MPs’ expenses: the story that changed politics
There is more than one thing wrong with Britain’s public life. The Daily Telegraph’s glee at publishing a set of expenses which were going to be published shortly anyway, and its smugness at engineering ‘one of the biggest parliamentary scandals in British history’ (its own rather pompous words) is one of those things.
Our reactions to the MP expense story could be sorrow, or they could be anger. But smugness, delight, glee, self-righteousness, self-importance, and revelling in muddying the waters as much as possible should not.
The Telegraph’s story about itself reads more like the back cover of a John Le Carré novel (except, with a John Le Carré, you know that the prose inside the novel will be vastly more elegant than what someone made up for the back cover).
But the Telegraph did not ‘uncover’ this material. It merely pre-empted it. The uncovering was done by others. Most notably by Heather Brooke, the US journalist who first put in a Freedom of Information request on MP expenses, after questioning them unsuccessfully since 2004. In April 2007, Tory MP David Maclean tried to introduce a bill exempting MPs from disclosure under Freedom of Information. It was Liberal Democrats Simon Hughes and Norman Baker who used Maclean’s own favourite technique to talk out the bill. But it came back shortly thereafter, as both Brown and Cameron tacitly backed attempts to keep MP’s ways secret.
In June 2007, the Information Commissioner backed disclosure, but not of receipts, but in February 2008, the Information Tribunal ruled that the receipts, too, should be released. The House of Commons appealed, but, in May last year, Brooke won her High Court case, and the claims of 14 MPs, including receipts, were made public.
Following this, all MP claims, with receipts, were due for release this summer.
All that the Telegraph did was buy an illegal copy of the receipts and release them early, for their own purposes.
I cannot emphasise this point strongly enough. Brooke, not the Telegraph, deserves the full credit for the story ‘that changed British politics’. The Telegraph did nothing but breach an embargo. To be sure, it was a sharp piece of newspaper marketing. But the Telegraph contributed nothing to the actual process of disclosure — it merely took credit for it at the end.
Brooke’s response to this is rather less smug, as she outlines in this BBC article. To her, it is a point about democracy, not a prurient interest in which MPs buy champagne and which buy Scotch eggs.
Brooke’s intention was to re-energise democracy, not to boost sales through cheque-book journalism. And, equally, her intention was to show things for what they were, not to pour the maximum amount of scorn whether deserved or not.
As the public, we do not have to buy into the Telegraph’s version of events. Likewise, we do not have to buy into their judgements. Someone who spent money on having light bulbs replaced after an electrical fault is not ‘guilty’ merely because his actions appear comic. A couple who claimed vastly more than should be allowed by a complicated arrangement with second homes should not be allowed to get away with a simple resignation. MPs who claimed for mortgages that did not exist should face the full weight of the consequences.
All these distinctions, the Telegraph attempts to blur. It presents a picture of politicians as all more or less on a sliding scale of corruption.
This was not Brooke’s intention.
The Telegraph should own up: it wasn’t really their story.
As for the public, we must now do the most difficult thing in these circumstances. We must re-engage with politics, not casting away in protest to single-issue parties about which we know very little, but making it absolutely clear to the main parties what we require of them. More people should vote, not less.
Finally, I predict that a number of MPs, while protesting their innocence now, will choose not to stand at the next general election. We therefore need a new cohort of candidates to replace them. This is not a popular thought at the moment. Just by being a parliamentary candidate, one is at risk of being tarred with the same accusation ‘you’re only in it for the money’. But if no-one stands, then democracy dies.
Those who can, must.
