I also thought it fascinating that Clegg dragged Iraq into a reply completely unrelated to the PMQ he was asked – another sign the comment was preplanned.

I’m sure there are more than a few Tories who voted for the war who feel cheated and misled by Blair and Straw, especially now the Chilcot enquiry is more and more coming round to the Lib Dem point of view.

Clearly we live in an unequal society where very many people feel they have to live in fear and secrecy. To point this out seems to me self-evident rather than arrogant. Nor would I define freedom as the freedom to live in the closet. To me, that seems a contradiction, and to miss the bigger picture. Real freedom is surely living in a society where sexuality is a pedestrian demographic fact, not something that needs to be hidden. And it is going to extreme lengths to hide a 10-year relationship that makes it a single-issue in someone’s life – not living life in the open. There’s a difference between a private life and a secret life.

While being gay no longer raises an eyebrow in public life, it is of course more controversial in many people’s personal/family lives. These things are not easy. They could be made easier by politicians setting an example. I don’t want to brow-beat them into doing so – but I’m disappointed when they don’t.

I want equality in all things for both gay and straight people. No, gay people don’t have less right to a private life. Politicians do. Their domestic arrangements, particularly when taxpayer funded, are rightly subject to public scrutiny, especially after the expenses scandal. The expenses system, as it now stands, does seem predicated on an assumption that no one would want to keep their partner a secret – so he does seem to have been caught in an insoluble conundrum, whoever paid the rent in this case.

The irony is that, had he declared his partner, he would not only have stayed within the rules but could have claimed more in expenses. Thinking you can maintain a secret life in public life seems naive, and protecting privacy is not an appropriate use of public money. Especially since that right to privacy doesn’t extend to benefit claimants, who are thoroughly snooped on and would lose their benefits and possibly face prosecution if they didn’t declare a cohabitee.

I do hope this is temporary, though, and Laws can return to Cabinet soon. I think he’s a very talented politician – the Government needs him.

But equality and freedom mean that individuals should still be allowed to choose how much of their private life to make public. David Laws was having an innocent, legal, no-one’s getting hurt love affair (of whatever flavour) that he didn’t want to share with friends and families.

It was an open secret at Westminster that he was gay, and it’s unfortunate his closet doors have been blown off in such a violent way by the perfidious Daily Telegraph over the observance of what’s really a technicality in the complex expenses rules, not deliberate fraud.

And I don’t think Alistair Campbell’s role in this is fully explained yet. Just a hunch.

The relationship is not the business of parliament or you and I.

YOU may not buy that, but perhaps you should. I have no need to know he ins and outs of everyone’s relationships. There is no need to be nosy!

You don’t know what his family are like. They may be openly homophobic.

The issue is the public money used.

If he were to stop claiming but still live at the same address, then he may have revealed the relationship.

His other option was to dead let (rent but not live in) another property and pay his rent to his partner from his own pocket.

But then we would have had another scandal.

MP Rents flat, claims it on expenses and doesn’t live there. Instead he lives with his lover.

He was on a hiding to nothing either way. The only thing that would have afforded him privacy was means tested expenses, because he wouldn’t have qualified for any.