We are extremely concerned by the MP sleaze scandals of recent weeks. We simply don’t believe these issues exist in a bubble.

As just one example, over 100 MPs have second or third jobs, many paying more then their MP salary. The larger an MP’s majority, the bigger liberties they’re taking.

When politicians openly and knowingly fail their constituents, it’s a symptom of something far more rotten at the heart of our political system. The Government’s anti-democratic agenda includes many bills now passing through parliament, all with measures threatening to undermine our democracy.

The Elections Bill will remove the independence of the Electoral Commission and undermine its ability to monitor elections. Bills like the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill and the Judicial Review and Courts Bill all take power out of the hands of ordinary people and our democratic institutions and concentrate it in the hands of the Government.

It is a Government that clearly aims to weaken or remove mechanisms which can hold it to account.

Tony & Sue Pasternak, Roch