Byers Market

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You can rent an MP just like you can rent a London taxi, said Mohamed Al Fayed, towards the tail end of John Majors Government.

Yesterdays abuse is todays job pitch. Im a bit like a sort of cab for hire, said Stephen Byers, a few weeks ago, in a conversation captured on a video camera hidden in a bowl of pot pourri. This is the dispiriting way that a party prepares to lose power. Not in tub-thumping scandal, but in a tawdry and desperate sort of moral collapse.

Along with Geoff Hoon (the former Defence Secretary) and Patricia Hewitt (the former Health Secretary), Mr Byers was recorded offering his services to a journalist, whom he believed was an executive from a communications company. Whereas Mr Hoon only offered expertise on government, his former colleagues both appeared to offer access to it.

Mr Byers went farther still, offering to assist putative clients in directly changing the law, and claiming that he had done exactly this for other clients in the past. Either he was lying, or he was not lying. Neither interpretation is attractive.

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Any dispassionate observer may feel that Stephen Byers should have smelt a rat. Along with his two former colleagues, he is a representative not only of a party that expects to lose government, but also of the Blairite faction within that party that has already seen its influence wane. If you really wanted to influence government policy, there are probably better ways to spend 5,000.

All three former Cabinet ministers are planning to stand down at the next election. It is thus unsurprising that all are now trying to turn their accumulated experiences into something that, in the words of Geoff Hoon, frankly makes money. But this is not merely a story about the depressing career moves of yesterdays legislators. The claims made by Stephen Byers were detailed and specific. They must be addressed.

In recorded conversation, he claimed to have lobbied Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, to squash a food-labelling regulation on behalf of the supermarket group Tesco. He also claimed to have worked together with Lord Adonis, the Transport Secretary, to help the train and coach operator National Express to extract itself from the East Coast Main Line without paying a penalty.

Both of these claims have now been denied by all involved, including Mr Byers, who claims he was exaggerating. But it is not enough to simply declare, as Harriet Harman, the Leader of the House of Commons did yesterday, that all government departments behaved perfectly. Downing Street, likewise, has been far too quick to rule out an inquiry. These are not the sort of allegations that should, or can, be ignored.

Last month David Cameron called lobbying the next big scandal waiting to happen. It is happening now. Those at Westminster may draw moot distinctions between cash for experience and cash for access, or between self-aggrandising claims and actual delivery. The public will not be so discerning. Nor should they have to be.

In dealing with the last big scandal that of the summers revelations over MPs expenses our elected representatives were unforgivably slow to recognise the strength of public disgust at practices that they, themselves, considered entirely unremarkable. Can they really be so determined to repeat their mistake?