Since the Telegraph began publishing the details of MPs’ dubious expense claims last Friday, we have witnessed what Ann Widdecombe has described as a ‘My shirt’s hairier than yours’ competition. Politicians have been falling over each other to confess their regrets about their behaviour and be the first either to pay back their undeserved windfalls or force their colleagues to do the same, thereby gaining the moral high ground on their slower and apparently less remorseful rivals. The faster, the sorrier and the more expensively penitent the better. The episode has the air of the banks’ recent clamour to get all the bad news out there as fast as possible in a desperate effort to rebuild shareholder confidence.

The Jubilee Centre’s forthcoming new edition of Votewise asks how Christians can decide who to vote for. Unfortunately, the current climate of self-flagellation is not going to be enough to win back voters, as the European elections next month are likely to prove. Paying back what they never should have claimed or received in the first place is only a starting point. In the Old Testament, relationships between thief or defrauder and victim were restored by the payment of restitution. They were required to return not only what was stolen – surely the bare minimum that could be expected – but also an additional sum. Sometimes this was an extra 20 per cent (Leviticus 6:2-5) sometimes as much as five times the amount in question (Exodus 22:1), depending on the circumstances. Leaving aside the question of whether or not MP’s expense claims can legally be considered as fraud, making restitution was never supposed to be free in the sense of paying back nothing more than was taken in the first place. That is hardly a punishment, and hardly adds to the confidence of the victim.

When news of his £16,000 claim for a mortgage that no longer existed came to light, former agriculture minister Elliot Morley reportedly offered to ‘go further’ than simply paying back what he owed, although it is not yet clear what he meant by this. When Jesus called Zacchaeus down from the sycamore tree, the tax collector immediately gave half his possessions to the poor and promised to pay four-fold restitution to those he had defrauded. His overly-generous gift (in terms of what the Law actually required of him) showed that this was a heartfelt response to God’s grace, rather than a minimal or token gesture. No one was in any doubt about his motives: Zacchaeus was genuinely sorry to the people he had hurt, and genuinely grateful to Jesus, and so went far above and beyond what he needed to. Now that would be something worth voting for.

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