The issue of MPs expenses is still causing politicians mental stress, according to their doctor.
Ira Madan, consultant occupational physician at the House of Commons, explained Ipsa, the new expenses watchdog, was cited by MPs as the cause of their anxieties as well being the butt of people’s jokes.
“The frustrations and difficulties members are experiencing with Ipsa are contributing to poor mental wellbeing,” Dr Madan told the Commons committee, which deals with members’ expenses, yesterday.
She said: “The bureaucracy of Ipsa has increased their workload, they find it increasingly frustrating to deal with Ipsa, they are concerned that the way the expenses are reported by Ipsa is picked up by their local constituency press and there can be some fairly vitriolic reporting of that.
“If they go to the hairdresser, people will say: ‘Are you going to put that on expenses?’ It might be funny for the first one or two times but, actually, it gets right up their noses.”
It came as Ipsa released details of MPs who wrongly claimed taxpayer-funded expenses for websites, featuring party logos.
Among the 20 parliamentarians were Moray MP Angus Robertson, the SNP leader at Westminster and Dundee West Labour MP Jim McGovern. But they did not have to pay back the cash because the breaches were relatively minor.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article