No Expenses Spared
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Brown said: ‘People want to know that the system in future will be different. It will be open. It will be transparent. It will be fair. It will not be managed by MPs themselves but by an independent body that will take responsibility for it.
‘That is why it is right to refer the Kelly report for action and implementation, not by ourselves, but by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. That is the recommendation of the Kelly report and that is what we should do.’
Cameron also said it was important that the Kelly recommendations were accepted in full.
‘By accepting this report, today should mark an important day, a day when we say that from now and into the future, MPs should not vote on our pay, our expenses, our pensions, our terms of service, our resettlement, or our expenses packages.
‘Isn’t that an essential part of restoring faith in Parliament, in politics and in this House of Commons, that all of us care about?’
Nick Clegg added: ‘After a shameful year for this Parliament I agree that Sir Christopher Kelly’s report finally gives us the opportunity to start restoring people’s trust in the work of MPs here, and that is why it must be implemented in full without any further delay.’
Sir Christopher ended with a warning. He said: ‘There is a risk that, as the impact of the revulsion caused by the Daily Telegraph’s revelations fades with time, some may be thinking of distancing themselves from their earlier expressed determination to implement our report in full. If so, that would, in my view, be an error. The damage that has been done by what has been revealed about past malpractice and about the culture that goes with it has been very considerable.
‘I don’t believe the trust in those who govern us will be restored unless those in authority show leadership and determination in putting the abuses of the past behind them, however uncomfortable that may be.’
As 2010 began, the expenses saga still hung over Parliament, with the twin threats from the Legg report and the police investigation still to be played out.
To the dismay of those MPs who had hoped the Legg report would be delayed until after the election, Sir Thomas announced that he would publish his findings in the first week of February.
Across 240 pages, the former mandarin detailed how he had ordered 390 MPs to repay just over £1.3 million. The biggest single repayment ordered was almost £65,000.
For the first time, the public was given a completely independent verdict on how MPs had behaved. The fact that well over half of MPs were deemed to have broken the rules was a fresh shock to an electorate which had, no doubt, been hoping that the scale of the MPs’ greed had been exaggerated by the media.
If anything, Sir Thomas’s verdict was even more damning than anything which had gone before.
‘The saga of MPs’ expenses and freedom of information has been traumatic and painful’, Sir Thomas said. ‘Public confidence has been damaged, and the scars will no doubt take time to heal.
‘But there is a positive side. In responding, our national institutions, including a free press, an independent judiciary and – in the end – the executive government, political parties and above all the House of Commons itself, are showing that, when things do go wrong, we have together the will and the means to put matters right, heal and reform the systems and the culture, and move forward.’
Sir Thomas, however, proved to be simply the warm-up act for a far bigger bombshell which would be dropped the following day.
On 5 February Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, made a live televized announcement to disclose the Crown Prosecution Services decision in the cases of the three MPs and three Lords whose cases had been referred on by the police.
The decision had been an impeccably guarded secret; no newspapers or media organizations had received leaked information about whether anyone would be charged, so the Telegraph newsroom stood in silence to hear what he had to say.
Starmer’s words drew gasps from the watching reporters; all three MPs were to be charged with multiple criminal offences. Lord Hanningfield would also face prosecution.
He said: ‘In four cases, we have concluded that there is sufficient evidence to bring criminal charges and that it is in the public interest to charge the individuals concerned. Accordingly, summonses in these cases have been obtained from the City of Westminster Magistrates Court and will now be served on the individuals in question.’
All four were to be charged with false accounting under section seventeen of the Theft Act 1968, which carries a maximum sentence of seven years’ imprisonment.
Elliot Morley was accused of making mortgage claims of £30,000 ‘in excess of that to which he was entitled’ and, for part of the period, when ‘there was no longer a mortgage on that property’.
Chaytor was accused of ‘dishonestly claiming’ £1,950 for IT services and also claiming sums of £12,925 and £5,425 relating to rent on properties which he and his mother allegedly owned.
Devine was accused of ‘dishonestly claiming’ money for cleaning services and for stationery, using false invoices, and Lord Hanningfield was accused of dishonestly claiming ‘for expenses to which he knew he was not entitled’.
All four said they would deny the allegations when they made their first court appearance on 11 March.
No date has yet been set for the men’s trials, but a year after the Telegraph’s expenses investigation first began, the most dramatic twist in the tale may be yet to come.
Epilogue
March 2010
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 pu
blic’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.’
Appendix: The Expenses Files
TOP TEN MOST NOTORIOUS CLAIMS
1. Elliot Morley (Lab, Scunthorpe)
Elliot Morley claimed more than £16,000 for a mortgage which had been paid off.
2. David Chaytor (Lab, Bury North)
David Chaytor was another MP who stands accused of improperly claiming expenses for a property he owned outright, receiving almost £13,000 in all.
