MOST of the letters and emails I received about the Maria Miller affair were rather better informed than some of the commentary on the broadcast media.

I heard one commentator tell his listeners that the affair proved that the new post-2010 reformed parliamentary expenses scheme was no better than its discredited predecessor. Gadzooks! Maria Miller’s case has nothing whatsoever to do with the new expenses scheme. On the contrary, it relates entirely to pre-2009 expense claims.The problem could not have occurred under the new system because the expense she claimed for – mortgage interest – isn’t an allowable expense under the new rules.

Neither does the accusation that MPs sit as judge and jury in these cases apply under the new scheme. Had the complaint related to post- 2010 expenses claims then it would have been investigated by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority’s compliance officer; and had Mrs Miller wanted to appeal against his findings, she would have had to take her case to a tribunal like any ordinary member of the public.

The complaint was that she used her parliamentary housing allowance to accommodate her parents. The Commissioner for Standards in Public Life rejected the complaint and found she had not fiddled her expenses. She did, however, draw to the commissioner’s attention a mistake she had made: when she claimed mortgage interest she did not reduce the claim when interest rates fell.

She was, naturally enough, required to repay the over-claimed amount.

The commissioner calculated the repayment at some £45,000.The media story was that the Commons Standards and Privilege Committee then overruled the Commissioner and let Mrs Miller off with a lighter sentence of only £5,000. This is nonsense.

It wasn’t a sentence, it was a repayment. The committee was able to calculate the over-claimed interest with the benefit of paperwork that had not been available to the commissioner. The final £5,000 figure was agreed between the commissioner and the committee as the correct one, the commissioner was not overruled.

So what was the fuss about, what was it that Maria Miller was found guilty of and what was the penalty?The reports by the commissioner and the Standards Committee agree that she did not have a proper attitude to the inquiry; she acted through legal representatives and, in short, was obstructive.

The punishment was that she was required to make an apology to the Commons. In this she failed. The public perception was that it wasn’t much of an apology and that, ultimately, was why she had to go.

If you try to look at it from her point of view, you might imagine how she felt aggrieved: she was accused of cheating, she endured a long inquiry into the arrangements of her personal life then, having been cleared, an apology was demanded for having tried to protect her family from some of the more intrusive aspects of the inquiry. That is one way of looking at it.

In public life, however, the stakes are high and an apology has to be fulsome. Hers wasn’t.

Will the new post-2010 expenses regime solve the problem? The rules are a lot tighter and the enforcement is entirely independent of Parliament.

It is, however, a very expensive system and I still favour a more radical solution: abolish the entire system and put MPs in exactly the same position as any other professional – by having to argue out with the tax man exactly what is, and is not, a legitimate business expense.