Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, is to face an inquiry into her claims for parliamentary expenses on her constituency home, it was announced yesterday. John Lyon, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, performed a U-turn and announced he had accepted a complaint after twice refusing to inves...

The parliamentary sleaze watchdog today dismissed a complaint about Jacqui Smith's expenses – but is now considering "further correspondence" on the issue. The office of John Lyon, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, said he would not be pursuing a complaint he received yesterday about S...

So. It's official. Greed is good. Or, at least, it's government-sanctioned. Because forget the bankers and their billion-pound bonuses (they're bankers, what do you think they're in it for? Karmic goodwill and a cup of cocoa at bedtime?), there are only so many statements the government can make abo...

Yesterday saw representatives from the UK’s financial journalism industry give evidence to a House of Commons Treasury Committee inquiry into the banking crisis. So what conclusions were drawn about the media’s ‘role’ in the crisis? A fairly resounding ‘it wasn’t ...

The Metropolitan police will tomorrow be urged to investigate whether two Labour peers broke the law after allegedly indicating to undercover reporters that they had used their influence to help to amend legislation in exchange for payments. As the government admitted that the peers were facing "ver...

It cannot be right that the House of Lords is now more ethnically diverse than the House of Commons, the head of Britain's equalities watchdog warned yesterday. Trevor Phillips said that parliament might be the heart of Britain's democracy but its lifeblood remained "white, straight and male", with ...

MPs face an internet backlash over plans to keep the details of their expenses secret, it emerged today. The creators of the non-partisan websites TheyWorkForYou.com and WriteToThem.com have started a Facebook campaign against the proposals to exempt MPs from the Freedom of Information Act. Supporte...

David Cameron would remove more than 60 MPs as part of a Tory plan to make parliament work more efficiently. Drawing on plans drawn up by Kenneth Clarke, the former chancellor, the Tory leader today pledges to introduce legislation in his first term as prime minister to cut the size of the Commons b...

So, blearily, government offices re-open, factories closed for an artificially long break think about turning on the lights again, and the fortnight of footling around we don't somehow count as a public holiday is over. The hardworking families so relentlessly invoked by politicians are going back t...

David Cameron's decision to abandon all thought of asking his shadow cabinet team to give up their part-time moonlighting jobs in the private sector invites the question: "What on earth made him think they might?" As Nick Watt reports in today's Guardian, several shadow ministers made it plain they ...