The stench of corruption and arrogance over the Westminster parties grows ever strong. Latest revelations include the news that cabinet ministers have spent more than £6 million on chauffeur-driven cars and that the new speaker’s wife has been sacked for allegedly faking her CV.

The chauffeur scandal is completely separate from any other expenses scandals and forms part of the “ordinary” benefits which cabinet ministers receive.

The cost over the past four years comes to nearly £24 million on vehicles and drivers, according to media reports. Last year, 93 ministerial cars cost the public £6.3 million, or £67,500 per vehicle.

The Home Office and the Cabinet Office each spent more than £1.8 million on a fleet of cars since 2005.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that the wife of Commons Speaker John Bercow has been fired from her job after it was claimed she had lied about having a degree from Oxford University.

Sally Bercow — who although married to Tory John, is an activist and candidate for the Labour Party — was dismissed by public relations business Consolidated Communications after it contacted the Oxford authorities and discovered they had not granted her a degree.

The company accused her of having lied on her CV. It also claimed that Mrs Bercow — who at the time was known by her maiden name, Sally Illman — had used “multiple CVs” with different “facts” about her past on each one.

In an indication of the similar nature of all three Westminster parties, Mrs Bercow has been a member of the Tories, Liberal-Democrats and Labour.

She was social secretary of the university’s Conservative Association in 1989. She then joined the Liberal Democrats.

A short while later she rejoined the Conservatives and addressed their party conference in 1993. In 1997 she joined Labour and is currently a candidate for that party in the Westminster Council borough.

Mr Bercow has promised to “clean up” Parliament in the wake of the expenses scandal. Possibly he should start at home.