The rules that Westminster MPs are so quick to say they stayed within are of course rules that they themselves devised, and at a time when they expected their claims to remain hidden.

Having said that, I am not at all interested in trivia such as loo seats. I should think quite a few of us have fiddled an expenses claim to that extent somewhere along the line. The overall cap was in any case £24k a year. Even with that amount added directly to their pay packets, it would not put them on wildly exhorbitant packages against current norms. Certainly it's peanuts when set against, say, bonuses in the financial sector. It wasn't a smart idea, but the expenses system was seen as a backdoor way of ensuring an appropriate level of remuneration at a time when MPs' official pay was being pegged.

The serious issue here is the exploitation of the system for capital gains. For instance Sugarfoot Jack's list accuses Hazel Blears only of claiming for three properties in a year, which in itself would not be so extraordinary. (There is no suggestion that she owned all three at one time or exceeded the £24k ceiling.) Her real crime - and if it isn't a crime, it should be - was that she avoided the 40 per cent tax she should have paid on a significant capital gain. She did that by making one of her properties her secondary home for expenses purposes and making the same property her primary home for tax-avoidance purposes.

Others used expense claims to fund property transactions that earned them handsome profits. Capital gains such as these have in some cases been enormous and are outside the £24k cap. With any luck a few MPs at least will have caught a cold in the weakening property market.