Last month all the UK's living former Cabinet Secretaries wrote to The Times calling on the Government to toughen up ethical standards for those in public service. The letter was written as the controversy over MPs' standards of conduct engulfed Parliament.

The five peers, Lords Butler, Wilson, Turnbull, O'Donnell and Sedwill, urged the Government to adopt the recommendations of a recent Committee for Standards in Public Life (CSPL) report and place key standards bodies and the enforcement of such matters on a statutory footing. For many of us in local government this debate is all too familiar.