Although I think much of this MP's snout in the trough activity is absolutely appalling, there is one particular aspect of these accusations that I am not happy about.

[Note: the case of Bill Cash (assuming the Telegraph article is sufficiently complete) seems a good one to make my point. I have no other knowledge of nor connection with Mr Cash, his daughter, his constituency or his political party.]

My issue is this: should the allowance paid for a second home depend on whether the MP owns it outright, on some proportion of mortgage, or rents it?

My view is that it should not. If the MP saves travel expenses between Westminster and constituency (together with a sufficiency of his/her time), I think the allowance should be paid. And it should be paid as a nominal rent appropriate for the property and with a modest upper limit. It is also clear to me that the allowance should be for the lesser property of those in Westminster and his/her constituency.

It is also important that the MP should not make a profit out of the allowance, and this seems to be where the difficulty perhaps arises: expenses must be for items that are actually paid for (preferably against receipts). Although this works well for most things (travel, hotel accommodation, meals away from home, etc), it does not work well for an owned property unless it is on a 100% mortgage. Perhaps it is insistence of actual expenditure for second homes that is causing effective invention of expenditure to replace that which should be claimed as 'notional rent'.

Finally, on Bill Cash, though payments to spouses and other family might well be legitimate (including the long tradition of MPs paying their wives for secretarial duties), the practice is surely best avoided on the grounds of the stink of nepotism. If the money he has paid his daughter, by way of rental, is not a fair and proper proportion of the allowable costs of running that property, and according to his usage of it, then there are serious grounds for calling for his resignation: but not (in my view) otherwise.

Best regards