3. Jim Devine (Lab, Livingston)
Jim Devine is suspected of submitting false invoices to claim £3,240 for cleaning services and £5,505 for stationery.
4. Douglas Hogg (Con, Sleaford and North Hykeham)
Douglas Hogg infamously included the £2,115 cost of having his moat cleared in his expenses. The MP had come to a special arrangement with the fees office under which he provided a list of the costs of running his estate, which were greatly in excess of the maximum second home allowance, and he was paid one twelfth of the maximum each month. The ten-page costs letter included the moat, piano tuning, £18,000 a year for a full-time gardener, £671 for a mole-catcher and around £200 a year for maintenance of an Aga oven.
5. Margaret Moran (Lab, Luton South)
Margaret Moran renovated three properties at the taxpayers’ expense – including a £22,500 course of dry rot treatment at a seaside house a hundred miles from her constituency – by repeatedly ‘flipping’ her second home designation.
6. Julie Kirkbride (Con, Bromsgrove)
and Andrew MacKay (Con, Bracknell)
As married MPs, Andrew MacKay and Julie Kirkbride were both entitled to claim additional costs allowance. However, the couple chose to designate different properties as their second homes. In 2007–08 Mr MacKay claimed £11,968 on a flat in Westminster. During the same period his wife claimed £13,377 on a flat in her constituency.
7. Ben Chapman (Lab, Wirral South)
Ben Chapman claimed about £15,000 of expenses for interest on part of his mortgage he had already repaid – but unlike other claimants for ‘phantom mortgages’ – he did so with permission from an official in the Commons fees office. He had complained that ‘by paying off capital I am forgoing interest and investment opportunities elsewhere’.
8. Sir Peter Viggers (Con, Gosport)
Sir Peter became famous for trying to make perhaps the most ridiculous claim of all – that of £1,645 for a floating house for ducks on his pond. The ‘Stockholm’ duck house was based on the design of an eighteenth century building in Sweden and was almost 5ft tall. Sir Peter’s claim was rejected by the fees office. He had however been paid more than £30,000 of taxpayers’ money over a three-year period for ‘gardening’, including the cost of twenty-eight tons of manure.
9. Shahid Malik (Lab, Dewsbury)
The former justice minister has claimed the maximum available in second home expenses for his house in South London, despite having quite a modest mortgage. He owns his ‘second’ home in London, but rents his ‘main’ home in his constituency.
10. Bill Wiggin (Con, Leominster)
The opposition whip had formerly designated his second home as a house in Fulham, West London, worth at least £900,000. In April 2004 he and his wife spent £480,000 on a constituency property near Ledbury, Herefordshire. He changed his second home designation to the new property and began claiming mortgage interest payments totalling £11,514. But the couple owned the property outright. In December 2007 the fees office asked him about his living arrangements and he was allowed to change his second home designation back to his London house ‘retrospectively’.
&nbs
p; SOME OF THE MORE LUDICROUS CLAIMS
Peter Ainsworth (Con, Surrey East)
Peter Ainsworth’s claim for a £957 ‘pewter finish’ radiator cover was rejected by the fees office.
Mark Hoban (Con, Fareham)
£35 on a toilet-roll holder, £100 for a shower rack, £79 for four silk cushions and £18 for a lavatory brush. He said: ‘At the time, I believed these claims were within the spirit of the rules’.
David Jones (Con, Clwyd West)
£119 for a Corby trouser press.
Sir Gerald Kaufman (Lab, Manchester Gorton)
Claimed £8,865 for a Bang & Olufsen television. The claim was rejected, but the fees office did pay him £750 – the maximum allowable for a television under the second homes allowance.
George Howarth (Lab, Knowsley North and Sefton East)
Tried to claim £999 for a chest of drawers in his second home, telling the fees office that it was the only one that ‘matched’ the rest of his furniture.
David Wilshire (Con, Spelthorne)
Claimed a total of £6,000 towards redecorating his second home at some point in the future. He arranged to claim £66.66 a month for the ‘share of renewal of carpets/curtains every ten years’.
Rosie Winterton (Lab, Doncaster Central)
Tried to claim for ‘soundproofing’ the bedroom of her London home. The £890 bill was rejected by the fees office.
Mike Penning (Con, Hemel Hempstead)
Claimed £2.99 for a stainless steel dog bowl. He told the Daily Telegraph: ‘This was claimed for mistakenly, for which I apologize sincerely and will pay back.’
Natascha Engel (Lab, Derbyshire North East)
Claimed £117.50 for ten copies of a DVD of her maiden speech to Parliament. She has since said she will pay the money back.
Fraser Kemp (Lab, Houghton & Washington East)
Claimed for sixteen bed sheets in less than two months.