A new group, Open Up, is calling for all MPs to submit themselves to an open primary before the next election. This is the one move, the campaign claims, that would do more than any other to purge the political system of the expenses scandal.

All campaigns overplay their hand. Open Up is no exception.

A renewal of our political system will take more than open primaries. But the campaign's message is a thoroughly good one and would begin the long process of reform.

How can it be taken forward? Take my own case. I have long campaigned for open primaries, especially in safe seats.

When I first mentioned this idea to colleagues a Parliament ago I was accused of simply wanting to draw attention to myself. "You know you will win so what's your point?", was the common retort.

I would now like an open primary in Birkenhead more than ever. I have been accused, with polite language, over my expenses.

I have replied to Sir Thomas Legg about the cost of my second home.

I await his reply but I still feel unclean. His letter bangs around in my head incessantly. This is the basis of my renewed interest in an open primary.

Such a move would allow my constituents to pass a specific judgement on the question of my expenses, but also my record as their MP. They would have a choice between me and other candidates wishing to stand in a safe seat.

This is not a choice that my constituents get in a general election. Whenever that occurs they also have to consider how their vote will affect the formation of a government and who will be Prime Minster.

So, over to you, Open Up. If I can persuade my local party to back me, will you come and organise the contest?

The Totnes open primary cost £40k. Does your campaigning extend to raising the money to put your idea into practice?

For you not to respond positively would be a lost opportunity to expand the means by which democracy is renewed in our country.

Failure to respond positively would also label Open Up as part of the campaign that is much enjoying denigrating MPs but which is not coming up with anything positive.

As MPs we have much to answer. But there is a huge danger in this expenses campaign. It is doing much to boost newspaper sales, but it has yet to begin influencing the renewal of our form of representative and responsible government.

How fair is my comparison of Sir Thomas Legg's imposition of a retrospective 5 year claw back on MPs' housing claims with a similar retrospective decision to change the speed limit?

I have likened Sir Thomas Legg's application of the rule on expenses to the scenario of a motorist who drives at 25 miles per hour in a 30 mph limit zone then five years later, once the speed limit has been changed to 20 mph, discovers he has been fined for speeding following a decision to back-date the claim.

Emails have pointed out that I'm wrong to use this analogy. The speed limit should not have been 30 mph in the first place. It should have been 20 mph all along. Yes, that is presumably why the Highways Agency has taken the decision to reduce the speed limit. But should the change be introduced retrospectively and fines imposed?

I have never made an ACA claim which I thought was unfair to the taxpayer. I would be ashamed if I had. Indeed only by assuming that I was intellectually inadequate could one take the view that I was using my housekeeping bills as a means of boosting my personal income. The total of all of my claims over the past five years have ranged from 50 per cent of eligible sums to 30 per cent last year.

The main point that I was attempting to make in my column for the Liverpool Echo was that Sir Thomas has arbitrarily imposed a cap on only cleaning and gardening expenses. At no stage has he explained this, nor why he has restricted his cap to only gardening or cleaning costs.

If his precedent had been followed consistently Sir Thomas would have applied his retrospective rules to all the main headings allowed in my claims. He has not done so.

Robert Verkaik in today's Independent goes further. He argues that Sir Thomas Legg's decision is not akin to retrospective changes to the criminal law, but to the changing of tax loopholes or windfall charges on corporations who have benefited from unintended legislative consequences.

The charges arising from the closing of tax loopholes, however, are never retrospectively imposed.

But if Robert Verkaik's argument is to hold, and there is much attraction to it, shouldn't the new retrospective rules be applied consistently across all main headings of expenditure?

From honourable member to rogue.  That, thanks to retrospective and unprecedented changes Sir Thomas Legg has made to the rules on MPs' expenses, is how I feel. 

You may remember that last year I was part of the small band of MPs who voted to make details of our expenses public. It was a mystery to me why the then Speaker and his allies opposed being open to taxpayers. They were later defeated in the courts. 

As soon as the details of our expenses were given to MPs I put mine on my website.  The Daily Telegraph who bought all of this information published a ‘rogues and saints' gallery.  Having considered the evidence, they placed me in the latter category. 

