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It started with an embarrassing story about a Cabinet minister's husband claiming for two adult porn movies on her official expenses but ended with a torrent of allegations about 'flipping' second homes and bills for items as outrageous as chunky Kit Kats and toilet seats.

The Houses of Parliament have been rocked to their centuries old foundations by revelations that have angered the electorate and damaged support for all political parties.

Leading politicians have been forced to resign while police have been posted outside the homes of some disgraced MPs, including Elliot Morley who claimed expenses worth £16,000 for a mortgage he had already paid off.

Michael Martin, Speaker of the House of Commons, was forced to resign after the prime minister withdrew his support after the veteran Labour MP for Glasgow North East faced unprecedented attacks on his authority from the floor. Martin, who is in ultimate charge of Commons' administration, had repeatedly thwarted moves to ensure greater transparency on parliamentary expenses.

The scandal is so deep and pervading that even leading reputation management consultants believe the government will struggle to recover while some MPs will be forced to step down at the next election. As one consultant eloquently puts it: 'They're screwed.'

'They have forgotten that they are public servants,' says John Lehall, managing director of Insight Public Affairs. 'They have flagrantly abused that trust.'

Lack of control

James Frayne, account director at Portland, adds: 'The idea that this may be a flash in the pan is wrong. The government has no control of this story. They need to introduce total transparency and take radical action, kicking MPs out when necessary.

'If MPs can't be honest about small things, like expenses claims, then people will start to question what else they are lying about.'

Lehal adds: 'For many people, it has confirmed everything that they already thought about politicians.'

When the Daily Telegraph first published details of the expenses of Labour MPs, including a £6,577 cleaning bill that prime minister Gordon Brown paid to his brother, the newspaper could not have predicted the outrage its series of scoops would provoke.

It certainly caught politicians and their advisers off guard. But, as many public affairs consultants point out, many in the industry have known that it was only a matter of time before the expenses scandal broke. 'This issue has definitely been festering for a long time,' concedes Richard Patient, managing director of Indigo Public Affairs.

But timing, as those in the media know well, is everything 'This could not have happened at a worse time for the government,' adds Frayne. 'Taxes are going up. There has been a huge crackdown on ordinary people. The government also made the case for higher taxes saying everybody should share the burden. There is nothing the British public hates more than hypocrisy.'

Mark Hamilton, consultant at Regester Larkin, agrees, adding: 'It is no coincidence that this has erupted now. Learning that MPs have the ability to top up their salaries may have been fine when the economy was growing, but when ordinary people are watching what they are spending their money on, that is a different matter.'

The anger is particularly palpable in constituencies where local residents struggle on low salaries while their MPs have claimed tens of thousands of pounds in what appear to be unjustifiable expenses. One member of the audience at Question Time, featuring Sir Menzies Campbell, housing minister Margaret Beckett and Theresa May, shadow work and pensions secretary, likened MPs' actions to 'benefit fraud'.

Constituents' reactions

'Many people view this as exactly the same as somebody having their fingers in the till,' says one public affair consultant. 'And MPs will find it very tough to convince them otherwise.'

While the predicament is undoubtedly unusual, crisis management experts argue that the fundamentals to restore reputations (and order) remain the same. Politicians have to be transparent, open and honest.

Warwick Partington, managing director of Media Training Masterclasses, adds: 'MPs need to do the right thing by the taxpayer rather than by the official guidelines. They must put their constituents' interests before their own - and be seen to do so!

'Those MPs who serve their constituents and the taxpayer properly, both in the spirit of as well as the letter of the regulations, will come out of this far stronger.'

Alistair Eperon, chief executive of Eperon Consulting, adds: 'MPs must recognise the public mood and should not make excuses or blame 'the system' as that is simply digging a bigger hole.

'They should recognise that the rest of the public sector and the whole of the corporate sector find the laxity and generosity of the current system incomprehensible. Furthermore, they should recognise that politicians start from a pretty discredited position in terms of ability to manage the nation's affairs (recession, public transport and education) and demonstrate appropriate contrition, which is more than simply saying Sorry.'

In the immediate aftermath of the revelations, experts believe that David Cameron emerged the stronger leader, grasping the severity of the issue and demonstrating his intention to deal with it.

