The cost of MPs' expenses, pay and staff has surged by more than 50 per cent to £130 million in the past five years.

The increase has occurred after MPs changed the rules for hiring employees and buying computers.

Details of how much each MP claimed in expenses over the past three years are published for the first time by the Commons today, before the Freedom of Information Act, which takes effect in January.

Interviewed in the Times, Sir Archy Kirkwood, the Liberal Democrat MP who is spokesman for the House of Commons Commission, said many MPs are "nervous".

"I celebrate the opportunity for people to do this job differently. And if people don’t like it then their electorate can throw them out: not commissioners, not clerks, not accountants," he said.

"And so my colleagues need to be robust about defending how they do the job they do, because it is my hunch that there is no systematic abuse of these allowances whatsoever, that we can detect."