Dear Lord Nolan

Lord Nolan's report on sleaze is due to be published today, but perhaps he could squeeze in a few last-minute recommendations? For a suitable fee, of course, if that would help ...

Do you have room to add a few more proposals to your report on "50 Ways for MPs to Avoid the Sleaze Factor"? And would it help if I slipped you and your committee a few quid each to squeeze them in?

I'm a bit worried that you might be too hard on the Commons. After all, MPs have a job to do. Several jobs, in the case of David Mellor, who in the last Register of Members' Interests turned out to be interested in 11 different consultancies.

There is nothing wrong with that, as many of the worthy witnesses appearing before you have pointed out (some of them possibly presenting you with a bill after offering their evidence, through force of habit). Members need to break away from the hot-house of Westminster and cool off by experiencing the real world. If this includes being a director of Business Post plc and HFC Bank, as it does for Dudley Fishburn, Kensington MP and PR consultant to the American law firm Shearman & Sterling, so be it.

By contrast, take my MP, whose reselection meeting I am about to attend. All she does is hang about in the Chamber, waste her time in committees, chew the cud with party activists or address residents' associations. None of this involves any financial reward and she lives entirely on the state, that is, her £32,000 salary. She listens to her constituents wittering on about their housing or other pettyproblems! Is this the kind of person you would vote for - assuming you had a vote - your lordship?

Of course not. Like me, you place a high value on financial independence, without which Members will be fawning on the electorate in case they are thrown out without a penny to their name at the next election.

So, Proposal No 51: privatise MPs. No salary at all. One Member told me that most of those on his side doubled their income by taking on outside work. In other words, the removal of their salary would leave them with the £32,000 they are supposed to live on. Some Members such as Kenneth Baker, MP for Hanson plc, Torrey Investments Inc, Videotron Holdings and so on, would hardly notice.

For those with no market value at all, you had better add Proposal 52: the MPs' Loan. This would be like the Students' Loan but higher, pegged to the sum that David Mellor receives from a single one of the defence contractors for which he is a consultant. Like me, your lordship would not like to see MPs starving. Just hungry.

Finally, Proposal 53. If these draconian measures discourage everyone from standing for Parliament, we can co-opt Members from friendly boardrooms. MPs can be part-time directors, so surely directors can be part-time MPs. If arms manufacturers, PR firms, chartered accountants, overseas banks, and foreign hoteliers are effectively running the show, they are cordially welcome to take over the reins and sort it out themselves.