AN oversight by David Cameron has highlighted a situation that I am sure you will find outrageous. The former Prime Minister, who resigned after his government lost the Brexit vote in 2016, has failed to renew a pass that grants him unrestricted access to the Houses of Parliament.

A minor act of forgetfulness you might think – and you are probably right.

We might, or might not, feel it is shame Mr Cameron has lost this privilege, which includes use of Parliament’s subsidised restaurants and bars. What will unite us, though, is disgust that around 400 ex MPs enjoy the same favour. Though not kept secret, this seldom publicised fact has emerged through reports of Mr Cameron’s apparent slip-up. These point out that his name is absent from a list of pass holders published last year and an imminent new list.

Mr Cameron’s former colleague George Osborne, now a newspaper editor, is among the pass holders. As a former Chancellor he, along with Mr Cameron, must bear some responsibility that Britain is now a Land of Food Banks. Yet those we elect to govern can remain virtually free loaders in Parliament long after the pass we gave them – our vote, the only pass that should count – has expired. As a corruption of Parliament this might be low scale – but a corruption it is. The post-service pass should be abolished, with just one exception. Granted automatically, that would be to ex Prime Ministers. So Mr Cameron would get his pass after all.

DIG deep into your memory: GATT. Remember that? If not, you might well come across it in one of the historic front pages this newspaper publishes each Saturday. Standing for General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, it is a shortform once almost as familiar as TUC.

GATT is still around. But it’s now within a body defined by different initials – WTO, the World Trade Organisation. Its rules – GATT updated – are what we would follow in the event of a no deal Brexit. And – here’s the thing – in 1947 Britain, under Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee, and with Harold Wilson as trade minister, took a leading role in setting up GATT among 23 nations – negotiating mutually beneficial tariffs.

GATT morphed into the WTO in 1994. We trade exclusively under its rules with 24 nations. They include Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Russia, the United States, and, oh yes, China, (which seems to have no problem at all sending us stuff ). So when it is said that a no deal Brexit means “crashing out of” the EU nothing could be further from the truth. We would simply be widening our use of a long-established successful system that we helped create.

BRITISH justice. While released on licence from a life sentence imposed for the rape and murder (by stabbing 39 times) of a three-year-old girl back in 1979, a man launched a vicious knife attack on a woman suffering from dementia. Convicted of her attempted murder the 57-year-old has now been sentenced to life with a minimum of 17 years. So he could be released a second time. Are you and I insane to believe that such an offender should never be allowed to pose any risk to anyone ever again?