AN INDEPENDENT organisation set up to monitor Parliamentary expenses and salaries has been branded “a bureaucratic ornament” which is taking up MP's valuable time, Newport's Paul Flynn has claimed.

The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) was set up in 2009 following the expenses scandal, but has come under fire for a range of reasons, including its high running costs - estimated to be as much as £6m - and allegedly slow working pace.

Newport West MP Mr Flynn has now called for the organisation, which also sets MPs expenses, to be scrapped and replaced with a new system.

Writing on his blog the long-serving Labour MP said: “(The IPSA) was designed to be a bulwark against new fraud, restore the public’s confidence in MPs (and) create an independent body remote from MPs control, absolving Parliament from accusations of manipulation of finances in our self-interest.

“It has failed in all three ambitions.”

Saying the reputation of Parliament had sunk to “subterranean” levels, Mr Flynn added that he believed the majority of the voting public continued to believe MPs used the expenses system for their own ends.

He added the IPSA had made claiming for expenses far too complicated and time-consuming.

“A monthly 30 minute chore was complicated by IPSA into hours of tedious frustrating trawling through a bureaucratic morass of rules that are complex and tedious,” he said.

“IPSA robs MPs and our staff of much of their most precious possession – time.”

Mr Flynn, who has served as Newport West MP since 1987, said he had his Parliamentary colleagues would welcome a new system with expenses based on the distance each person had to travel to Westminster, and paid automatically.

"It would be acceptable even if it meant reduction in the amounts that MPs receive because of the liberation from the tentacles of tedious bureaucracy," he added.

"MPs would gain time, Parliament’s reputation would be protected and IPSA's annual running costs excess of £6m would disappear."