PAUL Flynn has a history as a campaigner.

Over the years he has thrown his weight behind a whole variety of subjects from drug legislation to the safety of bullbars on some vehicles.

Some of his causes are popular, some less so.

But the Newport West MP has backed the wrong horse in calling for a revamp of the House of Commons expenses system.

Not because he is necessarily wrong – but because he is an MP.

He might be right when he says the system brought in after the 2009 expenses scandal is unwieldly, bureaucratic and expensive.

His proposed solution – providing MPs with an annual allowance – might save Parliament both money and time.

He is certainly brave for raising the issue again. And the national media ahould note that Mr Flynn has raised his concerns about Ipsa, the body that regulates Parliamentary expenses, on many occasions.

But he is on a hiding to nothing.

Most people simply do not trust MPs to have any kind of responsibilty for the setting or operation of their own expenses system.

When the details of MPs’ expenses claims were leaked to the Daily Telegraph in 2009 all hell broke loose.

The majority of MPs had done nothing wrong. Some had made mistakes. But some were downright crooked.

Those who stole from their constituents – because that is what fiddling your expenses amounts to if you are paid by the taxpayer – were able to do so because of a system that was laughable in its laxness.

Voters were rightly furious at what had gone on.

And let us not forget that expenses claims were kept secret for many years and the Commons authorities fought tooth and nail to keep it that way despite Freedom of Information rulings.

It took a whistleblower and some fine journalism to expose those MPs who were feathering their own nests with our money.

The scandal led to a deep distrust and lack of respect for MPs that remains to this day.

Many of them did not deserve to be tarred with the same brush but that is what inevitably happened.

And in the same way that journalism has struggled to recover from the phone hacking scandal even though the vast majority of the profession had nothing to do with it, MPs simply cannot talk about expenses without being greeted with derision.

That’s exactly what happened to Mr Flynn this week after he again raised the issue in his online blog.

Those parts of the national media opposed to Mr Flynn’s party lapped it up, with some even suggesting the veteran MP’s suggestions were Labour Party policy.

That’s not the case, of course, and Labour has been forced into issuing a statement to that effect.

While Mr Flynn has railed against some of the national media coverage this week, it would seem naive of him to re-post his thoughts on such a controversial subject and not expect those publications opposed to his political views to have a field day – particularly as he has a higher profile at the moment as Shadow Leader of the Commons.

In my view, Mr Flynn is right to raise the issue of MPs’ expenses but some of his reasoning for the need for reform – for instance, that the claims system is a time-consuming chore for MPs and their staff – is flawed and out of touch with public opinion.

Many workers have to jump through hoops to claim expenses from their employers and they will have little sympathy for MPs having to do the same.

But I will again propose a solution – no doubt unpopular – that I have been writing about since the expenses scandal was at its height in 2009.
And it isn’t so far away from Mr Flynn’s idea.

Put simply, I would raise the basic salary for MPs to £100,000 and not allow them to claim for anything else.

Job done? Maybe.