MPs' foreign trips: find facts not fun

This is an outward-looking country and MPs may, as they scrutinise the work of the executive, need to ask whether other nations manage some areas of policy better than we do here.

That may from time to time entail going abroad to interview prison officers or social-work trainers. As with the claiming of expenses, however, these investigations must be conducted in the right spirit.

They must not become an excuse to extract a free holiday at the taxpayer's expense. So it is hard to see why five-star hotels and first-class air travel are really required when many leading businesses whose staff work long hours to win business abroad no longer regard such expense as necessary.

Our disclosure of the near £1.4 million cost of MPs' travel last year comes as the Committee on Standards in Public Life begins its much-needed investigation into MPs' remuneration. It is unacceptable that MPs should go on being able to claim for domestic living costs on a lavish scale.

They should be fairly remunerated, reflecting constituency and Westminster duties, at a level comparable to others exercising similar responsibilities. The farcical process of using the taxpayer to underwrite the cost of 88p bath plugs and £5 adult movies must end.

As a Populus survey shows widespread public disquiet over some MPs' behaviour, it is vital that Parliament puts its house in order before damage to trust in the democratic process spreads further.

Trimming the fat

SHADOW Chancellor George Osborne faces the wrath of public-sector unions for pointing out that existing three-year pay deals are too inflexible. Yet, as so often, the Conservatives are caught in a bind over public-sector pay.

Today's figures from the Institute of Fiscal Studies suggest that the next government faces a debt burden that will amount to more than 73 per cent of the country's output by 2015. However, previous elections have shown that any suggestion of public-sector cuts triggers embarrassing Labour accusations that schools will close and hospitals suffer.

So it is today, with the Conservatives already beating a retreat on Osborne's comments, which have come at the same time as off-message interventions from other Tories on hunting and the NHS.

In a recession, despite Mr Cameron's promises to ring-fence health and education spending, punishing public sector workers is hard to defend. Yet perceptions are changing.

More than 1,000 council officials are paid more than £100,000 a year. Many people have also realised how much more generous public-sector pensions can be than those in the private sector.

Sooner or later, the recession will dictate that a public-sector fat from a decade of largesse will have to face cuts. Other governments are already taking such action: the Irish government is today bringing forward an emergency budget including a pension levy, in effect a pay cut for higher-earning public sector staff.

A future Conservative government might have to do something similar if it is serious about tackling the public debt burden. That may not be popular, but it is only right that the public sector — at least in its higher-paid reaches — should bear its share of the pain in a recession.

Something fishy

The £5 million upgrade of the London Aquarium has added a spectacular glass tunnel for a display of stingrays and a glass roofway for viewing seven
species of shark to the excitements of the capital's greatest fishy attraction. With the Easter holidays now upon parents, anything featuring sharks is bound to have an appeal.

This, surely, is the way to experience the perils and pleasures of the deep: from the civilised surroundings of the South Bank.