The answer should be obvious.

Julie Kirkbride's comment piece in The Times today is redolent of the amateur parliaments of days of yore. In sum: if I didn't use my family as child carers and office workers, and pay them through the expenses system, then I wouldn't be able to be an MP and a mother at the same time. (Everyone else has to employ child carers.) Kirkbride's brother lives off his investments and so has lots of free time. (What about all the other women who work who don't have rich brothers?) And finally, she argues that the press revealing her expenses payments will make fewer women want to be MPs. (Not parliament's bad rep, brought about by MPs, then.) The argument runs, MPs need to have rich family members to help them out, and they need to be compensated by the taxpayer. Hey, I know, let's make Parliament an amateur affair, choc full of landowners and City executives who spend a day a week at Westminster.

There is an argument going round that MPs should be paid more, but this is unlikely in the current climate. Equally unlikely, but probably more helpful, is to give them much more money to run their offices. According to the New York Times, Congressmen and women - even Michele Bachmann - get between $1.4m and $1.9m. MPs get $200,000. This means they usually employ one underpaid and harassed staffer in their constituency and at Westminster plus an intern or two. And this means they scrabble around employing their relatives and claiming dodgy expenses. Perhaps MPs should put themselves on the naughty step for a few years by freezing their own pay. In the meantime, they can set about a thorough constitutional reform - and go about professionalising their backroom operations.