The answer isn't to alter the system - it's to stop fiddling

It looks as though Gordon Brown's grand plan to reform MPs' expenses is dead in the water. I hope so
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Hard times, good times, one thing's for sure - the Commons is always behind the times. It has the stale institutional-food air of a fading Edwardian hotel, the staff attitudes of a Victorian department store and most of the MPs dress as if it was still around 1976. Mingle with commuters in any London station and you see people in normal clothes. In parliament it's still baggy suits and ties. Too many MPs still haven't caught up with the communications revolution - many prefer a pen and ink to email.

None of that matters very much - except that it does provide the clue to the great parliamentary expenses mystery, namely, what the hell do they think they're playing at, with the bundles of receipts and the ludicrous claims? The answer is that they are, as usual, behind the times and out of touch.

It wasn't so long ago that working life was dominated by fiddles. Journalism was notorious for the "blankie" culture. (A "blankie" was a blank restaurant bill, proffered by winking waiters and collected in their dozens, to be handed in as receipts for meals never eaten.) Different professions had their dodgy little traditions, ranging from outright larceny to over-claimed travel costs. No doubt some survive but, by and large, the national habit of fiddling has been squeezed, including by the tax authorities. It's like the replacement of lunchtime boozing by bottled water, or the disappearance of Irish jokes - a sign of an altered culture.

As I wrote here a few weeks ago, we may well see resignations when the full story becomes clear in July. Every single receipt put in by every MP will be made available. There is panic at cabinet level and among some senior Tories. Clearly there have been some greedy claims indeed. At the very least, candidates challenging incumbents next year will have plenty of lethal ammunition, so we could see a historic clear-out of the current Commons.

Plenty of MPs are frank about how the scandal slowly built up. Before there were allowances for second homes, which started in the 70s, some MPs were so strapped for cash they stayed overnight in their Commons offices, sleeping on sofas. There was apparently a code whereby a bin placed outside your office door signalled to the cleaner that the Honourable Member was fast asleep and shouldn't be disturbed.

That was clearly ludicrous, and the resentment of poorer MPs about their working conditions fostered a kind of Westminster trade unionism, which delivered the first allowances. But they were modest. As the daughter of an MP from that time, I remember vividly the stark, minimally furnished two-bedroom bungalow we used in the constituency; my parents wouldn't have considered charging anything but the very basics. Slowly the culture of charging grew. Hidden from the public, and presided over by helpful Commons officials who tended to be deferential to MPs, it eventually reached the current bloated level.

It is understandable why the prime minister wants to be seen to take action ahead of the publication of all those receipts. But it looks as if his idea of replacing the second home allowance with a daily attendance allowance is dead in the water. I hope so, on two grounds. First, and most obviously, a majority of MPs do need to have a second home. Refuse the allowance for anyone living in reasonable commuting distance from London, by all means, but don't discriminate against MPs from the rest of the country. The answer is to go back to modest allowances, strictly monitored. Or put it another way - if you are caught fiddling the system, the answer is not to change the system, it's to stop fiddling.

Second, however, the idea of paying people to turn up to do a job they are already paid for is grossly offensive to most voters. The suggested monitoring would not work, by the way, since MPs do important work outside parliament, in the constituency or as part of a committee. We already know when they vote, and when they're in the chamber speaking. We don't need a clock-in office checking system too. But the key problem is that a second payment simply looks like a top-up on salary, rather than real expense-based claiming.

So why not, as some are suggesting, ditch the whole allowance and pay MPs more? Over the years it has been claimed that MPs' pay has got out of line with rewards in the public sector as well as in business, and that has meant the talent pool in politics was too shallow because too few people were prepared to take less than they could earn elsewhere.

But this is not the time to increase MPs' pay. That argument, for a few years, is over. With taxes rising, savage job cuts coming across the public sector and unemployment soaring, any plan by parliamentarians to raise their own pay would see the building stormed and every MP thrown into the Thames. All sensible parliamentarians surely recognise this. If these are going to be austere years, then we're going to have to have austerity politics too.

Assuming that David Cameron's Tories win the next election, we might see a one-off reduction in the number of MPs, favoured by Cameron, which some have linked to a one-off and substantial rise in their pay. I'll believe that when I see it: it's very hard to get parliamentarians to vote themselves out of a job. Anyway, the problem is now, not then.

Brown was right to call for radical action and simplicity. The conundrum is that taking away allowances means compensating MPs in another way - yet every other way is only going to make voters angry. All the ingenious schemes in the world can't get around that.

The answer is obvious. In this climate, with many people being asked to make sacrifices, MPs' allowances must be pared right back to the minimum, and strictly enforced. No flat-screen televisions, designer kitchens, holiday jaunts, espresso coffee makers, patio heaters or the rest of it. No big mortgage payments, just basic accommodation. And any cheats to be expelled from the Commons immediately. While we're about it, by all means ban most outside employment too - that's a populist measure that would actually be popular.

The public mood has changed, and Alistair Darling pretty much said so in his budget. These are going to be hard years, during which we need leadership by example. That starts with MPs looking in the mirror and realising that they're way behind the times.

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