Public anger at elites who continue to line their pockets from the public purse whilst more and more ordinary people are genuinely finding it harder to make end meet has exposed something seriously rotten in our country.

Not all in our democracy is bad. There are good examples of local people getting involved in shaping their own towns and villages. Yet too many people feel no one will listen to them; that politicians are only interested in themselves. So they don’t bother participating in consultations and elections.

Ninety percent of MPs exposed this year for scrounging their expenses are in safe seats, where it is all too easy to become complacent and even arrogant. They represent parliamentary seats that never change party allegiance regardless of who the candidates are. These seats have the same MP for decade after decade. Our antiquated voting system perpetuates safe seats.

There is even local evidence that councils in which one party has had a monopoly of political control for years on end complacently abuse the members’ allowance system. It becomes a reward system for party loyalty rather than for public service.

National politicians should now be acting and not just talking tough on the renewed abuse by people in the City who are lining their pockets with outrageous salaries and bonuses – paid from our taxes since taxpayers bailed out the financial system last year. But MPs have become so mired in their own greed and lack of scruples that the bankers and others think they can get away with their own version of the same selfishness.

It does not wash for MPs to say ‘we were following the rules’ they loosely created. There are laws. There are rules. There are ethics. It is possible to abide by the first two but still avoid the last. Parliamentary expense claims to pay shopping, gardening and cleaning and general repair bills for the family home hardly class as wholly necessary to fulfil the role of Member of Parliament. The idea that an MP of ministerial rank or equivalent is entitled to twist the system even more than a lowly back-bencher suggests that the higher you climb the lower the ethical standards become.

It is quite clear that Parliament cannot clean up itself without help from the people. What is needed is a Citizen’s Convention to draw up a fresh approach to democratic accountability and ethics in this country. More information about a proposed Citizens Convention (Accountability and Ethics) Bill can be found at the website: http://www.unlockdemocracy.org.uk/?page_id=2033