Members of all four corners of the political spectrum debated the ongoing issue of MPs expenses on Politics Now.

On STV on Thursday night, David Mundell MP, Tom Harris MP, Stewart Hosie MP and Danny Alexander MP joined Bernard Ponsonby to debate the issue which has dominated newspaper columns for the past few weeks.

When asked about how Parliament should reform itself in light of the ongoing problems at Westminster, Mr Harris, a former Labour minister and the current MP for Glasgow South, said: "I think we should be very careful about feeding this anti-politics frenzy. Of course, everybody agrees we have to get the expenses system cleaned up but lets not fall into this trap for this race to the bottom.

"My fear is that we throw the baby out of the bath water with this. I don't see that some of the solutions being proposed are at all relevant to the problem that we have got here.

Mr Alexander, chief of staff to Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, added: "I think the changes we make in the political system, if trust is to be re-established at all, have to go beyond expenses. We have to look at all the other weaknesses that the current system has.

"If all we end up with is a cleaned up expenses system which desperately needs to happen, but we miss the opportunity to extend Freedom of Information for example in Westminster to the level it is in Edinburgh, then we would have missed the chance to really shake up politics. Parliament needs to be seen doing its job."

Over the issue of electoral reform, such as proportional representation as seen in the Scottish Parliament, Mr Mundell, Shadow Scottish Secretary, commented: "I think that we have seen here in Scotland a very good example through the introduction of stv (single transferable vote) and local government as to why actually proportional representation doesn't hold elected representatives to be accountable to their electorate, because people now have three of four councillors. They don't know who is actually responsible for what."

In response to the same issue Mr Hosie, the SNP's spokesperson for Treasury in Westminster, added: "In these multi-member wards, what we now have for the constituents is choice and if they are dissatisfied with the response of the service they get from one of the councillors, they can go to someone else and the work gets done. That is a good thing. This form of pr (proportional representation) we have in local government, almost every vote counts"