FROM THE VERY first day the expenses scandal broke, MPs who felt they had nothing to hide had been clamouring for Parliament to bring forward the publication of the expenses documents as a way of pricking the Telegraph’s balloon. They believed that if the public and, more importantly, the media were swamped with information on all 646 MPs the story would blow itself out in a matter of days, rather than being controlled by the Telegraph and drawn out over what became several weeks.
Luckily for the Telegraph, the redacted versions of the expenses documents had still not been signed off by MPs, and so Parliament was left in a state of paralysis while officials tried to hurry the process along in order to bring forward online publication from the original target date of July.
Thursday, 18 June 2009 was eventually announced as the day the public would finally get their chance to see the expenses claims of every MP, and find out for themselves exactly what their local Members had been up to.
Although the Telegraph’s expenses investigation would have been going for almost six weeks by then, it would still be a crucial day both for Parliament and for the newspaper. If the House of Commons published detailed information about each MP’s claims, the story could still rebound on the Daily Telegraph to some degree, as politicians would line up to renew their erroneous accusations that the newspaper had paid for what they claimed was ‘stolen’ information just so that it could ‘jump the gun’ by publishing the leaked files ahead of time. The Telegraph’s insistence that it had acted in the public interest by publishing material which would otherwise have been kept secret would also have been seriously undermined. On the other hand, if the material appeared in a heavily censored form, the newspaper would be vindicated.
The day would also prove a crucial test of whether the Commons had listened to the public anger over MPs’ expenses by publishing more information than it had originally planned to release.
In the run-up to Parliament’s publication day, the Telegraph’s coverage of the expenses story – which at its peak was taking up thirteen pages per day – had been wound right down, with the bunker team contributing no stories at all to the newspaper on some days. But behind the scenes the reporters, designers and sub-editors had been busier than ever, working flat out to produce a supplement on the expenses scandal under the guiding hand of group consultant editor Derek Bishton. The Complete Expenses Files was to be a 68-page magazine which would detail the claims made by every MP.
William Lewis stressed that he wanted the magazine to be a treasure trove of fascinating details, modelled on the design of the Sunday Times Rich List. But whereas the annual Rich List took almost a year to compile, The Complete Expenses Files had to be put together in little over a fortnight. Lewis had initially set a publication date of 27 June – comfortably before the original parliamentary publication date – but when Parliament brought forward its own publication date to 18 June, Lewis responded by changing the magazine’s publication date to 20 June, when it would be distributed free with the newspaper.
With a week less to prepare the supplement than had originally been expected, the bunker team worked later and later into the nights as they wrote new material on each MP and compiled new figures breaking down what they had spent on furniture, gardening, mortgages and other items. The magazine had to be finished by 12 June to make sure of its printing slot, and the bunker team worked until 3.30 a.m. that night to finish the job, before breaking out a warm bottle of white wine and some plastic cups from the water cooler for a weary celebration.
The Complete Expenses Files, published the following week, amounted to a Domesday Book of MPs’ profligacy, and it proved to be a massive hit with a public who were still clamouring for information. The reporters’ efforts would be rewarded with a sales increase of 150,000 – one of the biggest one-day rises in the Telegraph’s history, making that day’s paper by far the biggest-selling issue of the whole investigation. By lunchtime, newsagents across the country had completely sold out of copies.
Sales were helped by Andrew Pierce’s characteristically cheeky plugs for the supplement during a round of television interviews, in which he waved a copy of the magazine in front of millions of viewers. One TV producer tried to stop Pierce taking the magazine on set, so the indomitable reporter hid a copy down the back of his trousers before producing it with a flourish on camera.
Although the media coverage of MPs’ expenses had diminished following Gordon Brown’s reshuffle, the Westminster rumour mill was being cranked up to full power again with whispers that the Telegraph had held back a ‘big story’ for publication on the eve of the parliamentary disclosure.
‘Please, just give us a hint of what you’ve got – have you kept back the affairs?’ Winnett was asked by one caller from the upper echelons of the Conservative Party.
‘Erm, not quite, but I think you’ll enjoy what we have got,’ came the hesitant reply.
In fact, the truth was that once again the rumour mongers were wide of the mark. The Telegraph had nothing spectacular up its sleeve at all. But, not for the first time, luck was about to shine on the newspaper and the prophecy would, in the end, be fulfilled.
Having put the magazine to bed, the bunker team had started going back through the expenses files to tie up any loose ends and chase any leads they hadn’t previously had time to follow up. The team had hoped to come up with two or three front-page stories to run in the build-up to the official publication. By Tuesday evening, however, there was little sign of the major breakthrough required for Thursday’s paper.
‘Found anything good yet?’ Chris Evans kept asking.
‘We’re working on it,’ Winnett would reply.
