I think we saw the best and the worst of Parliament this week. On the plus side I think we moved closer to getting a £30 million investment from the government in to education in the City of Gloucester for a new-build Academy Secondary School.

It’s something I’ve been pushing for - for ages. Education Secretary Ed Balls gave my question in the Chamber on Monday a very positive response which leads me to be very hopeful that it should now happen.

On the downside, I’ll bet you probably didn’t notice the story about me trying to get £30 million for new school buildings in Gloucester because everything was drowned out by the MP’s expenses scandal (yet again) as Sir Thomas Legg sent a letter to all MPs.

If MPs and Parliament are ever to emerge from this mess so we can return to the big issues like education, health and the economy, then they are all just going to have to swallow some medicine and stop moaning about the Legg enquiry.

Yes, he’s made a new set of rules - but the old rules are totally discredited. If anything, when the dust settles, I think we’ll all be left asking why Legg didn’t take things further. Why didn’t he ask those who had ‘flipped’ homes and deliberately avoided capital gains tax to pay it back? Why didn’t he ask those who had worked the system by ‘maxing’ up their mortgage interest to the entire allowance to pay something back?

Talk of legal challenges and MPs refusing to co-operate with Legg’s audit will just drag down the reputation of Parliament even further. I think the sensible thing for all of our MPs to do is just to co-operate with the audit and if Legg says that someone – anyone – has to pay money back, they should just do it and let us then move on to a new and cleaner system that is independently assessed.

Maybe then we can get back to the important issues of the day that make a difference to the lives of our constituents, like investment in new schools.  

Parmjit Dhanda MP

Member of Parliament for Gloucester