WHAT is more important: an MP’s moat or a life-extending liver cancer drug?

Sadly, for the small number of cancer patients who need it, the answer would seem to be the former, not the latter.

Doctors would very much like to prescribe the drug Nexavar for their patients because it offers a precious few more months of life. But the drug watchdog Nice has provisionally decided it is too expensive for the NHS.

That rather sticks in our craw when MPs claim thousands for flat screen televisions, antique bookcases and moat cleaning.

MPs will argue that a comparison between their expenses and NHS budgets is a specious argument. But taxes that fund their lavish lifestyles is money that cannot be spent on the health service.

After a week of damaging revelations MPs are suffering from a credibility gap. No one is prepared to listen to their lectures about belt-tightening any more.

Incredibly, some are still trying to justify their claims by saying they are poorly paid.

An MP’s basic salary of £64,766 puts them in the top ten per cent of earners – even before we count their goldplated pensions and expenses. Many top up their earnings with second jobs outside Parliament. One MP has ten.

As for those who claimed for non-existent mortgages and the like, we support Middlesbrough Mayor Ray Mallon’s call for a police inquiry.

And we trust the guilty will swap one type of taxpayer funded accommodation for another – in Wormwood Scrubs, Pentonville and Holloway.