Quick, someone call Woodward and Bernstein! Some MPs may have purchased an overpriced coffee maker! Help! These people need to be stopped before they purchase an unnecessarily pricey food mixer!

Has there ever been such a banal, pathetic, political scandal as John-Lewis-Catalogue-Gate? I realise that the revelation that MPs are reimbursed for household items has sent their collective reputation to a new low with most people. But the story struck me rather differently.

You see, the reason why we claim the right to know every last thing about MPs' expenses is that they work for us. We pay their wages. And so we do. Which makes us their employers.

Now, here's how I'd like to be seen as a boss. Firm but fair, approachable and pleasant, giving credit where credit is due, gently encouraging. I'd like my workforce to think me broadminded, someone who expects hard work, but always notices when employees do more than their contracted hours. I want them to know that they can't take the mick, but I will treat them like grown-ups and give them some latitude even when they cut the odd corner. And I will expect to get what I pay for.

But, oh, when it comes to the personnel we employ in our Westminster Legislative Division, how far we depart from these ideals. What bosses we are.

We are rude and contemptuous, berating our workers at every opportunity, calling them useless and crooks and liars. We blame every employee for the fault of one or two of their number. We are unbelievably suspicious, sure they are all swinging the lead. We have an extraordinary sense of entitlement, regarding late nights and weekend working as standard. We issue strict and often very silly instructions about exactly what we want done and upbraid the workforce when it all goes wrong.

We begrudge every penny we spend on wages and accuse our employees of rolling in money, talking of snouts and troughs, when all we pay them is a fairly routine professional salary. Recently, we have started scouring the petty cash receipts, asking recalcitrant workers to stand in front of our desk as we add up their claims with a pocket calculator to make sure no fraud has been committed.

We have become the Hitler of the stationery cupboard, counting the number of envelopes and stamps they use and publishing league tables of them so that those using the most paperclips can be pilloried.

And then, with an amazing lack of self-awareness, we complain that we can't get the staff. Of course we can't. Who would want to work for us?

So you may have greeted John-Lewis-Catalogue-Gate burning with righteous indignation about your elected representatives. For me the experience induced a sort of soft depression. I realise that while I spend my whole life listening to people prattle on about the rights of man and the great community of humankind, the reality is this: we are all just sitting ready to pounce if someone else gets away with owning a superior washing machine.

One of the biggest burdens of being an MP is having to live in two places. It either means being separated from your family for long periods or schlepping them up and down to the constituency. This inconvenience comes with the job. We require MPs to spend plenty of time in the area they represent, preferably with their family. Since we demand this, we have to be prepared to pay for it. We cannot expect members to kit out two family homes on a fairly run-of-the-mill salary.

So we will have to reimburse the reasonable expense of a moderately comfortable dwelling. And it seems to me that using John Lewis prices is an intelligent way of judging whether claims made on individual items are fair or not.

One of the most irritating aspects of the whole pantomime has been the way the prices have been greeted as if they were ridiculously luxurious. A bunch of upper-middle-class journalists have been trying to suggest that spending £10,000 on a kitchen is outrageous, when they are perfectly aware that it isn't. Not that we're actually arguing over anyone's real claim for a kitchen anyway - just over the guide price.

It is certainly true that one or two of the guide prices for the small items are a shade high. So if you want to create a fuss about the need to shave £50 off the maximum price of a freestanding mirror, go ahead, you surely have right and justice on your side. I will spend the time on something more exciting and important - memorising the names of all the people who competed in the finals of the 1978 South West Regional Tiddlywinks competition, for instance.

What is all this doing to our politics? It is crowding out the real issues, drowning out proper controversies in a cacophony of noise about trivia. As we insist on our right to transparency (and who can ever resist such calls?) so we encourage MPs into an endless battle to prove each other a transgressor.

One of my favourite Labour MPs, John Mann, has turned himself into litle more than a full-time complainer about other people's minor wrongdoings. Meanwhile, one of my favourite Tory MPs, Eric Pickles, last week wrote to the Cabinet Secretary complaining about the cost of deep cleaning John Prescott's old apartment. On and on we go until every MP seems corrupt and we can't tell the difference when there really is corruption.

Well, I don't know about you, but I'd like good people representing me. I'd pay them well, invest some trust in them, treat them nicely. And hope that they find something important to talk about.

daniel.finkelstein@thetimes.co.uk

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