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IPSA have embarked on a charm offensive to mark its three-month anniversary.

Now, you should know that both Ian Kennedy, Ipsa’s chair, and its chief executive, Andrew McDonald, are very touchy and a tad hysterical when it comes to criticism. Kennedy told The Telegraph just last month that…

All of these are claims that have rained down on us, all made with gusto – and every one untrue.

So, the chairman of Ipsa believes every MP who has made a complaint about Ipsa – including all of us who took part in a Westminster Hall debate on the subject on 16 June – is a liar. Interesting… (I wrote to Mr Kennedy today, inviting him to place on record his belief that I am lying in my criticisms of Ipsa but I expect he won’t reply – I’m only an MP, after all, not a journalist.)

Now Andrew McDonald is patting himself on the back because, three months after it was up and running, Ipsa have managed to pay his and Mr Kennedy’s salaries on time and in full. So job done.

McDonald, responding to outrageous and unfounded claims that the Ipsa computer system is crap, said:

MPs’ offices spend around 15 minutes a day doing their online expenses – which, given the significant sums of public money involved, does not seem unreasonable – and we now settle claims within 13 days.

I’m sure his Director of Corporate Information and Communications Technology, or one of his three deputy directors, told McDonald that this was the case. But how does he know that on each occasion, the person using the system logged off entirely happy with the service? Yesterday, for example, I gritted my teeth and logged on to try to make some claims. As per procedure, after a few minutes I tried to phone Ipsa to ask for help. I waited for 15 minutes before hanging up and trying again. Then the phone cut out on me after I’d got through. Then I tried again and it was engaged. I tried three more times and on the third time I got through to a very helpful gentleman who explained how I could progress my session. He rung off and I continued my session. Then discovered I was locked out of the system. I gave up.

Now, in IpsaLand, this was simply an MP logging onto the system and then, half an hour or so later, logging out. But on the planet Earth, this was an MP giving up in frustration and not claiming money that was due to him. I get the feeling that that’s the point of the system.

As for claims being paid within 13 days, the only claims that I know of that are paid that quickly are mileage claims. Many colleagues have claimed bitterly that they are thousands of pounds out of pocket thanks to Ipsa’s tardiness. But then, they’re MPs and are therefore lying, according to Mr Kennedy.

McDonald continues:

All I will say is that I am pleased with what we have achieved to date – against daunting odds.

Daunting odds? Ah, yes – the outrageously difficult task of paying 650 people identical salaries and paying out expenses. A feat no organisation has ever dared attempt before now.

Ominously – and you can almost hear the threat in his voice as you read it – McDonald tells the Telegraph:

…in 2011/12 we will undertake our first review of MPs’ pay. To have an informed – public – discussion of pay, we need to ask fundamental questions about the role of MPs and what they need from the taxpayer to perform that role.

Oh, well, that’s going to work out well, isn’t it? “So, tell me, Mr Average Member of the Public, do you think that overpaid MPs – remember, the ones who stole all that money from you over the years and spent it on duck houses and such? – should get even more money?”

His boss, Ian Kennedy, recently made a speech in which he claimed:

It is one of the peculiar ironies of fate that MPs voted en masse for the creation of IPSA, only for some, the refuseniks, to expend a great deal of energy criticising it and its staff

That’s not how I remember it, matey-boy. Yes, there were some votes on some of the dafter things that Jack Straw inserted into the Bill on stuff like Parliamentary privilege, but there was no vote on the Second or (I think) the Third reading. This was not because, as Kennedy no doubt tells himself as he’s crying himself to sleep at night, everyone enthusiastically supported of the legislation; it was because we made the colossal mistake of considering the legislation in the midst of the expenses scandal – the worst possible time to give due consideration to such an important Bill. No-one in their right minds would have spoken out against its measures given the rapidity with which the media would have lept on them, destroying with  self-righteous relish any chance of re-election for that individual.

No, there’s never been a vote on Ipsa in the past. But there might be one soon. And I suspect we’ll be a lot less reticent this time about expressing our views in the lobbies.