ALMOST A YEAR after the start of the Daily Telegraph’s expenses investigation, it has brought about major changes in Parliament and altered forever the relationship between the governed and governing classes.
The 2010 general election will be remembered as the poll which led to the biggest clear out of incumbent MPs ever seen.
The new intake of MPs, from every political party, will have to re-establish the trust of the British public in the political class. Establishing MPs’ worth and accountability will be a long and arduous process following the behaviour exposed in 2009.
The secretive ways of the House of Commons will have to be opened up to scrutiny in a new age of transparency. The gentleman’s club aura of the hallowed buildings has been laid to rest as a result of the expenses scandal.
MPs were left in no doubt by the reaction to their behaviour that they are the servants of the people rather than a self-serving political elite which deigns to go to the country every four or five years.
The system of MPs expenses has already been reformed under duress from the voters. It is important that there is no back-sliding from the reforms and no chipping away at the new standards now falling into place which will prevent many of the previous abuses emerging and flourishing again.
Yet there have been worrying signs that MPs have not, so far, learned the art of humility in the face of the public backlash over their expenses. As the Telegraph said in June 2009 there is ample evidence that MPs still don’t get it.
The resignation of Michael Martin as Speaker gave Parliament the chance to show that MPs of every party could put their tribal differences aside by choosing a candidate behind whom the entire House could unite. However, the more respected Parliamentarians – such as Frank Field, Sir George Young and Ann Widdecombe – were quickly passed over.
Instead, Labour used its parliamentary majority to elect John Bercow, not because he was whiter than white (he wasn’t, having flipped his homes and avoided capital gains tax), not because he was universally popular (he was quite the reverse) but because Labour knew that installing John Bercow would infuriate the Tories who saw him as untrustworthy and suspected him of being a closet turncoat.
Unable to justify electing a third successive Labour Speaker (when tradition dictated they should alternate between parties) Labour MPs thought it a terrific wheeze to choose a Tory who was hated by his own party. In doing so, they dragged politics down to the level of the school playground and lowered themselves still further in the public’s estimation.
A survey of MPs carried out in August 2009 by the polling company BPRI also suggested that politicians have yet to accept responsibility for the expenses scandal. Asked who was most to blame for the erosion of the reputation of MPs, sixty-four per cent of them replied the press, while twenty per cent blamed the fees office. Only half said MPs themselves were to blame.
However, there are also encouraging signs that political parties are willing to change the way they do business. In August 2009, for example, the Conservatives experimented with a new way of selecting parliamentary candidates. Needing to find a replacement for Anthony ‘you’re-all-jealous’ Steen when he steps down from his Totnes constituency, the Tories held a US-style primary, asking voters from all parties to choose a Conservative candidate who will go forward to fight the next election, rather than simply choosing a candidate from an internal short list. The winner, a local GP called Sarah Wollaston, beat two other candidates who, as local councillors, had previous experience of politics. By choosing a non-politician to fight for a parliamentary seat, the people of Totnes were reflecting a growing public desire to be represented by real people rather than political hacks. Similar contests have now been held to select Conservative candidates in several other seats and people from different walks of life who will add to the quality of political debate have been selected.
One undeniable achievement of the expenses story was that it got people talking about politics like never before, at a time when fewer and fewer people were engaging with the political process by using their right to vote.
As for the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph, the expenses investigation led the front page of both titles for thirty-five consecutive days, an unprecedented record for a peacetime story. The success of the investigation, which helped to redefine the Telegraph titles in the eyes of the public, as well as selling more than a million extra newspapers, has led to something of a renaissance for investigative journalism, with newspaper editors more willing than at any time in the last decade to give their reporters the time and the resources to conduct complex research.
It also proved that news can still sell newspapers as well as drive online traffic. It was a brave decision to go with a story others in Fleet Street decided was too risky, but the decision was rewarded commercially and journalistically. The unique multi-media mixture of the story – combining paper, web and television – also demonstrated how big scoops are likely to be handled in the twenty-first century.
The ultimate praise for the Telegraph’s story came from rival journalists, many of whom privately told colleagues at the Telegraph that they didn’t think their own newspapers would have been so even-handed, or prepared to cover every single MP, if they had got the disk. The traditional broadsheet format came into its own when displaying the questionable claims made by MPs. Industry experts described it as a triumph for design as well as journalism.
But what became of the moles who put their jobs on the line by leaking the material in the first place?
Throughout the Telegraph’s investigation, no-one at the newspaper knew for certain where the leak had come from, or who had given the disk to John Wick.
It was only in early August 2009 that the authors of this book finally knew the source of the leak, and met one of those who had worked there and been involved in passing the disk to Wick.
The material in chapters two and three is based on interviews with the mole, who spoke to us on condition of anonymity and was pursued for months by the Parliamentary authorities.
So had it been worth it?
‘I’m bloody glad we did it’, he told us. ‘There’s no two ways about it. We saw what was happening, we saw that information, and you just couldn’t keep that from people.
‘Everyone in that room was of the same mind: this was our money and these were our employees, effectively, but no-one could hold them to account. Pretty much everyone working in that room was being paid a pittance to do their job. Meanwhile the MPs were being well paid and claiming a fortune on their expenses, yet what have they done for us in the last ten years?
‘The people who were working on redacting the MPs’ expenses were people who are proud to be British, and they were saddened by what they saw.
‘Now that the Daily Telegraph has put this in the public domain, it has to bring about reform. That was why we leaked the information, because the British public deserves better.’