For the last five years, I claimed, for my home in Birkenhead: £11,250; £12,006; £11,509; £9,573 and, for the year ending April 2009 my claim was £7,303, 30% of the total allowance. I did not claim anything approaching the maximum annual £24k simply because I did not need to claim such an amount. 

However, late on Monday I received along with other MPs a letter from Sir Thomas Legg. He recommends I repay just over £7,000: £1,000 housekeeping costs for each year; £1,800 of other household bills, and £230 which I should have claimed from other allowances. 

Sir Thomas correctly points out that over the five year period I claimed twice for three bills amounting to £117.  The bills shouldn't have been presented twice nor paid. I regret this and have paid the money back. 

My concern is that nowhere has Sir Thomas explained why he has changed the rules which have resulted in his recalculations.  No matter what the cost of maintaining a second home in my constituency has been, a £3k cut-off point was retrospectively imposed. 

Imagine that you have been driving, perfectly legally, through a 30 mile an hour zone at a speed of 25 mph. Imagine then your reaction when, five years later, you receive multiple fines as a decision has been taken to change, retrospectively, the speed limit to 20. 

Sir Thomas has also suggested that other household bills were wrongly claimed telling me that the Fees Office had told me such claims were invalid.  Sir Thomas is simply wrong. There is nothing in the file to support his assertion. He has misread a letter between Officials dated after this period relating to another issue. The actual file shows that at no point were objections raised to my claims. 

Last week I replied to Sir Thomas. I was dazed that, as someone who has always been open about my expenses, his arbitrary decision should link me with the abuses known all too well to voters. I have requested that he withdraws his suggestion, but I am not holding my breath. 

I share the electorate's anger with how some have played the system. But the Legg Review does not seem to have taken on the abuses. What he has achieved is simply to move around some of the characters in the honourable members and villains galleries.  

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Smoking tobacco can kill. There is no question about that. What the House of Commons has to decide today is what further steps it will take to prevent people from smoking which will kill some of them.

Up until this point the Government's campaign has been to prevent people from smoking in public places. I have supported these moves, with some reservation.

Most people do not now smoke, and I guess the majority of us now do not like being in public places where other people are smoking. The ban was well judged and I cannot recall a single prosecution for breaking the new prohibition.

This restriction has meant, however, a severe curtailment of the freedom of smokers. They have to smoke outside the doorways of cinemas, pubs and places of work.

The House of Commons today has the opportunity to ratchet up the restrictions against smoking. Today we could cross a threshold.

From early days minors have not been allowed legally to purchase tobacco. But most of the Government's anti-smoking campaign has been to prevent people smoking in places where it can either damage the workforce - bar workers in pubs or colleagues in shops and offices - or where it is unpleasant for the general public.

MPs are now being asked to ban any signs that tobacco is sold at newsagents and other outlets. Retailers will be able to stock supplies of tobacco but will not be able to have any of these stocks on display.

I shall be voting against these further restrictions on the grounds that the ban will prove pretty futile. I cannot believe that selling tobacco from under the counter is going to prevent anyone from acquiring a smoking habit. Indeed it might increase its attractiveness.

My vote against these proposals is based on different grounds. I think we have reached the end of the line in a free society in trying to curtail the smoking habits of our fellow citizens of which we do not approve.

I am not against using sanctions, but I do believe they should be proportionate and above all they should be effective. I do not believe these rules will lessen the numbers of people smoking.

I also believe they are now disproportionate in respect to the various mortality values. When one looks at death rates we see a growing number of people dying from heart disease and its consequences, and yet we take very little action to prevent people stuffing themselves with poly-saturated fats or trying to encourage people not to join the mega overweight brigade.

How do we as legislators justify yet more penal actions against smokers, while we are as yet unwilling to take the first simpler action to prevent people dying from excessive obesity?

There is scope for governments to try and modify our behaviour but the limit to this approach has, I believe, now been reached in respect of smoking. Our attention should now be focussed on the other big killer in Western Societies that is linked to overeating.

