David Cameron has broken his electoral promise to increase health spending, says Ed Miliband. 

David Cameron says he will not break his promise to increase health spending, but will guarantee it. 

Up or down? Will he, won't he? Honest or not? Here is one that will run and run, since much depends upon it. Don't we in the media just love the seeming moral clarity of a broken promise. 

Well, frankly, my dears, I couldn't give a ...

And here speaks someone with a deep interest in health and the public finances. Actually, it is because I am deeply interested in health that I couldn't give a ... 

I don't care if he breaks it by the sums involved and I don't care if he keeps it. I don't care for Ed Miliband's allegation and I don't care for David Cameron's defence. I am a simmering vat of apathy.

Narcissism

For it is a perfectly sad/comical case of what Freud famously described as the narcissism of small differences. It is a difference that makes no practical difference. All that is at stake is the vanity of politics for name-calling. Doubtless some followers of politics will love it. 

'Up' evidently sounds good, at least in the judgment of these party leaders. 

'Down' evidently sounds terrible. Many will take issue with those judgments. But that's not my point. 

My point is that between 'up' and 'down' is a difference, potentially, of tuppence. Between 'up' and 'flat' is a difference, potentially, of a penny. Is that really the measure of the difference? It might as well be. 

'You said you would wash the dishes and you missed a spoon,' is about the size of it.

The 0.1% difference that dominated PMQs, between the Coalition plans in the spending review and the prospect of a fall (implied by recently revised estimates of inflation - a revision that is itself subject to revision), this difference is equal to about £100 million. 

It sounds a lot, until you remember who it is for: all 60-odd million of us. The NHS is vast because we are multitudes. This £100 million works out at about £1.60p per head, per year. About 3p per week. 

Save up and you could crack open a new box of Boots own-label plasters. It is about one-tenth of the cost of one trip to the GP. 

Of course, £100 million is not nothing. But it is next to nothing compared to the scale of change the Heath Service faces. 

Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, has said that it can no longer increase its share of GDP. That will break a 60-year pattern. If sustained, it will be unique in the OECD - a shift of historic importance, a world-first and nothing short of a revolution. That would be huge.

Margins and error 

It is in that context that £100 million is small. It is so small in proportion to the whole that the chance is high of the Department of Health going far above or below by sheer accident. 

They pretend to be Robin Hoods of financial expectations, our leaders - and we encourage them - but this arrow will be four years in flight. What chance that it will actually hit the mark? 

Any large business that said its reputation would stand or fall on a 0.1% change in annual turnover ought to be audited for sanity. It is almost impossible to plan to this degree, not least because no-one knows anywhere near exactly how much has been spent until after the event. 

The typical margin of error on Treasury forecasts for public spending is 20 to 30 times greater.  

Next to a health budget in excess of £100 billion, this is like fighting while the house shakes around you over the quid you found down the back of the sofa. Either healthcare hasn't enough, or it has plenty, and that will not change because of the PM's promise, either way. 

But isn't David Cameron's integrity at stake? 

Not with me; not for 3p per week. Part of the problem, perhaps, is that too many took seriously the electoral promise in the first place, assuming that 'up' must have meant something significant. 

It didn't. It was, as often in electoral coverage, indicative of a failure to establish the magnitude of 'up' and its implications, and so allow vagueness to do what vagueness is often allowed to do in politics and appear meaningful while meaning nothing.

But if politicians choose to bet their reputations on the thickness of a fly's eyelid, is that not the measure by which we should hold them to account? I think not. I do not want them judged by trivia, even if they do. That is to play their game. 

Meanwhile, the large questions of how big a share of national income the Health Service should take, and how people's rising aspirations for healthcare will be met in future - whether privately or publicly, through insurance or tax, markets or planning - the real and serious choices, in other words; about what sort of system we will have in future to give people what they want; choices that no party seriously addresses; these are edged out by the playground squabble about broken promises. 

After one general election and one comprehensive spending review, I am still no wiser about how any party proposes to meet - or deny - long-term public expectations for the nation's healthcare. 

No, the promise, broken or kept, is not the story - for all that broken promises are in the air as a result of Nick Clegg's misery over tuition fees. It is a distraction from the story. 

The important numbers, the big numbers, are orders of magnitude above this confectionary spat. That the leaders think it even worth shouting about and we think it worth serious attention, let alone think it the standard by which they should be judged, that's what makes them - and us - odd.

