John Tate is unconvinced that charity expenses can't be abused as easily as MPs' expense claims.

There has been some comment that a number of chief executives do not support the idea of expenses disclosure and I spoke to Jackie Ballard – CEO of the RNID - about this today.

As an ex-MP Jackie is no doubt sensitive to this issue and I am pleased to say she supports the principle of the idea – but feels that expenses information is only useful if published at a detailed level.

She also points out that it is a non-trivial issue to correctly and fully disclose expenses. For example if travel bookings are made and paid for by the charity rather than the individual should this also be disclosed? If so there would be some work required to provide all this information.

She also feels that a clear expense policy for all staff with the appropriate checks to make sure this is enforced will help overcome concerns in this area.

The good news is that former Charity Commissioner Lindsay Driscoll is to chair a new high-powered working group that will develop best practice on how charities should report the expense claims of their senior managers and trustees. The committee has been established by the NCVO and Charity Finance Directors’ Group. Hopefully this will help establish some clearer policies on this issue.

Jackie did come up with one interesting observation when comparing charity CEOs' expenses with MPs'. She suggested that there is less scope for abuse with charity CEOs' expenses as they are limited to a much smaller category of expenses items – such as travel, overnight stays and subsistence. Hence she sees a lot less scope for funding jacuzzis/duck pond homes, subsidised accommodation and the like.

But I am not convinced of this – and would be interested to hear your views on whether there are examples of this in the sector?