WE were on holiday in Portugal when the story broke about MPs’ expenses, so there was plenty of time to drool over the lurid reports of the scandal in the papers.

By the way, I remember years ago holidaying in Spain and Portugal and in those days you had to wait until teatime for the morning papers. Not now. They are printed in Spain, so you can get one in time to read over breakfast. And I must say they are printed on cleaner presses than the English ones: you don’t get your marmaladed fingers covered in black ink.

But the printing was the only clean thing in this mucky mess of politicians on the make.

What strikes me most keenly about the whole sordid affair is the response of every commentator who pitched in with his solution to the problem of MPs’ avarice. They all say: “We need a better system.” This is no answer, for any system is only as good as the people who operate it.

What we have here is a moral problem, and systems have nothing to do with morality. No system can turn a dishonest man into an honest one.

As long ago as 1934, TS Eliot, in his long poem Choruses from the Rock, put his finger exactly on the spot when he mocked “...men dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good”.

This is what we need: not an improved system, but men and women who know the difference between right and wrong and prefer the right. It would be hypocritical to accuse the MPs and try to pretend all the rest of us are in the clear.

Even journalists are not always whiter than white. I recall some years back when I worked as a contracted freelance on a national paper and I used to be sent on assignments, often with a colleague. One morning after breakfast my colleague was so thoroughly engrossed in his notebook that he didn’t even hear me when I asked if he fancied another cup of coffee. I said: “Are you working on your article for the paper?”

“No,” he replied. “I’m doing my expenses – the most creative part of my job.”

I’m afraid it’s true that many of us are tempted to add on a bit more than we should when claiming legitimate expenses and we are so tempted because we think huge institutions, such as national newspapers or the Inland Revenue, can easily afford to let us have a bit extra.

Someone who wouldn’t dream of stealing from his mates or from the corner shop might not have scruples about putting one over on the taxman or query an undercharge on the bill at Tesco.

It’s the same in the case of the MPs – only on a grand scale. A culture has developed among them of distinguishing between private and public money. They have become so habituated to this that they do it unconsciously, as if they say: “It doesn’t matter, it’s only the public purse, the Government’s money.”

But they forget that the Government doesn’t have any money. It’s our taxes. Our money.

The tried and tested remedy for dishonesty is naming and shaming. If someone on the fiddle is told very directly that what he is engaged in is theft, just as much as the man in the striped shirt, mask and carrying a bag marked “Swag”, then, even if his conscience is not pricked, he will fear for his good name.

So hit ‘em where it hurts – slap bang in the reputation.