Radio 4’s Today Programme has revealed the cost of the new parliamentary body to police MPs’ expenses: around £6.5 million a year, with 80 staff and a boss pulling in £100k.

Nice work if you can get it, but surely it raises serious questions about the new system.

The total amount current and former MPs are being asked to repay, covering claims over several years, is a touch over a million pounds.

That means the new cost of checking those expenses and ruling whether they’re legitimate is many times higher than the amount the public purse was previously losing where MPs played the system, pushed their luck and – in a handful of cases – allegedly indulged in outright fraud.

In recent years, every MP has – controversially – been allocated £10,000 annually to communicate with their constituents. That allowance is now gone, and it seems the money – all of it – will instead be spent on checking claims against receipts.

Is that really the most efficient system that could be devised?