Why the second home allowance fracas is not going to disappear

Parliament has risen for a two-week Easter break and MPs have left
Westminster to spend more time with their homes - sorry, their families. But if they believe the row surrounding the Commons second home allowances is about to die down, they should think again.

Virtually every day sees a different newspaper revealing details of the
expenses and allowances claimed by ministers - and they have all been ministers so far, with Chancellor Alistair Darling and Transport Minister Geoff Hoon now joining Jacqui Smith and Tony McNulty on the wall of shame.

As suggested by the Mole last week, it is now widely believed in Westminster that this is a drip, drip operation being masterminded - with considerable success - within the Tory high command following a leak from inside the Commons secretariat, where MPs' allowances and expense claims are currently being totted up before being made public.

But David Cameron needs to be extremely careful. Just because no
Tories have so far been fingered does not mean they are clean. Indeed, in an article for the Mail on Sunday in which Cameron pressed
home his demand for party leaders to meet and get to grips with the issue, he was careful to state: "This is not a problem for any one party - we are all implicated and we must all find a solution."

Right. So the Tory leader is not out to make any political capital from this affair. Yet that sits uneasily with the suggestion these leaks to the press have been helped along by his own people.

It couldn't be a case of Cameron attempting to have the best of both worlds could it? It might be a clever tactic, so long as the inquiry into the leaks doesn't end up pointing the finger at the Conservatives, which seems unlikely unless someone has been extraordinarily careless (though, believe me, Labour is digging like mad to get something on someone - anyone).

The Prime Minister, meanwhile, has an equally difficult task. It is pointless attempting to suggest there is no problem and he knows that what's currently being revealed about Commons allowances has been accepted custom and practice for decades.

The current line from Downing Street is that Gordon Brown expects his Cabinet colleagues to "act in a way consistent with the rules of the Commons". But that's the problem: they have been doing just that and the public has only just caught up with it.

THE MOLE: EXPENSES ROW

FIRST POSTED APRIL 6, 2009