A Spectator's Notebook
ritil MOST SENSIBLE suggestion made in vOmc t,*.; Tuesday's 'privilege' debate in the Commons came from Lord Hinching- brooke, who said that publication of 1 the details of MPs' petrol. allocation I would be the best answer to allegations.
But even if his advice is accepted, I fear that the House has already—as another MP said—made itself a laughing-stock. The original privilege complaint (as The Spectator recalled last week) arose out of a misunderstanding. The Sunday Express article denouncing the 'prodigious supplementary allow- ances' given to politicians was concerned not with MPs but with constituency workers. The article's tone may have been offensive, but the views expressed in it were certainly arguable; I can see little excuse for giving such allocations to the con- stituencies, and none at all for having given them in mid-December, before the fuel situation had been fully -appraised.
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