THE House of Lords’s privileges committee certainly lived up to its name in giving David Maclean the lightest of raps on the knuckles for signing a contract to lobby for the Cayman Islands.

The word “privilege” derives from the Latin for “private law,” and Parliament reeks of such double standards, routinely absolving its members for activities that would see an ordinary citizen banged up in jail.

Simple cases of corruption have abounded under this administration — from David Laws and his £40,000 “second home” expenses fiddle, through Liam Fox and the Adam Werritty scandal to Maria Miller’s claims for the mortgage and upkeep of her parents’ home.

But Lord Maclean’s case belongs to another and even more serious sickness at the heart of British democracy — or rather to two more serious sicknesses, since the existence of the completely unelected House of Lords is an affront to democracy in the first place.

But the sheer number of parliamentarians who receive funds from companies or governments on top of their salaries is breathtaking, and the idea that these “extra jobs” do not influence their voting behaviour is absurd.

Maclean denies that he was paid to lobby and this appears to have convinced his fellow peers of the realm.

This is despite the original investigation into Maclean being demanded by Labour MP Paul Flynn because of his approaches to various MPs on issues concerning the Cayman Islands.

It is also despite the existence of a £12,000-a-month payment from the Cayman Islands Finance Ministry to a consultancy owned by Maclean, backed up by a contract he signed committing him to “making representations to members of Parliament.”

It is even despite him not disclosing this contract during an investigation into his links with the Cayman Islands.

The idea that “the wording did not matter” when it comes to such a lucrative contract, as Maclean claims he thought, beggars belief.

The Cayman Islands are one of the world’s top tax havens and, at a time when organisations such as UK Uncut and the Tax Justice Network have exposed the way corporations funnel tens of billions out of the country every year to avoid paying their fair share of tax, it was clearly useful for the overseas territory to bend the ear of government against clamping down on the scandal. 

The rot spreads further. As previously reported in this newspaper, Andrew Lansley’s privatising Health and Social Care Act was voted on by a Parliament containing 220 members with interests in private health companies.

MPs regularly take up contracts to “advise” private firms or sit on their boards, raking in the cash and, we are told, never allowing their paymasters to affect their judgement.

Labour’s welcome proposal in April to ban MPs from having second jobs was slammed by the Tories, with Andrew Bridgen MP — paid up to £7,773 a month as non-executive chairman of a vegetable distribution firm — declaring that roles outside Parliament were essential so MPs stayed in touch with “the real world.”

Whether this has worked in Bridgen’s case is unclear — he derided critics of Lansley’s NHS-wrecking Act as “Stalinists,” suggesting a rather overactive imagination.

But if MPs want to stay in touch with the real world they should take time to volunteer at foodbanks or meet the victims of Tory policies such as the bedroom tax.

Taking lorryloads of cash from firms or governments which have an obvious stake in the way our laws are shaped cements the divide between MPs and the people they supposedly represent and cripples the democratic process.

Maclean should be punished. But unfortunately this behaviour is endemic at Westminster.