Anger over expenses overhaul claims

Professor Sir Ian Kennedy indicated he could scrap MP expenses reforms

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.

Labour MP John Mann said that Sir Ian should quit if he was not prepared to implement Sir Christopher's recommendations in full. "If he is intending to start consulting again and reopen it, he should resign because that's not his job - £100,000, I understand that he's being paid - his job is to implement the Kelly review," he said.

Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker - an outspoken campaigner for reform - said he was "deeply dismayed" at the prospect that some of Sir Christopher's key recommendations could be dropped. "That rips the heart out of what Sir Christopher Kelly says. There is not very much left after that," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

However a spokesman for Ipsa said that it had a "statutory requirement" to consult on the content of the new scheme. "Sir Ian made his position clear when he was nominated as chair - Ipsa's job is to take the reins following the Kelly report and put together a scheme for consulting on," the spokesman said.