More revelations in the Sunday Times following the Anderson Perry sting.

I am not as shocked as I was this time last week when I heard Stephen Byres talk about the going rate for his invaluable services. At £3,000 - £5,000 a day, his was turbocharged greed.

The law of diminishing returns is beginning to kick in. Nevertheless, this morning’s revelations cannot be ignored.

Today, it is former Defence minister Adam Ingram who is in the frame. The outside earnings of the MP for East Kilbride are trawled over. The Sunday Times tells us he charges £1,000 for a meeting and £1,500 a day. He “earns” £173,000 on top of his MP’s salary. He is a busy boy! And, it seems, a very wealthy one.

The sting also catches Richard Caborn.

Caborn, never one knowingly to under sell himself, charges £2,500 a day plus expenses. He already gets £75,000 a year from the nuclear and construction company AMEC.

Caborn told the undercover reporter that he (Caborn) had access to the highest levels of Government. “If Samir Brikho (the Chief Executive of AMEC) wants to see the prime minister,Samir Brikho sees the prime minister.” Hmmm.

Oh yes, and he also wants a peerage.

On 8 May 2008, Caborn gave evidence to the Public Administration Select Committee as part of our inquiry into Lobbying: Access and Influence in Whitehall.

He was testy and rattled, belligerent and upset that he had been “singled out” and “mentioned in dispatches all over the place”.

He was an angry man. And with me in his sights, he observed: “I am bound to say that some of the questioning today has not been as sharp as it ought to be; it has been ill-informed in some areas.”

Well, thanks to the Dispatches revelations, we are not quite so ill informed now as we were then.

You can read the transcript on:

www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmpubadm/36/8050806.htm