WHETHER or not Jack Straw and Malcolm Rifkind are shown to have broken parliamentary rules, it all looks rather grubby, doesn't it?

The two former foreign secretaries face allegations of being involved in a "cash for access" scandal after being secretly filmed in a sting set up by the Daily Telegraph and Channel 4's Dispatches.

The heavyweight MPs are accused of offering to use their positions to influence decisions on behalf of a fictitious Chinese company at a price of at least £5,000 a day.

Mr Straw, one of Labour's heavyweights, uses language more befitting an unscrupulous dealer than a sitting MP. He tells representatives of the fake company that he operated "under the radar" to change EU rules on behalf of a commodity firm which pays him £60,000 a year. He also said he had used "charm and menace" to persuade the Ukrainian prime minister to change laws for the same company.

For his part, Mr Rifkind, who happens to be the chair of the Commons intelligence and security committee, boasted that he could arrange "useful access" to every British ambassador across the world.

Whether they have broken the rules will depend on whether they properly disclosed their activities and financial interests at the right time on the register of MPs' interests.

But, regardless of that, isn't it obvious that there is a conflict of interest here? How do we know politicians are acting in the best interests of the people who voted for them and gave them their positions of influence, or the private companies which pay them to lobby on their behalf?

All parties should make it clear that this ambiguity will stop once and for all.

In the meantime, irrespective of impropriety, how worrying is it that two our our most experienced MPs are dim-witted enough to fall into such an easy trap?