Parliament must move quickly to reform the disgraced expenses arrangements or voters will never forgive MPs

It already feels like both a cliché and an understatement to say that this has been a bad week for politics. The barrage of revelations about MPs’ expenses has caused immense damage to the standing of all MPs, and Parliament itself. For many people all of the worst stereotypes of a sleazy, self-interested political class will have been confirmed.

Mistakes have been made on all sides, as have apologies, and money has rightly been paid back. But we absolutely cannot afford to dither and delay on a wholesale overhaul of the rules. If we want to salvage people’s trust we cannot allow these scandals to fester. With people across the country struggling under the weight of this recession we were already facing growing scepticism towards mainstream politicians. Without decisive reform on expenses that will become more profound and widespread. Our politics is on the edge of a cliff.

That’s why I approached Gordon Brown and David Cameron with proposals to clean up expenses last month. Regrettably they wouldn’t sign up to them then, but the media furore has now forced the other parties to open their eyes to this crisis, and a variety of different proposals are on the table.

That said, none of their ideas address the biggest loophole in the system. MPs are making hundreds of thousands of pounds by playing the property market with taxpayers’ money. We need to get MPs out of the property game altogether by adopting the system they use in Scotland, where only rent can be charged to the taxpayer, not mortgage costs. And in the meantime any MP who sells their second home should return any profit to the taxpayer.

It’s one of the major changes I’m asking Sir Christopher Kelly to recommend in his independent review. His inquiry is now more important than ever, and I’ve gone to the other party leaders again to urge them to declare publicly that they’ll accept his recommendations in full. In normal times I would be very reluctant to suggest we adopt proposals we haven't yet seen. But these are not normal times. Only by binding our hands in this way - removing the ability for Parliament to quibble over the detail of Sir Christopher’s recommendations - will we have a chance of convincing people that we are serious about serving them, rather than our own interests.

That agreement should be cemented by an immediate parliamentary motion voted on without delay. This is no time to hesitate on doing the right thing. People will never forgive us if we do.

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