Then, as Winnett was travelling home on Tuesday night, he received a text from Martin Beckford. ‘Think I may have found something interesting, give me a call if you can.’
Winnett immediately did so, and Beckford, who had been going through the office expenses of junior ministers, explained that he had found a bill for accountancy advice for Kitty Ussher, the junior Treasury minister who had featured in the paper in the early days of the investigation after she tried to claim for having ‘swirly’ Artex removed from her ceiling.
Winnett was distinctly underwhelmed by Beckford’s news. After all, the Telegraph had already devoted considerable coverage to the fact that several senior ministers, including the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, had claimed for advice from accountants. This sounded like more of the same – an OK story but not one which was likely to make the front page.
‘Sounds all right,’ said Winnett, trying not to communicate his disappointment to a reporter who had worked as hard as anyone over the previous weeks.
‘Hang on, I haven’t finished yet,’ Beckford continued. The letter setting out the advice Ussher had received from her accountant was in the file. Beckford said: ‘I’m not sure whether it means what I think it means. But this is what the letter says:
‘“I am enclosing a declaration to vary your previous main residence election for a period of one month to [Burnley home] and then back to [London home].
‘“The effect of varying the election is that [Burnley home] will receive the final three years’ main residence exemption and the gain will be completely exempt from capital gains tax provided [Burnley home] is sold before April 2007.”’
‘Bloody hell!’ Winnett spluttered. ‘She’s flipped the designation of her main home for a month just so she can avoid capital gains tax. It’s completely premeditated.’
Beckford had stumbled across one of the biggest scandals of the whole investigation. Ussher wasn’t the first MP, or even the first minister, to be accused of avoiding capital gains tax, but whereas other ministers had been able to muddy the waters by saying they had been assured they were not liable for CGT, or that the issue had never even crossed their mind, here was proof positive that a government minister – and one who worked in the Treasury, no less – had knowingly and deliberately flipped the designation of her main home specifically for the purpose of avoiding paying CGT when she sold it. Although she hadn’t broken any laws, Ussher had been guilty of what could only be described as sharp practice.
The following morning, checks with the Land Registry revealed that Ussher had sold the property in her Burnley constituency for a profit of more than £40,000. The tax flip had saved her between £9,750 and £16,800. She had also claimed for the cost of accountancy advice to fill in her personal tax return.
Beckford began to draft a formal letter to the minister, and at lunchtime he sent it.
Meanwhile, Jon Swaine had also uncovered an interesting new avenue of enquiry. He had been studying the office expenses claims of David Chaytor, the Labour MP who had made phantom mortgage claims and had already been forced to announce his resignation at the next election. He had found that Chaytor had made a series of payments to ‘consultants’ totalling thousands of pounds. On closer examination, it turned out that many of the ‘consultants’ were Labour Party activists in Chaytor’s constituency.
There was also a series of intriguing invoices for work worth almost £5,000 from a ‘Sarah Rastrick’ – whose address was the same as that used by Sarah Chaytor, the MP’s daughter. Swaine ordered a copy of Sarah Chaytor’s birth certificate from a register office in Yorkshire, where she had been born, and when it arrived by special delivery the next day his suspicions were all but confirmed – Rastrick was one of Sarah Chaytor’s middle names. She had been a graduate student in London when the payments were made.
Swaine rang Chaytor’s office, and it was Chaytor himself who answered.
‘Oh, hi,’ Swaine said, ‘it’s Jon Swaine here from the Daily Telegraph.’
On the other end of the line, there was deadly silence for a couple of seconds, before Chaytor eventually replied: ‘Hello.’
In response to Swaine’s questions, Chaytor said that his daughter was working part-time in his office. She had, he said, ‘thought to adopt a professional name for work purposes’. The arrangement looked odd, however, and Swaine began working on a story.
As Beckford waited for Ussher’s response, the bunker team was summoned into the editor’s office. It was the sixty-fifth birthday of chief lawyer Arthur Wynn Davies, who had put his retirement plans on hold indefinitely, particularly in the light of the expenses story. As the staff toasted Wynn Davies’s 32-year career on Fleet Street – and chief executive Murdoch MacLennan presented him with the traditional gold watch – Wynn Davies enthusiastically eulogized the expenses investigation.
‘I thought I’d seen it all,’ he said. ‘But I want to tell you all now that it’s been a privilege to have worked with you all on what’s been the greatest scoop in my time working in our business.’
By now it was 6 p.m., and there had still been no word from Ussher. Shortly after returning to the bunker, Beckford called her mobile phone. He could hear her two young children playing in the background as Ussher explained that she had been unable to get to her email because of her family duties. As father of a new baby himself, Beckford had some sympathy for the minister, but he stressed that the paper would be running a story about her the next day and the time for her to respond was short.