Quizzes are funny things - and not always funny ha-ha.

We like them for all sorts of reasons; to show off; concede our socially acceptable ignorance of science and numbers; persuade our parents their money and attention on our education wasn't wasted.

CoJo Quiz of the Year

Delve the farthest reaches of
your memory to take on the
CoJo quiz of 2010

Click to start the quiz

They're sort of social - we like doing them with others, shouting out the answers and getting ferociously irritated when others do.

We like to win in a competitive quiz, but it's kinda socially unacceptable to do so and we must accept our victory - preferably by not more than a single mark - with egregious modesty, muttering things like" lucky" and "some people are just good at quizzes" ... which translates as "I'm so much cleverer than you".

This quiz is different - and probably not what you expect.

It's about things that happened (mostly) in 2010 ... but only sort of.

The questions are both obvious and cryptic. There aren't any trick questions in the usual sense of the phrase. But they're all trick questions in a less usual sense.

You almost certainly know more of the answers than you think - but you might have to put in a bit of mental spade work.

Go on, you know you want to.

In May 2011, if the coalition government has its way, we'll all have the opportunity to vote in a referendum on changing the way we elect Westminster MPs.

PR and Alternative Vote

BBC Head of Political Research, David Cowling, briefs on AV and how it differs from PR.

Click to watch the slideshow

That change will be from one 'first-past-the-post' system to what is, in effect, another 'first-past-the-post' system.

Supporters of AV call it 'fair votes'. Some even use the description 'proportional representation', or PR, to describe it.

But that's not accurate.

AV ensures that more than 50% of those voting in any constituency support the eventual winner, though perhaps not as their first preference.

But AV doesn't guarantee that representation closely - or even roughly - matches the proportions of relative electoral support.

Talk about being in the right place at the right time; well, sort of.

Peter Hunt, the BBC's Royal Correspondent, got the call about the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton when he was at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London attending the 7 July bombings inquest. A few moments later, camera crew at the ready, Hunt was outside the court building doing a live two-way for the BBC News Channel.

The royal engagement dominated every news outlet across the UK and was still 'breaking news' well into the evening of 16 November - the day of the announcement. By then, there was little more to be said; yet the plethora of reports continued the following day.

Call me a cynic - just as Peter did - for questioning the timing of the Prince's 'good news' during a period of widespread economic discontent: was the announcement fortuitous luck or a carefully planned PR exercise? Hunt insists that the future king is fiercely independent and was totally in control of the announcement.  

CoJo News Debrief is an ongoing series of conversations with journalists about the back story of their own news reports. Previous films in this series:

CoJo News Debrief with Robert Pigott

CoJo News Debrief with Nick Robinson

CoJo News Debrief with Jon Sopel

It's fair to say the jury - aka the electorate - is still out on the detail of the spending review ... though it certainly knows more now than it did before the election.

Add to that uncertainty about and the way the economy will go and it's clear that the opinion polls will provide crucial reading for the political parties and journalists alike in the months ahead.

Opinion and the Review

BBC Head of Political Research, David Cowling, reflects on public opinion and the spending review.

Click to watch the slideshow

The public's view is that the deficit should come down.

But it's clear they'd rather that happened through 'efficiencies' rather than real cuts ... and certainly rather than cuts to what they and politicians call 'frontline services'.

As David Cowling, the Editor of BBC Political Research, explains in this short video guide, one of the big problems for the Government is that the electorate is split.

Reduce the deficit slowly, or go for quick, deep cuts?

Which areas should be exempt?And do people think the cuts will be fair?

And what effect will the cuts have on public opinion once they see which services will be reduced, which will be provided in different ways and which will disappear completely?

These are the issues that will be played out in the weeks and months ahead as the polls track the likely impact for voters.

What will be the medium- and long-term stories of the Spending Review?

Will they be unrelenting in their accounts of loss and victims? Or will we - journalists - be able to capture a more complete picture of the way society and public provision changes?

The Social Dimension

BBC Home Editor Mark Easton reflects on the social changes to expect after the spending review.

Click to watch the slideshow

Unlike many other events, this one extends far beyond the time limits of the usual news cycle - it's not one of those topics which will be over and done with in a few weeks time.

