She hit out: “If you want to do your job properly you have to turn up every day. If you don’t you get your knuckles rapped by your party and won’t be 

re-elected.

“But to be paid extra to turn up for work? The new proposals would mean the MPs would be almost £2,000 better off a year.”

“It’s just so far removed from the Holyrood practices that I find it hard to have empathy for them.”

Plans for the new allowance follow a damning ruling by the Information Tribunal last week.

MPs will now be forced to publish every receipt claimed for under their £22,100-a-year Additional Cost Allowance, which is meant to cover the cost of running London homes.

The tribunal heard that lax rules allowed MPs to claim not just for mortgage and utility bills, but also for the weekly food shop and even items such as iPods and fish tanks.

Last night Nationalist MSP Sandra White said Westminster politicians did not need extra money because they are already “paid well enough”.

She said: “Their pay and allowances are very generous, and there is no need to give them more. I think the new plans would be as open to abuse as the existing system.

“I don’t always think they work hard enough for their money.” 

Mohammed Sarwar, Labour MP for Glasgow Govan, said he did not see the point of changing the existing system, added that “it works well”.

The Information Tribunal said the lack of “a clear, coherent and comprehensive statement of MPs’ entitlements is deeply unsatisfactory, and the shortfall both in transparency and in accountability is acute”. 

A committee appointed by Speaker Michael Martin is now considering two options to replace the current system – either rolling the allowance into MPs’ basic pay or giving MPs a daily attendance allowance.

The new system, to be finalised before the summer recess in July, will not require MPs to provide receipts, making it impossible for the public to use the Freedom of Information Act to discover how the cash is spent.

Adding the allowance to pay would take an MP’s salary to more than £85,000 a year – a rise of more than 30 per cent. But giving MPs a daily allowance would allow them to keep the cash without a headline-grabbing pay rise.

No figure has been set for the new allowance, but it is likely to be modelled on the £159.50 a day “overnight subsistence” allowance received by unpaid members of the House of Lords. In a typical Parliamentary year of 150 sitting days, an MP attending every session would qualify for almost £24,000 on top of their salary. The figure could be far higher in some years.

One campaigner yesterday called on the Government to provide London homes for MPs and scrap the expenses altogether.

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “This solution would make the system completely transparent, remove the administrative burden from MPs for arranging their own housing and ensure that taxpayers get the benefit from rising property prices.”

Attendance allowances are used in both the European Parliament and the House of Lords, but have frequently been criticised. One MEP secretly filmed colleagues signing in for their daily allowance before immediately leaving to go home.

Last year the former BBC chief Lord Birt claimed £43,000 in attendance allowances from the Lords despite speaking just once and taking part in less than 10 per cent of votes.