The government was accused of acting with "indecent haste" over emergency legislation being rushed through Parliament to clean up the MPs' expenses regime.

The government was accused of acting with "indecent haste" over emergency legislation being rushed through Parliament to clean up the MPs' expenses regime.

The Parliamentary Standards Bill will set up a new independent watchdog to regulate the allowances system and create criminal offences that could see errant MPs facing jail. But MPs condemned the decision to spend just three days considering the legislation in the Commons, arguing it could raise important constitutional matters about the freedom with which politicians can speak in Parliament.

Senior Tory Sir Patrick Cormack said the UK Government was taking a bill with "significant constitutional significance through the House at a gallop".

He added there were "widespread concerns in all parts of the House about what they are doing and the speed with which they are doing it".

Sir Patrick continued: "I hope that this afternoon and tomorrow, in this indecent haste, the government will respond with a degree of sensitivity to the points colleagues will be making, and I will be trying to make, about this bill to try and make a very, very bad bill just a little bit better."

Former Cabinet minister John Redwood asked how this "very complex and expensive bureaucracy" would be better than "beefing up" the present system.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw said the need for emergency legislation had been agreed by party leaders in talks before the bill came to the House. "There was a general agreement, I'm not saying it was universal, that we needed to make swift progress," he said.