In many cases, the stories behind the gloomy predictions and the very real implications of the spending review are only just beginning.

Politically, financially and socially, policy announcements from Westminster and the other UK governments will be played out in every local community and region across the UK.  

And that presents journalists with a very particular challenge, according to the BBC's Social Editor Mark Easton.

In this video guide, Mark reflects on the spending cuts as part of something much bigger.

What are the full implications for our audiences? How might we expect our public services and our politicians to work in the future?

What will accountability look like? And who'll be running the services that are, at present, state monopolies? Who'll be responsible if things go wrong?

As the spending review unwinds, there will be stories about cuts and loss. But there'll be another dimension too as society changes.

One story - many different angles.

So ... that's it then.

The spending review's over and now it's all about reporting the cuts - and everyone knows how to do that.

The Spending Review

BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson talks about the issues for journalists as plans become reality.

Click to watch the slideshow

Well, no. Not quite.

First, it's not all over. The real story is only just beginning.

And, second, the political story of the next four years will be as much about reform and political argument as it will be about cuts.

Not everything will go as the Government plans. It's inevitable there'll have to be trimming, changes of course and - if economic growth turns out to be more disappointing than forecast - another look at the numbers.

Without doubt, what's proposed won't just mean spending less; it'll mean the UK will find itself providing public services in different ways ... or even not at all.

Other political ideas will elbow their way to the front. How will the 'Big Society' fit into all of this? Will the opposition's ideas gain traction? Will some interest groups get their way while others are snubbed?

In this video slideshow, BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson gives some pointers to the political story that's only now beginning.

Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger and Sunday Times Editor John Witherow debated 'paywalls' for newspaper content during a recording for BBC Radio 4's The Media Show.

In this guest blog for the BBC College of Journalism, presenter Steve Hewlett sums up the discussion:

We will all be hearing much in the next few weeks and months about newspapers charging for content previously free online. Why? Because, in a characteristically bold (and regarded in some quarters as foolhardy) move, Rupert Murdoch is about to put all his UK newspapers' online offerings behind so-called 'paywalls'.

And, unusually for a Murdoch in British media circles, he has many people - friends and traditional foes alike - wishing him well. The fact is that long-term circulation decline and precipitous falls in advertising revenues have rendered most broadsheet business models unworkable. Revenues simply don't come close to meeting costs: to the tune of - at the Guardian/Observer on one hand and the Times/Sunday Times on the other - £100,000 and £240,000 a day respectively.

But the problem with going down the paywall route - even assuming it works in any terms and that enough people pay up to make it worthwhile in the first place (which is far from certain) - is that it runs the risk of missing out on the 'national conversation'.

The high-quality comment and analysis we get from our press feeds and informs that conversation, but it increasingly takes place elsewhere - not just pubs, clubs and living rooms but online in new, rapidly developing discursive, participative forms (think Facebook, Twitter, blogging etc). And not just writers but ultimately most of their proprietors, too, crave the attention and influence which, once behind a 'paywall', they might well lose.

Rusbridger and Witherow - with fully 30 years in the Editor's chair between them - disagree about paywalls but, interestingly, agree about something possibly more significant still. Both see the end of newsprint itself as being probably inevitable and even almost in sight.

For Rusbridger and the Guardian, with online revenues already up around £40 million a year and rising fast, it is already possible to imagine a print-free future. And for all the misty-eyed fondness for ink and hard copy you could see in both men a tangible sense that the future held substantially more by way of opportunity than threat.

:: Listen to the Media Show at 1.30pm, Wednesday 19 May on BBC Radio 4.

I was amused to hear about ongoing and in-depth research for an Ofcom report, due out this spring, into the acceptability of bad language on television. 

The poor researchers have had to sit in people's front rooms holding up cue cards with rude words written on them, noting the reaction from different demographics ranging from sexuagenarian Glasgwegian ladies (pretty broadminded, it seems) to asking travellers their views about the use of the word 'pikey' - which seems to have come into wider use since the Guy Ritchie film Snatch.

It'll be interesting to see what Ofcom recommends, as the research forms part of its ongoing review of the Broadcasting Code. 

Perhaps, as the recent Social Attitudes survey suggests, people are broader minded than we expect. What does offend is the deliberate use of language which abuses an individual or a group and/or their values and beliefs.

But there are hazards in deciding what offends who. 

