Fines for cheats

When people are caught trying to smuggle tobacco into the UK HM Customs threatens to take them to court, but offers them a compromise penalty of three times the revenue they tried to dodge – and the goods are forfeit.

MPs talk about trying to restore the public's trust in them. As far as I can see, the only way this can be done is to To do this we should force all expenses cheats to repay three times what they tried to swindle, and have their bell towers etc destroyed.

C A M AITCHISON

Peebles Drive

Glasgow

The Duke of Northumberland, advising Sir William Maxwell about the intentions of his son, Sir Herbert, to enter parliament as a Conservative candidate in 1873, said: "Let a young man enter the House of Commons as a free man, and there is no fairer field for his energy. But if he goes there with the intention of making money out of it, there is no surer road to degradation."

PETER O BEHAN

South Erskine Park

Bearsden

Glasgow

If we are sufficiently ill-advised as to re-elect to our respective parliaments those MPs and MSPs who have been exposed in the expenses scandals, we will be condoning the very corruption about which we have protested so loudly. In doing so we will then have become a part of the same problem. It is to be hoped that the instinctive wisdom of the electorate will prevail.

ANDREW C McWILLIAM

Boreland Road

Kirkcudbright