Speaker of the House Lockwood Smith is to visit Washington to push New Zealand's trade agenda.

For the first time in over a decade UnitedFuture leader Peter Dunne will not produce his annual list of Parliament’s worst behaved MPs – and he says it is all because of Parliament’s Speaker Lockwood Smith.

“Dr Smith’s control of the house this year has been of such a high standard that bad behaviour in the debating chamber has virtually dried up,” Mr Dunne said.

“There is one exception,” he said, naming Labour MP Trevor Mallard.

Parliament's Speaker Lockwood Smith has requested Maori Party MP Hone Harawira pay back some of the taxpayers' money used to fund him attending parliamentary business from which he skipped away from to see Paris.

Dr Smith is said to have requested a portion of the total expenses amounting to around $1000 after Mr Harawira decided not to attend a parliamentary conference in Brussels and take his wife sightseeing in Paris instead.

Public pressure has left Finance Minister Bill English in the "unfair position" of receiving no Wellington accommodation allowance, Speaker Lockwood Smith says.

Mr English was yesterday cleared by the Auditor-General of wrong-doing over his housing allowance claims, after he was criticised for claiming almost $1000 a week in expenses -- including $700 a week in rent, to live in his own house, leased to the Government as an official residence.

Speaker Lockwood Smith yesterday defended MPs' allowances, saying new MPs got the same pay as those, like himself, with many years of experience.

MPs' travel and accommodation costs for the first six months of this year were made public on June 30 following outrage in Britain over politicians' extravagant spending.

Since then, Finance Minister Bill English has come under fire for getting an allowance for the home he lives in with his family in Wellington, despite having lived in the capital for more than a decade.

National MP Lockwood Smith says his comments about the party having to swallow dead fish to make the public happy do not mean it has any secret agenda.

Last night TV3 broadcast secretly recorded remarks Dr Smith made on Friday at the party's conference.

"Once we've gained the confidence of the people, we've got more chance of doing more things," he said on Friday.

"There's some bloody dead fish you have to swallow ... to get into government to do the kinds of things you want to do," he said.