A case in point is the foul-mouthed force that was Ian Dury, brought to life again in the film Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll. Andy Serkis (best known as Gollum in Lord of the Rings) plays the utterly irrepressible musician who showed punk rockers how it was done. Serkis is a big fan of Dury (me too!) and fairly describes him as a poet. A rude and lewd one for sure, but he had a great sense of rhythm and of how to play with the sounds of words. 

The film highlights the row over his controversial song Spasticus Autisticus, which was written in reaction to (rather than for) the Year of the Disabled in 1981. Dury was himself disabled: he had polio as a child and wore calipers on both legs. Somehow the irony of the song's lyrics was lost on the good burghers of the BBC, who promptly banned it from airplay. 

When I check around, of course it did not offend disabled people at the time, and it doesn' t now. In fact it has become an anthem. There's even a Facebook campaign to get the song to Number One to mark its 30th anniversary.

What does bother the disabled community is the fact that disabled actors were not considered for the part (think Mat Fraser, for example). But do see it; Serkis is brilliant. And the young Ian is played by Wesley Nelson, who has cerebral palsy; he's interviewed here at BBC Ouch!.

The older Dury never minded his language. As journalists, we have to - but, before we tie ourselves in politically correct knots, it's worth asking the people we fear may be offended what they think.

The Science Media Centre - based at the Royal Institution in London - is one of the best resources for any journalist reporting a science story.

We've invited its Director, Fiona Fox, to make regular contributions to the College of Journalism Discussion pages - on science, the media and the misunderstandings that, from time to time, arise.

Here's her first post: 

It's all happening with science in the media.

No sooner were we back after the Christmas break than the BBC Trust announced that its third Impartiality Review will focus on science.

Then came the publication of 'Science and the Media - Securing the Future', the report of a six-month working group, set up by the Science Minister Lord Drayson, that I chaired.

And finally came the glossy launch of the BBC's Year of Science, prompted by the Royal Society's 350th celebrations.

The timing of the announcement of the Impartiality Review couldn't have been better for my report, with several people congratulating us for persuading the Trust to tackle science. Of course there was no connection whatsoever but some rumours should just be left to spread.

And since we are credited with such influence I thought I would make myself even more useful and lay out the issues that the Trust should address in its year-long review.

Probably good to start by saying that our report finds science coverage in the BBC to be in pretty rude health - especially in news.

Research carried out by Cardiff University School of Journalism for our group scotches some of the myths about a crisis in science reporting and reveals that there is more of it than ever, the status of the specialist science reporters is greater than ever and the appetite for science healthier than ever.

After a year that will be remembered as much for Nuttgate, UEA Gate and swine flu as it will for MPs' expenses, those who continue to insist that science is in a ghetto are starting to sound seriously out of date.

But that doesn't mean there is nothing to fix and the BBC Trust chose science over several other options because of growing concerns around the reporting of controversial stories like MMR, GM crops and climate change. 

Doubtless those concerns differ depending on who is raising them, but I can certainly highlight some of the main issues that the science community would like to see addressed by the Trust.

Central to these is the feeling that the vast majority of general news reporters, editors and presenters struggle to master some of the basic principles of science.

The notion that the media is dominated by arts and humanities graduates is prevalent and many feel that a double standard is applied with senior journalists and presenters being almost proud to admit to no knowledge of science in a way that they would never do with politics or economics. 

Almost all the really bad examples of science coverage from the BBC in recent years involve non-science journalists deciding to splash on some study that hasn't even be published, or making claims of major breakthroughs based on a single study that hasn't been replicated, or using percentages rather than actual numbers to scare us all witless about some new risk.

The BBC's College of Journalism is already planning to expand its science training for non-specialists and anything the Trust could do to make sure that editors and presenters do the training would be very welcome. They would also do well to look at some novel ways of populating their newsrooms with a few more science graduates.

Another thing the Trust will have to grapple with is the thorny issue of 'journalistic balance'.

Up there with the other sacred cows of 'objectivity' and 'impartiality', 'balance' works for journalism but is very problematic for science. 

Perhaps because we live with a system of adversarial politics, the notion of getting both 'sides' into every interview has defined the BBC's news coverage. I know of a former senior health reporter on the BBC who battled with his editors for months during the MMR debate after being told that every package must include a spokesperson from the anti-MMR camp.

