Frank Field - a truly Rt Honourable gentleman - has blogged his anger at his treatment at the hands of Sir Thomas Legg:
"From honourable member to rogue. That, thanks to retrospective and unprecedented changes Sir Thomas Legg has made to the rules on MPs' expenses, is how I feel.
You may remember that last year I was part of the small band of MPs who voted to make details of our expenses public. It was a mystery to me why the then Speaker and his allies opposed being open to taxpayers. They were later defeated in the courts.
As soon as the details of our expenses were given to MPs I put mine on my website. The Daily Telegraph who bought all of this information published a ‘rogues and saints' gallery. Having considered the evidence, they placed me in the latter category...
Late on Monday I received along with other MPs a letter from Sir Thomas Legg. He recommends I repay just over £7,000: £1,000 housekeeping costs for each year; £1,800 of other household bills, and £230 which I should have claimed from other allowances...
My concern is that nowhere has Sir Thomas explained why he has changed the rules which have resulted in his recalculations. No matter what the cost of maintaining a second home in my constituency has been, a £3k cut-off point was retrospectively imposed.
Imagine that you have been driving, perfectly legally, through a 30 mile an hour zone at a speed of 25 mph. Imagine then your reaction when, five years later, you receive multiple fines as a decision has been taken to change, retrospectively, the speed limit to 20."
Anger among MPs over Legg is close to boiling point. Frank Field could be the MP to lead a backbench insurrection. It has to be backbench - the Tory and Labour leaderships are insisting that Legg is obeyed. David Cameron has said Tory MPs who refuse to do so will not stand as Tory candidates.
But will they have to pay anyway? As James Forsyth noted on Friday evening, it is far from clear what will happen to MPs that do not repay but retire.