He made a statement declaring that the expenses system needed to change, and announced that members of his shadow cabinet members were prepared to repay any inappropriate claims.

'People are right to be angry that some MPs have taken public money to pay for items that most people can't afford,' he said.

A key aide to Cameron, Andrew MacKay, resigned after revelations that he claimed a second home allowance on a different property from his wife, and other Conservative MPs were warned that they would be fired if they failed to repay money that had been wrongly claimed.

Douglas Hogg, who claimed £2,115 for having a moat dredged at his country manor house, announced he would step down at the next election. He has represented Sleaford and North Hykeham in Lincolnshire since 1979, and was also a minister in John Major's government.

Personal call

On a personal level, it is believed that Cameron, a former director of communications at Carlton, applies the so-called 'Daily Mail test' to his personal actions. He considers not just whether something is within the rules of Parliament, but also how (if it were to become public) it would appear when splashed across the front page of the tabloid.

Over the past five years, his claims have mainly consisted of mortgage interest payments and utility bills for his constituency cottage in Oxfordshire. He has since repaid a £680 bill for clearing wisteria and vines from a chimney.

Frayne believes that Cameron (and the Conservative party) now has the perfect opportunity to tap into the anti politician mood to drive its policies on issues, such as public service reform or decentralisation. 'This would allow them to not only deal with the anti-politician mood but to use it to their advantage,' he says. 'They could develop a case, like Ronald Reagan once did, that ordinary people know better than politicians about how to spend their own money and that they will therefore be trying to reduce the power of government where they can.'

By contrast, the prime minister Gordon Brown's immediate reaction to the expenses scandal was viewed as inadequate. Experts believe he made a statement that was both too late and too ineffectual, although his later announcement of an independent Parliamentary Standards Regulator was admired. Hamilton described it as 'the best he has been through this particular crisis. He's been playing catch up with both Cameron and Nick Clegg.' 'Cameron stole the march,' says one. 'One area where Brown could have capitalised on was the number of Tories with second jobs,' says Lehal. 'Not many Labour MPs have outside interests, so he could perhaps have got back at the Tories.'

But such political point scoring could well have backfired as public outrage gained traction.

Indigo's Patient adds: 'MPs need to understand that they should no longer be in a position where they set rules just for themselves. They should be subject to the same rules as everybody else.' He points out that, in no other industry, would workers have the right to decide and vote upon pay increases.

Not all bad

However, Patient adds: 'There are plenty of very good MPs who work very diligently who are absolutely horrified that their colleagues are on the take.'

Regester Larkin's Hamilton adds: 'MPs need to be able to draw a line in the sand under this issue. Cameron has done that pretty effectively. MPs that haven't done anything too wrong should go back to their constituents and be open about it.'

He believes that some politicians need to hold public meetings to show their constituents that 'they are quite good people' and to communicate about the issue. 'If they believe that they have not done anything wrong then they need to be able to show that and to win back their constituents' trust,' he adds. 'They should focus the debate back onto local issues.'

Eperon agrees, but adds: 'MPs need to be seen to be taking collective ownership of the problem, and to find someone to take a lead in fixing it fast. But inquiries and 'independent' reports are increasingly seen to be the delaying/diversionary tactics they usually are.'

Many experts believe that tough sanctions need to be taken against those MPs seen to wrongly benefit from the system. 'It needs to be made clear that anybody who is found to have wilfully cheated the system will be kicked out, and certainly not allowed to stand at the next election,' says Frayne.

Hamilton adds: 'Some MPs will find it absolutely impossible to recover from this. For example, people find it difficult to understand how some MPs have claimed expenses for a mortgage that had already been paid off. To say that they didn't realise it is not an excuse.'

But few reputation experts believe the task will be easy or that confidence in the political system will be restored speedily. 'Will anything really transform politicians' reputations?' asks Eperon. 'As ever, only if the practical delivery of effective policy lives up to the rhetoric. It's most likely that this government will go down in history (slightly unfairly) as one of the most discredited and corrupt of this century, leaving the next government with a massive burden to carry which they too could find overwhelming.' 

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