By the time another hour had passed the story had been laid out on the front page with a gap left for Ussher’s reply. But now the minister had turned off her mobile phone. Beckford scrolled through her expenses files until he found a handwritten builders’ invoice that showed her home phone number in Brixton and gave it a call. ‘How did you—?’ Ussher began, then broke off when the penny dropped. She said she had read the email and promised to send a response immediately but when Beckford called the landline again half an hour later, there was no answer. Beckford was becoming increasingly nervous that something was up. Was the minister going to try to scupper the story by denying it out of hand? Was she seeking an injunction?
‘Don’t worry,’ Winnett reassured him: ‘If she did have a reasonable explanation, she would have given us it by now.’
Head of news Chris Evans read through the story on his computer screen.
‘Are we absolutely fine with this?’ he asked Winnett.
‘Yep. The letter in her file’s crystal clear and she’s had all day to respond,’ Winnett replied. ‘We know she’s seen the email from us because Martin spoke to her.’
By 8.30 p.m. Richard Oliver was coming under pressure to send the pages to the printers. The story was written, the front page was ready, with the headline ‘The minister and the £17,000 tax dodge’, and Oliver started typing in a final paragraph saying the minister had failed to respond to the Telegraph’s requests for a comment.
Then Winnett’s BlackBerry vibrated on his desk. He picked it up and scrolled through the email he had just received.
‘Ussher’s resigned,’ he announced calmly.
‘You’re kidding,’ Beckford responded.
‘Nope. They’re going to announce it any minute.’
Beckford puffed out his cheeks in relief, then began pacing the room to get rid of the nervous energy that had been building up all afternoon as he waited for the reply. The other reporters, apart from Winnett, had left for the evening, but within minutes Ussher’s resignation statement had appeared on the Press Association newswire, and as the bunker team heard the news from radio and television reports they started calling and texting Beckford to congratulate him on his scoop.
At 8.46 p.m. Downing Street issued a formal statement announcing the resignation. The Telegraph was just minutes away from the deadline for the first edition. The headline was hastily rewritten to read: ‘Treasury minister quits over £17,000 tax dodge’. It was the perfect way to reignite the public’s interest in the expenses story on the day that Parliament prepared to release the information. And the rumour-mongers were able to say ‘told you so’ about the Telegraph having a big, agenda-setting story, though none of them knew how close they were to being wrong.
Every MP’s expenses files were due to be published on the parliamentary website at 6.30 a.m. on Thursday, 18 June. Every national newspaper had teams of reporters at their desks by that time, ready to trawl through the data. The Daily Mail had even advertised for a team of students to help them out, while the Guardian invited its readers to help look through the files and point up anything of interest they noticed. The race was on to find anything the Telegraph had missed.
The bunker team were relatively confident that they had not missed anything major, though there was a certain amount of apprehension as the day approached. Some of the best journalists in the business had, in the past, looked through books or documents which their newspapers had paid big money to set eyes on first, only to find when the material was put on general release that they had somehow missed the biggest story contained in them. The last thing any of the bunker reporters wanted was to be embarrassed by another newspaper finding a scoop buried in the expenses claims of one of the MPs they had ticked off the list weeks earlier.
As it turned out, they needn’t have worried. As the reporters filed into the bunker at 7 a.m., each logged on to the Parliament’s official website to look up the MPs they had been responsible for checking. Once they had done so, it wasn’t fear which filled the room, but laughter.
‘Every single page is almost entirely black,’ Holly Watt said. ‘They’ve made themselves look ridiculous. How could they have been so stupid!’
‘Look at this,’ said Jon Swaine, pointing at a sea of black ink on his computer screen with only a tiny letterbox-shaped rectangle of white in the middle. ‘There’s a phone bill here where they’ve blacked out everything except the total for the bill. You wouldn’t even be able to tell it was a phone bill if you saw this.’
‘They’ve taken out everything even vaguely interesting,’ Rosa Prince added, gawping at the screen. ‘We would hardly have got a single story out of this. The other papers are going to have a nightmare.’
It was abundantly clear that Parliament had learned nothing from the previous six weeks. An email from Lewis to Winnett at 7.52 a.m. summed it up: ‘Cover up!’
As the investigations team trawled through the official files, they were amazed at just how much had been removed. The Firestorm disks, which contained the provisional redactions from the documents before they had been sent to the MPs for checking, had shown carefully drawn grey boxes over addresses, suppliers’ names, bar codes, and a host of other details which had been deemed sensitive. But in the final versions great swathes of other information had been blacked out as well, leaving far more black than white on many of the pages.
