THE first time I visited the House of Commons as a journalist I met an MP dressed in sports gear who told me he had been playing a match with a relative.

As I recorded this gem in my notebook he leaned over and chortled: “Don’t write that, put that I was in a committee or something.”

This exchange took place at around 11am – I’d been up since 6am just doing my job to get there. His working day hadn’t even started.

Yet I bet this politician reckoned he worked hard.

And just like Malcolm Rifkind and Jack Straw apparently – who both deny any wrongdoing – I suspect he may have felt there was nothing wrong, legally or morally, with this type of alleged ‘cash for access’.

For me there was something uniquely depressing about what we saw on Dispatches this week.

n Sir Malcolm’s apparently unabashed glee at the thought of making yet more money on top of the £800,000 he’s coined on top of his annual £67,00 salary for the past five years.

n Jack Straw’s eagerness to show some fictitious Chinese businessman round the House of Commons, presumably because he hoped there might be a drink in it for him, somewhere along the line.

It was depressing because nothing of what these men did is against the law of the land or, they say, the rules governing behaviour in public office even though these rules were approved by the very MPs who stand most to benefit from them.

It was depressing because so many other elected members – they really are all in it together – expressed sympathy for the pair.

Liberal Democrat MP Sir Menzies Campbell hailed Rifkind as an ‘outstanding’ chairman of the Intelligence Security Committee adding: “He has done the right thing in resigning, but the House of Commons will be the worse for the absence of his perceptive and always well-informed contributions to discussions on foreign affairs.”

And it is depressing that so many other politicians seem to think this kind of carry-on is helpful to let MPs ‘gain experience’.

Nothing wrong with that – and Jack Straw says his discussions were related to what he might do when he retired after the election – but why don’t they ever seem to want to gain experience of street sweeping, or working on a zero-hours contract in a call centre?

Why don’t they ever seem to want to gain experience by volunteering their expertise to charities for free?

The impression given over many years is that many MPs only seem to want to gain ‘experience’ via outfits that pay handsomely for the privilege.

Most depressing of all was their predictable response to the Dispatches sting.

Announcing his resignation to reporters, Sir Malcolm trilled: “I don’t think I did anything wrong. I may have made errors of judgment, but that’s a different matter.”

Jack Straw appeared to be trying to pass it all off as a ‘silly old me’ moment as he ‘referred himself’ to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner and stated he was: “Clear that there was nothing that I said in the meetings which was improper.”

That’s for the MPs’ own commissioner to decide officially.

Unofficially? It stinks.