George Osborne gains marks for being the first front bench politician of either of the two main parties prepared to spell out the details on the cuts which will have to be made to balance the budget in the longer term.  Brave certainly, but not brave enough.

 The Government is spending way beyond the revenue it raises.  It calculates that when the economy has returned to growth a £90bn deficit will remain despite the increases in revenue that growing economic activity will bring. 

The question for British politics is how to eliminate this deficit before the country succumbs to the next recession.  

Putting the question like this shows how modest George Osborne's contribution is.  By far and away the biggest cut is a single year freeze in most public sector pay - £12bn.  

But this is a one off saving.  There won't be a £12bn saving the following year unless the freeze is continued.  

What is required are permanent cuts in expenditure if the deficit is to remain reduced, and on a course to elimination. 

Ita is misleading to report the Osborne package as a £22.5bn savings over a parliament.  For once we need to keep focussed on the early cuts total.  How do the cuts shape up to a permanent £90bn reduction? 

Apart from a year's public sector pay freeze, a further £12bn from cuts was announced.  £1bn of that comes from savings on incapacity benefit which have proved in the past notoriously difficult to achieve.  Even more questionable is the £7bn savings from cuts in the Whitehall bureaucracy.  This Government has been trying to cut the bureaucracy and yet the cost of government continues to rise. 

The only clearly deliverable and sustainable cuts in the whole package amounts to £3.5bn: £1.5bn scrapping of child trust funds for families earning over £16k a year and the £2bn savings in cutting back on the eligibility to tax credits.  The cap on top civil servants' pensions is estimated at a £1bn saving but is calculated over a decade. 

Full credit to George Osborne for starting the debate on the theme ‘we are all in this together', but these spelled out savings are tiny in comparison with what is required. 

The next big cuts speech better take the theme: you haven't seen anything yet. 

Labour last week understandably played down the loss of The Sun's endorsement.  But an understandably laid back response shouldn't hide the seriousness of this loss of support. 

Look at Peter Kellner's piece in the current issue of Progress.  Kellner is vice president of YouGov and has analysed the difference between those voters who previously voted Labour, and who say they won't this time around, and those who have remained faithful. 

Kellner, I believe, misjudges his main conclusion.  He emphasises that most ex-Labour voters have not been attracted to the Opposition, so not all is lost. 

So why aren't these voters putting their X against Labour candidates?  The finding is pretty damning.  78 per cent of the one-time Labour voters say Labour used to care about their concerns while only 14 per cent still believe so.  

This is a more important conclusion I believe than the finding that these ex-Labour voters are not positively being attracted to the Conservatives. Analysts who pushed this line seem to forget that it is the government in power and who makes the news, reminding us of their presence 24 hours a day. 

This is where the loss of The Sun's support is so important.  Of those reading a morning paper over a third are The Sun or The Star readers.  In other words a third of one-time Labour voters will be reading a newspaper that shares their view that the Government doesn't act for people like them. 

By all means let's cheer ourselves up by publicly saying that the loss of The Sun's endorsement doesn't matter that much.  But don't let's be fooled by our own propaganda. 

We have a Herculean job on our hands to win back those one-time Labour voters.  Prattling on that we are the underdogs and that we have got a fight on our hands mustn't hide from us the basic fact that voters want us fundamentally to change if they are to support us.  

And if you still need persuading here is one last point.  Nearly thirty per cent of those who remain loyal to Labour do not believe the Government cares about people like themselves. 

Over to you Gordon Brown.

I cannot now remember when I first met David Layton.  I was probably introduced to him by Philip Rowntree.  What I can remember was from that first meeting, and at every meeting, David exuberated a sense of fun and kindly mischief. 

It was Philip Rowntree, and David Layton, who were the financial instigators of the Low Pay Unit.  Philip decided to back the establishing of the LPU with a tranche of monies which had been given to Seebohm Rowntree on his retirement from the chocolate factory in York.  Philip and David were the trustees with whom I worked most closely during the early years of the Low Pay Unit's life. 

