Not a lot of people know this

One of the members of Parliament has spoken out about allowances. She blogged the fact that she was advised these were not so much refunds of necessarily incurred expenditure as allowances to take note of the fact that MPs were under-paid. This got up the nose of Tory Party Office and she had to remove her blog.
It was archived and is still available; well worthy of time to read it. Here is just a taste

"Just park a couple of facts for a moment, which you may not agree with but are factual.
The first is that MPs have always been encouraged, by whatever means possible, to draw down their ACA allowance in full. This is because it was upped in place of an appropriate pay rise.

The rules surrounding the ACA were deliberately sloppy in order to maximise the opportunity that MPs had to draw.
This was always felt to be the safest political method to remunerate MPs, rather than face the media backlash of a pay rise.

Parliament is in chaos. The public are angry. The Telegraph has upped its circulation.
There are 650 members of Parliament. In any walk of life, in whatever profession, you will find people who are dishonest. It will always be thus as long as we are all human!"