The Commons Standards and Privileges Committee said there was "no intention" of MPs having to go "into any detail" about the work they pay family members to do. Erm, why? We, the poor suffering taxpayer, are paying for them so why should we not know what work they are doing?

Besides, what exactly would the point of just having a register of who has family members working for them without any further details? The issue with Derek Conway wasn't that he was employing his sons, but that he was paying them over the odds to do work that they weren't actually doing. If the details are not known and recorded, why bother creating this register? It's a waste of everyone's time and our money in that case, and worth nothing except as an attempt to appear transparent rather than to be transparent.

And it seems that even the European Parliament - despite it own great problems over Members finances - are to go a significant step further than Westminster and ban MEPs from employing family members.

This is a step too far in my opinion. All that is needed is a proper register of what family members do and the payment they received - not a piss-poor attempt like that suggested for Westminster, but a proper full register. Otherwise there's no point.

Do it properly or not at all. Half-measures help no-one.

Seventy Conservative MPs - including David Cameron - and "about 12" Lib Dem MPs employ members of their family. Gordon Brown and the Labour Party have made no declarations of the number of their MPs who employ family members, though 33 Labour MPs are said to have admitted they do.

I can't see any issue at all with MPs employing members of their family. Derek Conway wasn't "employing" his children, but just passing them money under the guise of employment. But actually just employing them to do a job is no problem - so long as they are actually doing the work. Like I wrote before:

This is what appears to be happening voluntarily in the Conservative and Lib Dem parties, and piecemeal with Labour.

However, the fact that David Cameron is employing his sister-in-law "as a correspondence secretary in his private office... paid £15,000 a year out of Conservative funds to work three days a week at the party's headquarters" is a complete non-issue. This money is not coming out of the taxpayer's pockets, but out of the donations made by Conservative party members and donors, like myself. There is no compulsion to donate in the first place, and I for one have no problem with him employing a member of his family so long as she is doing the job she is being paid to do.

So Derek Conway has resigned. He really had no choice after the revelations that he had employed both of his sons at the taxpayer's expense for minimal work, and Cameron withdrew the whip from him. Personally, I appreciate Iain Dale's stance on Derek Conway: he's a friend, so anything he wants to he'll say to Derek's face. Simple human decency. It appears to be a dying breed.

But after the furore that has risen around Conway, there appears to be suggestions to ban MPs from employing family members. Really, this is a very bad and frankly stupid idea. So long as the relative is doing the job they are paid to do [and properly], I can't see any reason why they shouldn't be allowed to do so. Rather, we the taxpayer are likely to get more work of - and thus better value for money - from MPs relatives working for them than a non-relative on the same level of pay.

There is also a large number of administrative issues with this idea, as pointed out on the Three Line Whip blog:

Rather than a blanket ban, it would be far better to instead make it necessary that all MPs declare all employees with whom they have a blood or legal relationship with, what the relationship is - and how much they are paying them to do the job. You could also say that any relatives should only be paid at the bottom of the advised parliamentary pay scale for their role.

A blanket ban on all MP relatives working for them, however, is a very bad idea indeed. Instead of banning it, just make the process transparent.

Tory MP Derek Conway has been outed as employing his son as a parliamentary researcher whilst he was a full-time student and paying him £1,000-plus per month, with a total of around £13,000 salary - plus bonuses. And all from taxpayer's funds, for work that wasn't done. Certainly not work to that value, anyway.

There is no excuse for what he has done. It is utterly disgraceful and unacceptable. He should have to repay every penny that has been wrongly taken. Every. Single. Penny. From his own money.

Just giving him a suspension from the House of Commons is not enough of a punishment - and the wrong sort of punishment. By suspending from the House of Commons, the people who are suffering are his constituents. What should instead happen is that he should have to continue working, but receive no pay.

I don't agree, however, that this "should be the last-chance saloon for the scandal of MPs expenses. It should mean that MPs finally come clean and reveal full details of who and what is being paid from the public purse." Because that isn't fair on the individuals who work for MPs for their salaries to be public knowledge. Instead, MPs should have to reveal whether they are employing any immediate or close family member and any payment they receive- and why. That is as it should be - but not for all personnel. Just those who are related to them.

Like ConservativeHome, I think that Cameron's reaction hasn't been decisive enough. But I don't think that the removal of the whip from Conway is the way to go. Instead Cameron should have declared that the Conservatives will be imposing a significantly greater punishment on Conway than the House of Commons Standards and Privileges Committee. After all, if they ejected him, they'd only end up bringing him back in eventually and reincarnating the whole story then. Far better to get it over with right away, and try and cut out as much comparison with Labour's sleaze issues as possible.