Conservatives are supposed to be opposed to the Nanny State, but Caroline Spelman had the state pay for her nanny as soon as she arrived in parliament in 1997. She had not even been an MP for a year when she started fiddling the system according to Michael Crick. She had a tax free nanny provided by taxpayers by the simple expedient of claiming the nanny was her constituency secretary.

No messing about, as soon as she got elected to the trough she started pigging out. It is endemic in the political class regardless of what colour rosette they wear. Geoff Hoon fiddles his mortage allowance, Tony Blair too abused it (as Cherie implicitly confessed in her new book), Nick Clegg amazingly makes an expenses claim that – to the penny – matches the maximum legally allowed. Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper fiddle their combined allowances and lie about their primary residence. They are almost all at it, they see it as a perk of the job. None are prosecuted, so it will go on. Let us be clear about this, it is not another “technical breach of the rules”, Spelman was stealing from the taxpayers.