Gone were the Ikea receipts submitted by the Prime Minister for his new kitchen. Nine pages from Gordon Brown’s 2004/5 file had been removed altogether. The reference to the Prime Minister’s brother, to whom he had paid £6,500 towards the cost of a cleaner whose services they shared, had also been removed, as had the correspondence which revealed his dispute with the fees office over the ‘Noah’s animals’ blind. Even the references to his claims for Sky TV, which had so enraged the TSO staff, had been expunged.
The most notorious expenses claims, including Douglas Hogg’s letter about his moat and Sir Peter Viggers’ duck island letter, had also been removed, as had Sir Gerald Kaufman’s receipt for a rug from a New York antiques centre. Michael Martin, the Speaker, had blacked out the word ‘chauffeur’ from receipts he submitted. Although the name of the firm was included, the type of business had been inexplicably removed. Even the lawnmower maintenance bill submitted by Alan Duncan, the Shadow Leader of the Commons, was severely redacted, as was David Willetts’s claim for having his light bulbs changed.
In fact, virtually none of the scams uncovered by the Telegraph would ever have come to light if there had not been a leak of the uncensored versions of the MPs’ expenses. Because all the MPs’ addresses had been removed, no one would have known about flipping, about phantom mortgages or about capital gains tax avoidance. The public would not have found out about MPs climbing the property ladder with the help of taxpayers’ money, or how, like Jacqui Smith, they had claimed their ‘second’ home was their family residence while their ‘main’ home was someone’s spare bedroom. Nor would we have been any the wiser about MPs who had given their children a helping hand by claiming for a property which was their children’s main home, or by selling them a property at a discount. And Margaret Moran’s £22,500 claim for dry rot at her house in Southampton would have seemed like essential maintenance at her constituency home.
Instead of providing newspapers with a batch of new revelations about MPs’ expenses claims, the parliamentary authorities had given them a far better story by trying to pull off one of the biggest cover-ups in history.
For the Telegraph, it could hardly have been better. Where rival newspapers could only rage about the lack of information contained in the material released on the website, the Telegraph had the advantage of being able to show exactly what had been covered up by printing, side by side, original documents and the redacted versions.
Parliament’s censorship had made a mockery of Gordon Brown’s claim on 17 May, days after the first expenses stories were printed, that ‘Transparency to the public is the foundation of properly policing this system.’ One Telegraph reader, David Wright from Worcestershire, neatly commented that ‘Gordon Brown is now so transparent I can see right through him.’
The public, predictably enough, were outraged at Parliament’s pathetic attempt to pull the wool over their eyes and MPs themselves tried to distance themselves from the decision to redact so much material. David Cameron said: ‘I think that people will be disappointed with the amount of information that is held back.’ Vince Cable, the popular deputy leader of the Lib Dems, who had nothing to hide, said: ‘The publication of the expenses in this format has only made people even more frustrated.’
As the day wore on, the blame game began. Some MPs tried to point the finger at parliamentary officials, saying they had asked for more information to be released, only for their requests to be rejected by Commons staff. Others said they were warned off publishing their own expenses in full, alleging that civil servants had told them they could face legal action under data protection legislation if they did so.
It was a farce. The following day’s Telegraph devoted the entire front page to the story. ‘Blackout: the great expenses cover-up’ was the huge headline, with much of the front page taken up by one of Gordon Brown’s phone bills, which had been so heavily censored that only his name and the amount owed were showing. Even the BT logo had been blacked out.
There was one more blunder to come on 18 June. In the afternoon, the House of Commons decided to publish a full list of all those MPs who had repaid money they had claimed on their expenses. In total, 183 MPs had repaid more than £470,000, mostly as a result of their claims being exposed in the Telegraph. The only problem was that the list was wrong. Not only did it ‘name and shame’ MPs who had not repaid any money at all, it also mysteriously included the name of someone who wasn’t even an MP (and, as far as anyone could tell, didn’t even exist). As a result the entire list had to be hastily withdrawn.
After six weeks of almost uninterrupted revelations about MPs’ expenses, which Gordon Brown later described as ‘the biggest parliamentary scandal for two centuries’, 18 June marked the moment when the biggest gamble in the Telegraph’s history was finally vindicated beyond any doubt. In the weeks that followed, other stories would take over the headlines and the MPs would finally get the chance to draw breath by taking a long holiday during the summer recess. But they did so knowing that the public would not forget the extraordinary events of the summer of 2009, and knowing also that the issue would rear up again when they had to fight for their seats at the next general election.
As David Cameron put it in a speech to members of his party:
What the Daily Telegraph did – the simple act of providing information to the public – has triggered the biggest shake-up in our political system for years.
Information alone has been more powerful than years of traditional politics. Of course it has been a painful time for politics and for individual politicians – but let us be clear, it is without question a positive development for the country.
It is information – not a new law, not some regulation – just the provision of information that has enabled people to take on the political class, question them, demand answers, and get those answers. That’s exactly as it should be.