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AS PLANNED, the new body overseeing MPs’ expenses is going the extra mile to make it as difficult as possible for us to do our job.

The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) has introduced yet another new rule which is so mind-bogglingly unfair and ridiculous, you get the impression that Ian Kennedy, its chair, invented it for a joke, just to see how long it took for us to notice.

The previous system of expenses was so over-generous to us that – and I know this is hard to believe – our constituency office telephone costs were met in full! I know! How crazy is that?

Mr Kennedy has now remedied this by including in the detailed guide to the new expenses system (not the general explanation of the scheme published a few weeks ago) this provision:

As it is expected that not all of the telephone calls will be relating (sic) to an MP’s parliamentary functions, IPSA will only reimburse 85% of the cost of the telephone bill.

The 85 per cent rule applies not only to constituency office phone costs, but to mobile phone bills – even those exclusively purchased and used by staff for constituency work – and fax lines. Yeah, because 15 per cent of all fax messages received or sent in my office are for personal use…

Okay, well first of all, this is all utter BS. Mr Kennedy has absolutely no grounds for presuming anything about the amount of personal calls made by my or any other MP’s staff.

I understand that the rule is based on a misunderstanding, or perhaps a deliberate misinterpretation, of a Customs and Revenue rule that people who work from an office based in their private homes can offset only a maximum of 85 per cent of their home phone calls for tax purposes. But MPs’ constituency offices are not in their homes. Does Mr Kennedy even know this?

At a briefing held by Ipsa last week, a very senior, very highly-paid official (not being familiar with the scheme he’s paid to oversee, the only question from MPs he was able to answer was that he was in the “£80,000-£90,000″ pay band) was unable to justify this petty little rule. When asked if Ipsa itself had all of its own telephone costs reimbursed by the taxpayer, he replied yes, but that was because Ipsa staff don’t make personal calls. At which point, I’m told, someone performed a “boom-tish” on a nearby drumkit.

As with yesterday’s post about Ipsa ditching direct payments, I don’t expect any sympathy from those who leave comments on this site. But the 85 per cent rule is still 100 per cent wrong.

In his foreword to the expenses rules on Ipsa’s website, Kennedy says:

It is not our job to punish the next generation of MPs for the excesses of what has gone before.  Our responsibility is to reimburse MPs for the costs they necessarily incur in properly doing the job of a legislator in the 21st Century.

Well that undertaking didn’t last long, did it? The sums involved – at least as far as my own arrangements are concerned – are not large. But the amounts are less important than the principle; MPs are now being forced to subsidise the House of Commons, to pay out of our own pockets for the privilege of being an MP. The new rule will barely be noticed by better off and millionaire MPs (and when I say “millionaire MPs” I mean, of course, “members of the Cabinet”). But that doesn’t mean it’s fair or remotely acceptable, especially to those of us who are not Cabinet members and who are paid £35,000 a year less than the part-time chairman of Ipsa.