Anger over expenses overhaul claims

The head of the new watchdog charged with cleaning up Parliament is at the centre of a political firestorm after it emerged that he may scrap key elements of the plan to overhaul the system of MPs' expenses.

Professor Sir Ian Kennedy let it be known through briefings to newspapers that he was ready to abandon the proposed ban on MPs employing family members paid for out of the public purse.

Even more controversially, he was also reported to be planning to drop a requirement for MPs to hand back any profits they made when they came to sell up second homes which had been bought with mortgages subsidised by the taxpayer.

The two measures were key planks of the reform plan published earlier this week by Sir Christopher Kelly, the chairman of the Committee for Standards in Public Life, and backed by the three main party leaders.

However, Sir Ian - who was appointed as the £100,000-a-year, three-days-a-week chairman of new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa), made clear hat he had "no obligation" to accept the plan.

He indicated that he thought some of Sir Christopher's recommendations were open to legal challenge and that he was intending to launch his own consultation process.

The news was greeted with alarm by supporters of reform who warned that Sir Ian was opening the door to those MPs opposed to change to unravel the whole of Sir Christopher's plan.