When Mark Oaten, the Liberal Democrat MP, was told by a price-comparison website that it could save him thousands of pounds, he was sceptical.

Two weeks later, he is on his way to being £10,000 better off.

Oaten was forced to step down from his party’s front bench team in 2006 after admitting an affair with a male prostitute, but he remains MP for Winchester where he lives with his wife, Belinda, and their two children.

The family, like most people, have been feeling the pinch, but the credit crunch has at least prompted them to overhaul their bills.

Here, Oaten explains how tangled his finances had become and how he managed to save so much money.

THINGS are changing in the Oaten household. Lights get switched off, the Aga is turned down and cars are used less. No, we’ve not become eco-warriors, we have been credit crunched.

Representing somewhere like Winchester, I never thought I would be dealing with people in debt fearing repossession and unemployment — but in the past month the middle classes have been coming to my surgery in need of help like never before.

Worryingly for me, I can relate to their stories. At kitchen supper parties there is talk of little else as we compare house prices, the high cost of heating with oil in our village and now — among our set for the first time — talk of redundancy.

Oh, how I wish I had taken more notice of my colleague Vince Cable. I used to listen as he went on about personal debt thinking he sounded like Private Fraser in Dad’s Army with his “we’re all doomed” talk. I even told him to stop talking so pessimistically as it might cost us votes.

Well, it turns out he was right and I, like Private Pike, was “the stupid boy”. As he was predicting problems ahead, I was busy remortgaging and running up credit-card bills. Like many people I got comfortable, thought “boom and bust” was over and ignored it. Whatever went out would be covered by what was coming in, so I needn’t worry.

So with our bills soaring and assets sinking, I had been searching for a get-out-of-jail card when by chance I met the guys who run Moneysupermarket. I had fixed to see them about an insurance scam affecting a constituent and during our conversation I mentioned that all my costs were going up.

Andy, the head of insurance and home services, suddenly said: “I bet we could cut the cost of your monthly bills.” Say that again? Bills, costs and cut all in the same sentence — this was music to my ears. So last week I took them up on the challenge. Could a website really help me cut my household budget?