David once told me very touchingly about the response of his father to the news David gave him concerning the establishing of Income Data Services.  David's father, Sir Walter Layton, was one of the great public figures of the inter-war period, as editor of The Economist and chairman of the wonderful News Chronicle  (The News Chronicle was the first newspaper I bought every day as a fifteen year old sixth-former). 

Growing up with such a powerful father would be difficult for anyone, particularly if the father made few concessions to his offspring.  But Walter Layton's response to David's news on IDS was that he thought it was the outstanding public act of his life.

In many ways it was, but David also has credit for swinging behind the Low Pay Unit.  At the time of its establishment in 1974 no-one, apart from NUPE - the trade union for lower paid local authority workers - was interested in the minimum wage and that includes the mighty trade union barons who sat on the TUC.  

Once the Unit was established we could employ Steve Winyard - now with the Royal National Institute for the Blind, Chris Pond who was an MP and Minister, and Marie Brown - who worked on Peter Townsend's mammoth poverty study - as full-time officers. They were soon to be joined by Jill Hendey who has spent almost 20 years working with me in the Commons. 

The Unit did change the debate.  Wage councils met regularly and gave more substantial increases in the minimum wage than they had done in their entire history.  The Unit's campaign for a statutory minimum wage saw its fulfilment with the election of a Labour Government in 1997. 

Philip Rowntree and David Layton were the two behind the scenes backers of these achievements.  And while Philip died sometime ago, David's innings of 95 years ended only a couple of days ago.

This week's New Statesman gives full billing to the latest and most dangerous economic heresy.  If only we could live in the world that Danny Blanchflower and Mehdi Hasan believe we are in.

 Hasan cites Blanchflower and Robert Skidelsky.  Have we learnt nothing from Keynes he asks?  Only idiots would cut government spending before a recovery was well underway.  

Said like that, who could disagree? 

But all three of these distinguished authors are preaching Keynesianism for a closed economy.  Our financial system is not sealed.  Furthermore we are borrowing hand over fist in order to pay today's bills.  

This year's borrowing alone will probably top £200bn.  It is simply untrue to say that we are borrowing less than other G8 countries.  We are borrowing a higher proportion of GDP than any of them. 

Each week the Government's debt office offloads another huge tranche of debt.  The debt is, and here it comes, largely bought by money the Bank of England is printing.  

Soon, we are told, there will be no more of this printing - or as we call it in polite conversation, quantitative easing - although there are already one or two voices at the Bank suggesting the policy should be extended. 

The crunch point will come shortly when there is no more of this funny money to buy the Government debt.  At this point the Government's cuts programme will be in the dock and the jury will be composed of those countries and institutions that might lend the British Government money. 

If the jury judges that the Government isn't serious about restoring balance to the nation's accounts before the next boom gives way to a recession we will be in serious trouble.  

Interest rates will rise and maybe, as I suggested to Robert Skidelsky in a radio discussion back at the time of the pre-Budget Report, the Government will not be able to survive, if it cannot finance its weekly dollop of debt.  

So the judgement on the inevitable cuts programme is not a simple one about not cutting public expenditure before recovery is well underway.  If only that was the question that had to be decided.  

Balanced against that issue is the need firstly, to prevent long-term interest rates rising significantly in order to attract gilt buyers - for long-term interest rates will cripple the recovery as well as impose further debt on future generations. And then, secondly, to prevent the nightmare scenario of there simply not being enough lenders to buy up the whole of each week's debt flotation because they don't think we are serious about reigning back on expenditure we cannot pay for. 

The decision on whether to cut or not is one therefore which requires real judgement.  Cutting too soon would harm any recovery while cutting too late could result in a devastating gilt strike.  

It is this decision we need to focus on. Predicting what Keynes would have said now is simply the latest form of escapism on the left.

Is there not a link between the abuse Fiona Pilkington and her family suffered for more than a decade and Carol Hill, the dinner lady who spoke out to the parents of a girl being bullied at school? 

I have found it impossible to read fully the reports of the decade long thuggery against Fiona Pilkington and her family.  We have had examples like this in Birkenhead, although similar cases in which I was involved took place a few years ago now.  I am not saying that there are no such examples in Birkenhead, but the pattern of gang warfare that Fiona suffered for a decade has subtly changed in Birkenhead.

