Legg report into MPs' expenses to criticise 'culture of deference'

MPs were braced for a fresh onslaught over their expenses today as the long-awaited report naming those parliamentarians ordered to pay back cash to the taxpayer is published.

It is reported that Sir Thomas Legg, the retired mandarin who carried out the review, will criticise a "culture of deference" in which MPs expected their claims to by approved by Commons officials without question.

However, it is understood that his handling of the review will be called into question by the senior judge who has been considering appeals against his rulings.

Sir Paul Kennedy will reject the principle of introducing retrospective rules and limits on claims for items such as gardening and cleaning, according to a source close to the inquiry.

A large proportion of the 80 MPs who appealed against the independent auditor's findings have apparently had repayments either overturned or significantly reduced.

"Many others will now be regretting that they did not fight," the source added.

The rift threatens to undermine the credibility of the audit of claims between 2004/8, which was ordered by Gordon Brown last May in a bid to draw a line under the damaging expenses scandal.

Sir Paul, a former appeal court judge, is understood to have written a foreword to his section of the report in which he rejects retrospective rules in principle. He also dismisses the idea that MPs should be punished now because claims were "tainted".

The text is said to contrast sharply with the foreword written by Sir Thomas to his part of the review.

They are due to be published together by the House authorities, alongside a list of MPs who have handed back money since the scandal broke last spring.

Commons sources expect the final figure for repayments to be well below the £1 million mark.

That would be less than the bill for Sir Thomas's work, which had hit £1.1 million by the beginning of last month - not including the costs of the appeal process.

The backlash against the audit process has been growing since the autumn, when Sir Thomas sent letters to hundreds of MPs spelling out how much he expected them to repay.

Many were angry that he had imposed limits for reasonable expenditure on items such as gardening and cleaning - even though none existed at the time.

The Prime Minister himself was hit with a demand for more than £12,000, some £10,000 of which related to "excessive" spending on cleaning.

The 80 MPs who decided to launch appeals learned the results from Sir Paul last week.

Those who have already made the conclusions public include Tory backbencher Bernard Jenkin, who had been asked to return £63,250 after using the second home allowance to rent a property from his sister-in-law.

However, that sum has apparently been halved by Sir Paul after Mr Jenkin argued he should repay only the money claimed after 2006 - when Commons rules were changed to ban renting from relatives.

Conservative MP for Thanet North Roger Gale, who has been heavily critical of Sir Thomas, said the ex-judge had cleared him after accepting that some £2,100 claimed for mobile phone bills had been "permissible" under the rules at the time.

Others believed to have been cleared on appeal include the Solicitor General Vera Baird, Liberal Democrat frontbencher Jeremy Browne, and Labour backbenchers Ann Cryer and Frank Cook.

Along with the audit findings and repayments list, the Commons authorities will also publish a breakdown of expenses spending from last year.

Meanwhile Sir Christopher Kelly, chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life who drew up a blueprint for reforming the current system, will be giving evidence to the Commons Public Administration Committee.

Earlier this week he expressed concern that key recommendations in his report should not be watered down by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, the body set up to actually implement the changes.

Ms Cryer said she was justified in appealing against a demand to pay back "substantial" expenses for rent claimed on a flat owned by her son-in-law.

The MP for Keighley, West Yorkshire, also insisted the majority of MPs had done nothing wrong during the expenses scandal.

She told GMTV: "I did everything legitimately, well within the rules.

"The reasons I moved to a larger flat was about my late husband having cancer. I needed somewhere bigger because I had a studio before, so that he could come down and spend time with me.

"Therefore I rented the flat from my son-in-law and I had the approval of the fees office to do that. They checked the rent was right with estate agents. I couldn't have been more honest."

She accused Sir Thomas of being unfair, saying: "I had to clear my name. What Sir Thomas Legg said about me was not just unfair it was almost defamatory, and therefore I had to clear my name."

Ms Cryer, who is standing down at this year's general election, said that some of the biggest offenders in the expenses scandal were "nice people, good MPs" who had "made a big mistake".

She added: "The majority of members of Parliament, they didn't do anything wrong and those who didn't actually appeal, there was a lot of pressure brought to bear on backbenchers by the leadership of all parties to stop them appealing because they wanted to get it cleared up, fine, but we also wanted to clear our names.

Tory leader David Cameron told reporters outside his London home that he had taken a "strong stand".

"I was the first to come out and say that MPs had to pay back some money. Never mind that they were acting within the rules, never mind that they were given permission at the time. The fact is that the system was wrong.

"That is why the Conservative Party even before Legg, even before Kennedy, got out there and said you have got to pay back some money.

"We did that so I would say that people have to pay back the money that has been identified.

"That will help us to move on and actually build a parliament that people can trust."

Norman Baker - the Liberal Democrat MP who has been an outspoken campaigner for reform - said the Legg audit had not helped efforts to clean up the system.

"It was sloppy," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"He asked me about mortgage repayments when I have never had a mortgage. He started trying to reclaim money for rent from people who hadn't been renting.

"So the thing was full of elementary errors. It had also cost over £1 million and it is £142,000 for six months' work for him.

"It is very unfortunate because the whole basis of the expense abuse is something that needs sorting out and having this ineffective bit in the middle has not been helpful."

Tory MP Ann Widdecombe said the review had been "lazy, incompetent and illogical".

"It was lazy because he didn't answer the points that were put to him individually; it was incompetent because he got so much arithmetic wrong; and it was illogical because he applied retrospective limits to some things but not to others."

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said he hoped today's publication would "draw a line under the rotten system of expenses we had in the past".

It is important that a new system is in place "so that in the coming months and years people once again look up to Parliament as a place they have confidence in, rather than look down on it as a place about which they are very embarrassed," he said.