Sir Christopher Kelly's recommendations may well have been met with approval from the media and the public, but their impact on staff was, as always, totally ignored. Skip related content
I'll start with the controversial bit.
On family members, the Kelly committee stated it has "no evidence of abuse occurring on a significant scale through the employment of family members.
"On the contrary, the committee has heard evidence that many MPs' family members work hard and offer good value for money for taxpayers'."
The parliamentary staff branch of the union Unite submitted evidence to the committee on the hard work that so many family members do in MPs' offices and put forward the branch's position that, as long as they are able to do their job, there should be no restriction on their employment.
Despite all this, the committee recommended that MPs should no longer be able to appoint members of their families to their staff.
Those currently employing family members should be able to do so for one further Parliament.
This applies to all MPs' partners, regardless of whether they are unmarried or in a civil partnership, yet no restrictions will be placed on employing other MPs' relatives.
I understand that a lot of people feel that the employment of family members is open to corruption, lest we forget Derek Conway; however, the vast majority of partners and children of MPs work extremely hard in their roles and in a lot of cases vastly exceed their job description.
The nature of an MP's work and the necessity to live in both London and the constituency means that some have employed their wives in the past to keep their family together.
In any case, the eloquent wife of Alistair Burt has already threatened a large-scale 'wife swap'. God help us.
On a more serious note, the committee heard evidence from Unite on the merits of centralisation of staff by the House, on the basis that so many members of MPs' staff are not treated fairly or even within the law.
59 members of staff do not have contracts of employment with their bosses and around 250 are paid below agreed payscales - that's £14,000 in London.
Sir Christopher felt that it was not 'necessary' to centralise staff, but rather recommended that a 'binding code of practice' be issued to ensure that MPs are recruiting and paying fairly.
If the law does not encourage MPs to pay and recruit fairly, I fail to see how a code from the House will do so.
Finally, Kelly recommended that redundancy payments for staff should not be decided by MPs but should be set centrally by the House.
The House has, in the past, refused to recognise a staff union on the basis that staff are employed individually but this is yet another example of centrally dictating terms and conditions when it suits.
This was a classic knee-jerk reaction to the baying for MPs' blood and was frankly, a lazy and superficial response to the desperate need to clean up the system.
Not only are the recommendations unfair, they're potentially against the law.
Changes to redundancy would require changes to contracts of employment.
Getting rid of employees on the basis of their relation to their employer would possibly constitute unlawful dismissal.
What is needed is genuine accountability of MPs to a body that can effectively ensure they are claiming appropriately and treating their staff, not only properly, but with regard to basic employment legislation.
Many MPs have shown that they cannot regulate themselves and this report doesn't do much to address this.
Widely ruling on all family members is not going to end nepotism in politics, it's going to put people who've done a fantastic job for many years out of work, damage relationships and potentially break the law.
Under Kelly's recommendations the system will still have huge scope for abuse for those who wish to do so.
My own recommendation to Sir Christopher would be to take note of the advice from those who understand how the system works, why it goes wrong and how to put it right.
Louise Haigh is parliamentary researcher to Jon Trickett MP.
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