This morning I have had a fascinating trawl through the Parliamentary regulations regarding The Communications Allowance and the use of House Stationery. You can be similarly enthralled by following this link.
Why? Well it seems that Sir Christopher Kelly's swingeing reforms in response to the MPs' expenses scandal will, according to leaked information that has made its way to the BBC, involve an end to the £10,400 a year communications allowance.
This is yet more unwelcome news for print. This allowance covers, and I quote:
- Regular reports to constituents
- Newsletters
- Questionnaires and surveys
- Petitions
- Targeted communications
- Contact cards
- Distribution costs including direct mailing and postage
- Websites
- Some capital purchases
If Kelly does indeed axe this allowance it will remove at a stroke some £6.7m of potential print spend across the country, much of which I imagine is carried out by local jobbing printers in each particular MP's constituency.
The centralised stuff, such as House of Commons notepaper and pre-paid envelopes is [apparently] unaffected, by the way, so no doubt Office2Office wing Banner Business Services is relieved about that.
While I'm
as outraged as the next taxpayer about the scale of abuse and collusion over
expenses that has emerged as a result of the Telegraph's exposé (can recommend
No Expenses Spared as an illuminating, if enraging read, by the way), I can't help feeling
that Kelly's reforms seem to be shaping up as a classic piece of over-reaction whereby dealing with one problem creates another.