I now get many, many more complaints about the behaviour of adults rather than young people.  And I cannot help wondering whether it is some of those young thugs of yester year who have now graduated into being parents themselves. 

If this is true then it is doubly dispiriting - dispiriting because of how these individuals wreck other people's lives. But dispiriting also because it denotes a change in what is up until now been a traditional pattern of ‘criminal' behaviour.

That pattern was for some working class lads to get themselves on the wrong side of the law. But this pattern of criminal behaviour for most would cease once they were into their twenties.  Setting up home and beginning a family seemed to transform the lives of most of these lads. 

That prospect now seems closed to many of them.  Too many of them leave school without being able to read or write, are paid benefits indefinitely and never have a job.  

Any partnerships they form are usually short-lived and the chaotic life style of the gang is reproduced in the home they form with their partners.  Many of these partnerships appear transient.  

Dealing with the yobbish behaviour of these families clearly calls for different skills than those needed to deal with the yobs that drove Fiona to commit suicide.  Part of any strategy, but only part, is to break in to the supply chain of yobbish behaviour. 

That is what Carol Hill tried to do in informing the parents of a little girl who she discovered tied up and being whipped by a group of boys at the school where she is a dinner lady.  Mrs Hill has been sacked for unprofessional conduct.  

The Sunday papers hint there may be more of this story to come out.  But it is difficult to see what could come out that could overthrow the urgent need now to consider a network of laws and rules which make the exercise of a generous public spirit a sackable offence.  

The big failure with Labour's anti social behaviour strategy has been that it is exclusively mechanical, and worse still, the machinery is largely run by middle class professionals who do not live in the areas most blighted by anti social behaviour. 

The details being given at the inquest into the death of Fiona Pilkington and her daughter Francesca should silence any politician who claims that this strategy against anti social behaviour is working.  But no serious rethink can begin without looking at the sacking of Carol Hill.

The aim must be to move back to a self-policing society where neighbours, friends, dinner ladies, voluntary workers, are all singing from the same hymn sheet. Part of this singing is to speak  out, and, where possible, act against this tide of yobbism which has already begun to destroy what was once a relatively peaceful self-governing society.

One almost sympathises with the Prime Minister. No sooner had he started to promise cuts and cuts and cuts again than the difficulties the Government is going to experience - unless they face the issue head on - became glaringly obvious.

The Government is naturally enough committed to cutting waste and the Prime Minster promised to cut unnecessary programmes.

I can't believe I'm different from the average voter. If there are unnecessary programmes what the hell are we doing providing them?

The same is true when his faithful colleague Ed Balls wades into the debate. If there is £2 billion to be saved from cutting waste, again, why hasn't that already been implemented? It shows a pretty scant disregard for tax payers' money, many of whom in my constituency earn less than one ninth of his salary and still manage to raise two children.

If the Government is not going to drown in the stream of new rhetoric flowing over our political debate it better cut to the chase quickly.

The Government badly needs to say what our essential goals as a party are and be prepared to disengage from other objectives. Otherwise we will get pulled down into a debate that demands cuts across the board.

In this way, the cuts agenda allows a radical Government to set new objectives, while disengaging from some of its current activities.

The debate urgently needs to focus on the outcomes of taking money from taxpayers to achieve public good. Broughton Hall in Merseyside is a model of how the new politics must operate.

The school has benefited from Building Schools for the Future, but it has also revolutionised its results. If we take out the handful of young women who ceased to attend the school, every pupil barring one achieved 5 GCSEs - with over 60% of them including English and maths. Now look at the schools in your area, what were their results like?

Broughton Hall is the objective for reforming the public sector. Budgets should be frozen now and those public sector workers with the ability should be encouraged to gain greater and greater outputs with what will in fact be falling real budgets.

Broughton Hall has shown the way. The Government desperately needs to get on to this attack rather than literally offering to take an axe to waste. That is the plea I made in the House of Commons.

The next few weeks are crucial in deciding how Labour holds on to its rump vote. It will not do so by obfuscating. It needs to show just how radical a cuts programme can be.