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Every year the parliamentary/constitutional think-tank, the , does a kind of health check on public attitudes towards politics. So here's the "good" news from the opinion polls taken for their 2010 Audit of Political Engagement.

They found that while the MPs' expenses scandal has hit the standing of MPs and Parliament, there has not been a collapse of trust in politicians or politics. The effect has mostly been to harden the views of those who were already sceptical - 26% of those polled say they trust politicians generally compared to 27% in 2004 and 73% say they distrust politicians compared to 70% in 2004.

But other survey results looking at what people think MPs should be doing and what they think they actually do underline the problem: 50% of those surveyed thought MPs spent most of their time furthering personal and career interests (bizarrely, 3% thought this is what they should be doing!)

Here are the full figures from the audit:

The figures suggest that the whole scandal was essentially a kind of "gotcha" moment when suspicions were confirmed. If there's any comfort it lies in the finding that twice as many people (38%) are satisfied with the way that their own MP does their job than are dissatisfied.

Another significant finding is that there has been a big decline in the perceived impact of Parliament on people's lives, compared to other institutions like "the media". Only 19% think Parliament is one of the top three influential institutions on their everyday lives - an 11% drop from 2004. But 60% still think Parliament is "worthwhile", and only 14% disagree.

And while 71% of people say they have discussed MPs' expenses in the last year, only 41% say they have discussed politics or political news. Perhaps the gap between these figures suggests people may not regard MPs' expenses as a 'political' issue, which may help explain why the scandal has had such mixed results in terms of trust and satisfaction with MPs and Parliament.

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