WITHIN the past week, the MPs’ expenses row threw up a non-expenses detail which I was sure would have the public spluttering into its cornflakes as indignantly as over the preposterous claims for moat-cleaning and installing a posh duck house. But it slipped past almost unnoticed.

Among those whose expenses in the spotlight was Sir Paul Beresford, Tory member for the Mole Valley in Surrey. (It’s amazing how many MP knights there are who are virtually unknown beyond their own patch).

A former leader of Wandsworth council, Sir Paul was knighted in 1990 for services to inner-city regeneration. His expenses earned attention because he nominated a property that includes a dentist’s surgery, above a shop in Putney, as his second home.

Sir Paul is the dentist. He even carried on with drill and pliers while serving for three years as an environment minister in John Major’s Government.

His dentistry is part-time, it must be said.

But a patient told The Daily Telegraph, which investigated this unusual arrangement: “I think he does dentistry at least four days a week” (including Sundays). “I knew he was an MP because he’s always rushing from here to there.”

Sir Paul himself said: “Patients are aware and accept the Commons takes precedence and accept short-notice cancellations.”

Since expanding the practice with other dentists, Sir Paul no longer claims allowances.

While he did so, the waiting room doubled as his sitting room in the evenings.

Bizarre in itself, the arrangement is strong evidence that MPs don’t have enough to do.

Last week on BBC TV’s Question Time, Richmond MP William Hague admitted that the number of MPs should be reduced by “at least ten per cent”.

Come on, William. Forty or even fifty per cent is surely a better measure of the slack.

MPs currently face so little Parliamentary work that their summer break has been extended to three months. Given your own promise to abandon, or suspend, your extensive writing, speaking and business commitments, adding, say, Ryedale or the Vale of York to your Richmond constituency should be a breeze. Maybe you could take on the whole of rural North Yorkshire, where they would certainly welcome you with outstretched arms.

A crackdown on MPs’ outside jobs is, of course, an urgently-needed reform. Coupled with it should be giving MPs some collective power. At present, governments can, and often do, ramrod through policies against the opposition of even their own MPs. This is a major denial of democracy and must end.

The battle cry of the public during the expenses saga has been: “It’s our House of Commons, not yours”. But cleaning up the expenses system will bring little long-term significant gain unless the Commons is seen in many other ways to come closer to the public.

Mind you, not so close as to have your MP peering into your mouth and poking about for cavities.

MIDDLESBROUGH down; Newcastle down; Sunderland survive. But none of the elite trio of North-East soccer clubs, fighting for their Premiership lives, avoided defeat in their last, crucial game. Perhaps they would have done better fielding only players born in the region. Their overseas imports probably thrive more on success than the adversity which brings out the best in the natives.