If John Buttifant Sewel was a private citizen, I wouldn’t care what he gets up to in his free time. However I do care very much that we have been footing the bill for his debauchery and alleged drug-taking. How dare Lord Sewel pay for his seedy pleasures with money from the squeezed public purse? With your money and mine.

How large must his sense of entitlement be? How far has he drifted from any understanding of what constitutes acceptable standards in public life?

Let me detail how generous we have been to Lord Sewel to better understand how scandalously he has repaid us. He enjoys a subsidised London flat, and an £84,500 salary with further allowances of £300 a day. It is reported that between 2001 and 2010 he claimed £403,799 in expenses.

It used to be called a gravy train. It’s now the coke train, judging by his declaration to one of his prostitute playmates that his daily attendance allowance "is not for lunch lovey, darling. It pays for this".

At a time of hardship for so many, isn’t that corrupt? It is in my definition. More than money, he has been given status, quite apart from his peerage. In his role as Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords he was empowered to help shape the laws that govern us. As Chairman of the Conduct and Standards Committee, Lord Sewel set out the standards required of his fellow peers. These were and are "integrity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership".

It would be comic if this was a political satire on television. In real life, it’s just offensive. In the wake of The Sun’s expose of his night-time habits, he has resigned from both posts.

In a recent blog for the Huffington Post his lordship wrote: "Scandals make good headlines. The activities of a few damage our reputations."

Does he presume the rules are only for others, that they don’t apply to him? I think he does, or did. It’s a common delusion among people with wealth and/or power. Not since Cardinal Keith O’Brien, that outspoken scourge of homosexuality, admitted to sexual impropriety with young priests has there been such a glaring example of hypocrisy.

In both cases the gap between what they advocated for others and what they did themselves is so large you have to wonder if the two ways of behaving were held in the same consciousness. There is a saying; the bigger the front, the bigger the back: Jekyll and Hyde.

But really none of that should concern us for long. We need to concentrate on the bigger picture, on what this scandal tells us about the institution that stands at the heart of our democracy.

Have the houses of parliament come to resemble too closely the Augean stables of Greek myth? Is it time to clean them out? I’m not just writing about the Lords but also the Commons. Politicians bemoan the loss of faith the electorate displays in politics. With a sex and drugs scandal teetering upon the cover-up of paedophilia, upon politicians for hire and upon expenses fiddles is it any wonder?

But at least the electorate has a say in who sits in the Commons; not so the Lords. Lord Sewel didn’t inherit his ermine-trimmed robe; he was appointed by Tony Blair. He may legitimately claim he earned his position for services to the public. He was leader of Aberdeen District Council and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Scottish Office as well as UK representative to Nato for three years. He gave us the Sewel Motion whereby Holyrood agrees to allow legislation at Westminster to be passed on a devolved subject.

So, like the disgraced former head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominic Strauss Kahn, his professional contribution is not the issue of whether or not he is suitable for office. It’s his morals that disqualify him.

Just as House of Lords reform has slipped down the agenda, his behaviour is a reminder that entry to the increasingly overblown second chamber should be by election, not appointment. Isn’t it also time to finally do something about it?

Lord Steel of Aikwood delivered a lecture yesterday in Northern Ireland calling for a constitutional commission to consider widespread reform. He argued for a 500-strong Upper Chamber elected by the component institutions of the UK. Forty of these "senators" would be from the Scottish Parliament.

The devil will lie in the detail but already it sounds preferable to what exists. There are 820 peers with David Cameron planning to add more. In the near future it could approach 1,000. At present, 738 are eligible to vote. 670 of them are appointed life peers, 87 are hereditary and 26 are bishops. I wonder how many of us feel represented by any of them?

We have cause to be grateful for the brake they sometime apply to the enthusiasm of governments with large parliamentary majorities. But that’s been a matter of luck.

On the matter of personal morality, most members of both houses do conduct themselves with propriety – at least we must assume so. But what is pernicious about those who do not is multi-layered. First, there is the affront of law breaking under the guise of unimpeachability and superiority. More importantly for me is the mutual cover it can provide to the worst amongst us.

For example, when Jimmy Savile was questioned about children he stated that he’d bring others down with him. When Cyril Smith was arrested for molesting children the police were ordered from on high to let him go. This week we saw a 1986 note from the head of MI5 to the then Cabinet Secretary referring to an MP thought to have a penchant for young boys saying "the risk of political embarrassment to the Government is rather greater than the security danger".

The risk to the children didn’t warrant a mention. Any victims remained helpless. That was a dispassionate view. Won’t corrupt people in high places be even more inclined to cover-up the vices of others, for fear of their own being exposed in return?

Well, Lord Sewel is exposed now. At the time of writing he is clinging to his peerage. I hope it is prised from his grasp. I’m truly not an unforgiving person but it still enrages me that Lord Watson, who went to prison for setting fire to curtains at an event I attended, remains a peer. I think that he and Jeffry Archer and the others who have fallen foul of the law should forfeit the right to shape it.

The final irony for Lord Sewel is that his committee helped to introduce the House of Lords (Suspension and Expulsion Act 2015), which allows peers to be barred from parliament if they breach the code of conduct.

If it transpires that the white substance he was filmed snorting, from the breast of a call girl through a rolled up £5 note, was cocaine, he could be the first to be expelled. In the absence of self- restraint, at least he will have to experience self-imposed justice.