Tories under scrutiny over expenses
A large section of David Cameron's top team has been dragged into the Commons expenses row.
The latest tranche of revelations from the Daily Telegraph indicated that senior Tories had engaged in the tactic of "flipping" property designations to claim more allowances.
Among them was shadow schools secretary Michael Gove - one of Mr Cameron's closest allies - who spent £7,000 over five months on a London property, before buying a house in Surrey and claiming thousand of pounds more on that.
Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley apparently renovated a Tudor thatched cottage on the taxpayer tab shortly before selling it, and shadow Welsh Secretary Cheryl Gillan was forced to apologise after admitting she had put through dog food on expenses.
Mr Cameron reacted swiftly by issuing an apology for his party's involvement with Westminster's discredited allowances regime.
But there will be relief at Conservative Central Office that he and the Tories' other two top figures - shadow foreign secretary William Hague and shadow chancellor George Osborne - seem to have escaped relatively unscathed.
Mr Cameron said it was going to be "another bad day for parliament and frankly another bad day for the the Conservative Party. We are sorry that this happened and it needs to change," he added.
A new independent audit unit - costing £600,000 a year to run - will take over scrutiny of MPs' expenses claims, say the Commons authorities.
The ruling Commons Commission is also due to discuss whether it can rush through the publication of more than a million edited claims receipts.
It is an attempt to stop the Daily Telegraph's "drip drip" release of a leaked - and unedited - version of the claims.