He argued that to do so was to distort the real balance of debate in which 99.99% of all experts believed this vaccine was safe compared to a handful of critics expressing fears.

The same is true on climate change. 

I am not with those scientists who call for the censorship of sceptics and I believe they should get their say on the airwaves. But the idea that every time climate researchers publish a new study in Nature they should have to do five rounds with a sceptic is just lazy. 

The irony is that we would learn much more about the real uncertainties in climate science if we subjected mainstream researchers to some good old fashioned journalistic scrutiny than we do from these endless spats.

If the public does not choose to take action on climate change, vaccinate their children or support GM crops, then so be it - that's called democracy. 

But if, as polls show, the public believe that scientists are split down the middle on these issues then journalism has failed us. There is dissent on these issues and it should feature in the media, but in a way that makes it very clear where the weight of scientific evidence falls.

Linked to this is the whole issue of weighing evidence over opinion and, again, I would like to see some guidance coming from the Trust about the need for journalists to make clear which stories and guests are voicing opinions and which are presenting the scientific evidence.

One of my lowest points came when I was asked by the BBC to find an eminent vaccine expert to debate MMR with the actress who had played the mother of an autistic child in a dramatization of the Andrew Wakefield story.

Those who know me know that I'm a big fan of people with strong opinions and a clear world view, but I do think we need to be clear about the distinction between fact and opinion when making decisions on these big issues.

So there you go - a few issues for the BBC Trust to consider. 

Now if by happy coincidence some of these appear on the Trust's work plan to be announced in spring then all well and good ... but from now on I'm charging!

Fiona Fox is Director of the Science Media Centre and author of Science in the Media: Securing the Future.

There's nothing like a bit of bad news to concentrate the mind.

And in June 2009, Gordon Brown had bad news by the bucketful.

There was uproar over MPs' expenses. Labour had done disastrously in the local and European elections, with the BNP winning its first seats in Europe. And yet another attempt to unseat Gordon Brown as Prime Minister had been foiled.

So the PM unveiled his latest ideas on Commons reform which were widely seen as an attempt to reassert his authority.

These ideas came on top of his proposals, soon after coming to office, that the Prime Minister should surrender some of their own powers to MPs - on declaring war and dissolving parliament to hold a general election.

And, as voter anger mounted over the expenses scandal, Gordon Brown floated the idea in his 2009 Labour conference speech that voters should be given the power to recall or sack MPs.

Not to be outdone, the Conservatives are calling for there to be fewer MPs.

The new Commons Speaker, John Bercow, is entering the fray, too. In September 2009, he proposed his own package of reforms to strengthen the role of the humble backbench MP, what he called "a backbencher's Bill of Rights". He also said he wanted to call time on the long recess which sees MPs leave Westminster in July and not return until October.

The scandal over MPs' second home allowances has been followed by a series of Sunday Times articles alleging that some peers have been abusing their own expenses system - an affair that's still rumbling on.

The newspaper has named more than a dozen peers. It accused some of pocketing tens of thousands of pounds by either declaring empty properties as their main homes or by claiming allowances despite having paid off their mortgages.

And it alleged that some peers had been 'popping into' the Lords chamber briefly to claim the daily subsistence allowance but spending very little time on parliamentary business.

Some of the claims are being investigated by the House of Lords authorities. Others have been passed on to the police. And while inquiries continue, the Senior Salaries Review Body has unveiled plans for a big shake-up of Lords' allowances in a move designed to "restore public confidence" in the funding of the Upper House.

The SSRB report, commissioned by the Prime Minister, recommends that the overnight allowance claimed by peers whose main home is outside Greater London should be cut from £174 to £140.

It also wants peers to declare which is their "principal residence" and to explain why they are making the declaration - current rules provide no definition of "main home".

The report wants mortgage interest relief to be phased out over five years. And it is recommending that peers, who are not paid - apart from some who are ministers, should receive a "daily attendance fee" of £200 to replace their current subsistence and office allowances worth up to £161.

And one other proposed change: peers would, for the first time, have to submit receipts for travel and overnight accommodation.

The Government says it wants the changes to be introduced by April 2010. The report on peers' allowances, and a promise of new laws to discipline peers guilty of misconduct, followed a Lords vote to suspend two Labour peers, Lord Truscott and Lord Taylor of Blackburn, for six months over the so-called "cash for influence affair".

