Andrew Smith MP is using parliamentary expenses to pay for literature telling us that he is, “making a stand when independence is right”.

Presumably, we are to infer that independence would have been wrong every time he failed to make a stand – voting to invade Iraq, for ID Cards, and, time after time, not bothering to vote at all on proposals to clean up parliamentary expenses.

For Mr Smith, independence has only really been right since Liberal Democrat Steve Goddard came within a hair’s breadth of beating him in 2005, slashing his once-safe majority to just 963 votes.

Matthew Casey, Steep Rise, Headington, Oxford