The long-awaited review into MP expenses by Sir Christopher Kelly has been published today. 

At the news conference (watch video below), Sir Christopher Kelly as the chair of the committee on standards in public life has recommended a wide-ranging shake up of the system.  His major proposals are to ban support for mortgage interest payments and that they should be stopped after an “appropriate transitional” period and that MP’s employing relatives should be phased out within five years.

Key Proposals include:

• MPs to claim for rent not mortgages
• Ban on employing relatives
• Ban on MPs near London claiming for second home
• End to £25-a-day subsistence claims
• Reduced resettlement grants
• Reduced travel claims

According to the Telegraph: Sir Christopher Kelly, is the civil servant charged with the job of cleaning up the House of Commons following the MPs’ expenses scandal.  

News from Epolitix concludes: final decision on the new expenses regime will be taken by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa).

It was established by Parliamentary Standards Act 2009, rushed through the last session as a reaction to public fury about MPs’ expenses claims.

Expected to begin work in Spring 2010, Ipsa will create for the first time a system of independent regulation of MPs’ salaries, allowances and financial interests.

It will have the power to investigate and invoke non-parliamentary sanctions analogous to those operated by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).