Adult films, moat cleaning, floating duck islands, silk cushions - flippin' heck ... was there anything that MPs weren't claiming for in the great expenses scandal of 2009?

It all began in the New Year when the Commons authorities announced that Parliament would be publishing details of MPs' expenses for the past four years, after abandoning attempts to exempt them from all requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

This prompted the first of a series of leaks from the Commons database - starting with the expenses of the then Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith.

It was revealed that she'd been claiming up to £24,000 a year in second home allowances for the house she shared with her husband and children in her Redditch constituency in Worcestershire while designating her sister's home in London as her main residence.

Then it was disclosed that she'd claimed on expenses for two adult films watched at her (second) home by her husband.

But that was only the start.

In May, The Daily Telegraph began publishing often eye-popping details of the private lives or lifestyles of scores of MPs after obtaining computer discs - from a still unidentified source - containing four years' worth of claims and receipts submitted to the Commons fees office.

Among them the senior Conservative Douglas Hogg claiming for cleaning his moat while fellow Tory Sir Peter Viggers charged for a "floating duck island" and the Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne put in for a trouser press.

And much of the controversy centred on the second home allowance.

The then Cabinet minister Hazel Blears was pilloried for claiming for three different properties as her second home in a single year - 'flipping"' a house in her Salford constituency and two flats in London.

Husband and wife Tories Andrew Mackay and Julie Kirkbride each claimed second home allowances on different properties.

And the Labour MPs Elliot Morley and David Chaytor were both suspended from the party after it was revealed they had claimed for mortgages they'd already paid off.

Most MPs in the firing line offered two main lines of defence.

Some insisted they were always acting within the rules.

Others said there'd been an unspoken agreement going back to the 1970s that voters would never accept politicians being given big pay rises so MPs should be encouraged to make up the difference through expenses and allowances.

One of the few to hit back at critics was the West Country Tory MP Anthony Steen, who'd claimed tens of thousand pounds for the upkeep of his country house.

He blamed the whole thing on jealousy, declaring in a BBC interview:

"I've got a very, very large house. Some people say it looks like Balmoral. It's a merchant's house of the 19th century. It's not particularly attractive, it just does me nicely."

As the uproar continued, Parliament finally published its own version of the expenses.

This provoked even more public anger at what was widely seen as an attempted Commons cover-up. For the official list had had the most interesting bits "redacted" - or blacked out, including MPs' addresses, for "security reasons".

If that had been the only version available, we would never have known that second homes were being "flipped" to maximise expense claims and to reduce capital gains tax.

Altogether, more than 100 MPs have announced that they will be standing down at the next General Election, some as a direct result of the furore over expenses.

Labour's Ian Gibson has already gone. He quit after being barred from standing again over allegations that he claimed for a flat in which his daughter lived rent-free. In the Norwich North by-election that followed, the 27-year-old Tory Chloe Smith became the youngest MP in the Commons.

But the highest profile victim of the scandal was Michael Martin, the first Commons Speaker to be forced out of office in 300 years.

He stood down after being accused by critics of being the driving force behind efforts to block the publication of MPs' expenses - and causing outrage when he publicly attacked MPs who were pressing for more transparency. So what's being done to clean up Parliament?

A Bill to create a new independent body, the Parliamentary Standards Authority, was pushed through just before the summer recess. But in the rush to get it passed, this was watered down and plans for a legally binding code of conduct for MPs and for two new criminal offences were dropped.

A newly created select committee on members' allowances has announced interim reforms - including a virtual ban on 'flipping' the designation of second homes and curbs on claims for furniture and things like cleaning and gardening. Mortgage interest and rent payments have been capped at £1,250 a month.

As the furore continued, a former civil servant, Sir Thomas Legg, was called in to carry out an independent audit of all MPs' expenses claims since 2004. His findings created uproar at Westminster when MPs each received their own 'Legg Letter' in October 2009, with many being asked to repay hundreds or even thousands of pounds.

Gordon Brown also commissioned an independent investigation into the whole expenses affair by the Committee on Standards in Public Life. 

And there was more outrage at Westminster when the committee, chaired by Sir Christopher Kelly, published a report saying that MPs should stop claiming for mortgage interest on second homes and also stop employing relatives with public money.