Les Bonner

Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg today called on Gordon Brown to waste no more time in organising a meeting of the three main party leaders to tackle the problem of MPs’ expenses. Copies of Nick Clegg’s own proposals for reforming the system were published on his website last week and have been sent to both of the other party leaders.

The plan would see the end of expenses being used to buy second homes, with MPs only allowed to claim for the rent on a second home, utility bills and council tax.

Last month Nick Clegg wrote to Gordon Brown and David Cameron calling for a meeting as soon as possible. Gordon Brown has since said that he would be ‘happy’ to meet to discuss the proposals. However, no meeting has yet been scheduled.

Nick Clegg said:

“Politicians cannot fall into the same old pattern of talking about how the rules need to be reformed and then keeping quiet in the hope that the issue will simply go away.

“There is a responsibility on senior politicians to show leadership and set out how they would fix a system that is clearly not up to the job.

“A meeting needs to be held without delay to come up with a fair and open way of meeting MPs’ costs.

“As the events of the Easter weekend have shown, there are still political insiders right at the heart of Government who seem to live in a small world of their own, oblivious to the effect their actions have on public confidence in politics. If we do not show that we are serious about taking action to fix things that confidence will continue to plummet.

“I have published my ideas for an extensive reform of the system. Others will have their own proposals too. It’s important that we now look at the detail of these proposals to secure an agreement between party leaders.”