THE caught-out political leaders of the three main parties now appear to be at panic stations.

All seem to be coming up with solutions to the current expenses scandal and their own roles in it.

Given that they are all neck-deep in the squalid mess they have created, it must not be they who decide on the solutions.

Does anyone feel that they can now be trusted to create new, transparent and fair ways of taking the problems forward? I, for one, think not.

Whatever they come up with will have been deeply thought through, and discussed behind the scenes by them, so that any change does not rock the boat too much, and effectively keeps the rotten governance of the three main parties in power and unchallenged.

Proportional representation will not be an option, because early next month this system will announce the Euro election results of the small parties, and it may, or most probably will, chill them to the core.

The highly anticipated political sea change we are about to witness in the Euro elections will bring a new dawn of politics to this country, from which the three disgraced main parties may never fully recover.

Mark Anderson, Middleton St George, near Darlington.

IT was interesting to read your Comment column that warned against reducing the number of MPs in our UK Parliament (Echo, May 27). Opposite this, in Harry Mead’s column, was the counter-argument that we could easily have an effective government with fewer MPs.

I feel we have too much government – an elected House of Commons with 600-plus MPs, an unelected Lords with who knows how many members, Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies, a Scottish Parliament, district councillors, town councillors and, in our area at least, unitary authority councillors.

You would think that’s enough, but no. We also have all those MEPs who help to rule us from Brussels. Why do we need so many and at such a cost?

With the current furore about MPs milking the expenses system we should also look carefully at the EU gravy train and, a little nearer to home, the cost of all our councillors. What do they all do to deserve the taxpayers’ money?

Reducing the size of Parliament would and should be the first step to reducing the size of all the government we are saddled with. Thus, we could save every taxpayer money.

John A Redman, Spennymoor, Co Durham.