So, Sir John Bourn, the government's spending watchdog, has decided to retire, after living life on the hog, bankrolled by the taxpayer.

Over the past three years, the head of the National Audit Office (NAO), who is responsible for ensuring that public funds are spent properly, globe-trotted, often accompanied by his wife, at a cost of £365,000. On his return he wined and dined, sometimes alone but more often with unknown guests in many of the best London restaurants, running up bills totalling more than £27,000.

Sir John, who has held his post as head of the NAO for 20 years, was specifically recruited in 2006 to a new role of policing the ministerial code of conduct which sets a framework of behavioural standards for MPs. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has cleared Sir John of "any wrongdoing", after it was decided that he had acted "in accordance with the existing rules". These rules must also have allowed him to accept hospitality from companies which had been the subject of major NAO investigations.

The public can relax, however, after an assurance from the PAC that they are intending to look at "the extent to which the NAO's corporate governance arrangements are consistent with best practice elsewhere". I assume that best practice, in future, will not empower the head of the NAO to book first-class air travel and top-class hotel accommodation for himself and partner, and then sign off his own expenses claims.

Over the past few years the standards of behaviour of MPs and senior government ministers, coupled with their self-centred obsession with hiking their salaries, expenses and already fabulous pension "entitlements", suggest that Sir John has been, in terms of his policing role, the "good cop". It seems that only the Liberal Democrats had been calling for his resignation. I wonder if that was just an "age thing", because he was, after all, totally blameless and just the type of watchdog the majority of the MPs dream of. David Brown, 3 Victoria Road, Lundin Links, Fife. Right to abortion This week marked National Pro-Choice Week and the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Abortion Act. This is still a reason to celebrate, as the Act represents a milestone in the women's movement and an end to the avoidable deaths of women through back-street abortions.

However, the principles behind this Act have never been more under attack. The most recent assault has been on abortion time limits.

This assault has little to do with science - a reduction is not supported by the medical establishment - and much to do with chipping away at a woman's right to abortion and banning it by increment.

Currently, only 0.5% of terminations in Scotland happen after 20 weeks and only take place for extremely serious reasons. Let's not be diverted by tactical manoeuvres to restrict access to safe and legal healthcare and lets put women's rights back into the abortion debate.

Women's Abortion Rights Scotland, Scottish Women's Aid, Engender, Rape Crisis Scotland, NUS Scotland, Edinburgh Women's Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre.