I’m not blogging much at the moment: I’m sorry, teaching commitments are keeping me away. But I must comment on an apsect of the MPs’ expenses revelations carried by the Telegraph today.
BBC News is reporting that “the Commons authorities” have made a complaint to the police about the leak to the Telegraph. If that’s right, it must mean the Speaker has authorised getting the police involved. As readers of this blog will know, my view of the Greengate-Galleygate affair was that the real scandal was the apparent abuse of power from the Home Secretary in allowing the police to be called in; it was obvious that the leaks in that case did not merit a criminal investigation and that the police’s role was in effect to prevent embarrassment to ministers. Jacqui Smith has never answered properly for what she did.
I now think the Speaker is doing just the same thing here. It is plain that these revelations are in the public interest. It is also plain that they do not threaten national security or risk any lives. If the Speaker wants to conduct an internal investigation and discipline some Commons employee for leaking this stuff, so be it. But to treat it as criminal is as outrageous as Jacqui Smith’s behaviour over Damian Green. The only interest the Speaker is serving is politicians’ personal interest in protecting themselves from embarrassment. The police should not be abused in this way. It must be stopped.
Hear hear.
This information should never have been confidential in the first place. The lack of transparency has kept out of MPs’ minds the person who would pick up the bill for their pouffes, swimming pool boilers and horse manure: the tax-payer.
MPs and “Commons authorities” are reportedly unhappy about the way this information is emerging; worried about the Telegraph’s political game and a “corrosive” effect on the public’s trust in the political process.
All this could have been avoided had the same MPs and “Commons authorities” not fought tooth and nail to prevent and delay publication.
In my mind it is the decision to fight and then delay further publication which is chiefly responsible for degrading public trust in the expenses process.
Head of Legal – you are absolutely right here. MPs make up their own “rules” and to now seek to blame “officials” is risible.
The biggest scandal has been this “second home allowance”. Just which property is the “second home”? It seems that a second home can be in more than one place depending on what is or might be payable – e.g. capital gains tax, council tax and the like.
Who are these nameless and unaccountable ‘officials’? The Fees Office? The Speaker? Who has made the complaint to the police and by what authority?
why do you think it was in the public interest? the details were to be made public anyway! the more of these leaks there are, the more it appears a (rather nicely done) campaign to destabilise the administration. not that the labour party can complain about spin – what goes around… but how much pathetic whining was there about the ridiculous blog smears that weren’t actually sent? one complaint was that the prime minister’s handwritten apology was hard to read – bless!!! the whiter-than-white tories will have their day as well; believe it.
and the damage is done – although most of the items claimed were within the rules (very bad rules from the little i can see of them, but within them). the luton mp was defending herself by saying the expenditure on her second home in southampton was that of her partner of 20 years where she went so they could have some family life. and she had cleared it with those administering the system. seems reasonable but by the party-political leaking, the reasonable is tarred with the same brush as the dishonest which makes the honest angry and does nothing to catch the dishonest. public interest? not by my reading of the term. party-political gain? uh-huh!
if there is a campaign to discredit any party or individuals from those parties, i’m quite happy to see steps being taken to nail whoever is doing it. even if i would be chortling when the leaks were about tories.
and if we don’t like the system (and nobody does) then change it. but don’t demonise those who genuinely worked within the system. don’t just call a witch-hunt and don’t disregard the need for evidence rather than a chinese whisper of rumours and punish the innocent with the guilty. maybe there are some lawyers reading who recognise this principle. or are we all too busy reading the daily telegraph? roll on the defamation actions!
Unsworth, it was the Speaker who authorised going to the police, in the same way Jacqui Smith did over Greengate. Guido has published the evidence. Neither Smith nor Martin called in the police themselves, in the sense of making a phone call. But the police would not be called in without their approval. Actually, you don’t need any evidence to know this. It’s obvious civil servants don’t do things like call in the police where this is against ministers’ wishes, and much he same must be true in the Commons, where the Speaker is the boss.
Simply: you take my breath away by suggesting the leak isn’t in the public interest. This is the clearest example of a leak in the public interest I think I have ever seen. I completely agree with Anon. above that the very worst aspect of this scandal is the long-running rearguard action by the Speaker and MPs to keep it covered up. That attempt continues even now with the outrageous involvement of the police.
They were going to release redacted information in July, blanking out addresses, I understand: the pretext for this was “security”, but of course the side-effect would have been to hide “flipping” and the locations of “second homes” such as Margaret Moran’s in Southampton, nowhere near her consituency, let alone London.
It’s quite right to have bust through the continuing cover-up in this way. No jury will convict whoever leaked the disks, and no further public money should be wasted in an abusive police investigation.
I am wondering if charges could be brought against MPs under the Fraud Act?
my comment was entirely on the basis that the information was about to be released officially and in full. if not i will be round in ten minutes – warm up the humble pie for me and find a very big fork!
You’re welcome to bring your own pie round, Simply. I don’t generally keep a supply in…
Honestly, I think they were planning to release an edited version, not including addresses. That’s why this leak is so justified.
You finally realise the full scale of this scandal when the penny drops that at every stage they’ve been trying to cover up for themselves.
Look at the article from last year, and tell me if it’s a coincidence which ministers supported it:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1552018/Freedom-of-Information-vote-places-MPs-above-law.html
Sorry, here’s a proper link to that article.
And here’s the Telegraph explaining that July’s version was going to be edited.
and to which charity has the public-spirited leaker donated his alleged 40,000 fee from the torygraph?
as ever, we are being played.
I don’t understand, Simply. We don’t know anyone’s been paid. But assuming they have been, it’s not taxpayers’ money, it’s the Telegraph’s, and you don’t need to buy the Telegraph if you don’t want to. You don’t even need to buy it to follow this story, it’s all free online. So the leaker certainly isn’t “playing” or “milking” us.
I don’t resent the money at all, to be honest. The July release was going to be conveniently redacted, as the final stage of the ongoing rearguard action to keep this all covered up. The person who leaked has risked their career and, we now know, a criminal record, in order to make sure you know about Geoff Hoon’s, Hazel Blears’s and other MPs’ “flipping”. The July redaction would probably have obscured that, and I think the person who’s ensured it isn’t obscured, at considerable personal risk, is probably entitled to more than £40k.
Are you seriously saying you think it’d be right for us not to know about “flipping”? Or that the leaker’s behaviour is in any way morally equivalent to “flipping”?
no carl, i am not saying we shouldn’t know about flipping or anything else and while my comments are always flippant and frequently cryptic, i think you would have to read them pretty awry to get that. and i know you are capable of better textual analysis than that.
but to attempt to be clear:
i think we should hear about everything.
i think we should hear about it all in an organised manner.
i think it should be investigated by people who are vaguely sensible and unbiased (the matter of who appoints them is another question of course) if any of those exist.
i don’t think there should be the usual trial by media on partial information leaked by god knows who for god knows what reason to a tory newspaper whose agenda we know all too well. the senseless bleating that ‘something must done’ invariably precedes doing something very badly. if nothing else, the last two administrations should be proof of that.
flipping may or may not be within the rules (who knows?) though it sounds like i would want it to be outside them.
i do not believe all the cheats are labour and i want to know why we are (until today) hearing allegations only against them.
i believe the wholesale leaking against those who may well not be guilty of anything is prejudicial to them, destabilising to government, encourages yet more voter apathy and is not a true reflection of the behaviour of mps. the more we are whipped up into an indiscriminate (self-)righteous frenzy, the more we abandon thinking for ourselves and join the baying mob, the less chance we have of sorting out the real abuses that exist.
i want those guilty to be punished in accordance with law and those innocent to be vindicated. i want those who have merely followed the guidelines to be allowed to look a bit tawdry and cheap but not to be punished if they have done nothing against the rules.
i want the rules changed to something sensible.
i don’t understand why revealing addresses is necessary re flipping – locations and change of property is surely sufficient for the case to be proved either way.
i want things tried in the proper forum.
i don’t want a precedent where public servants can suddenly devlop a ‘conscience’ when there is a party political gain or a wad of money to prompt it. (the payment story was in the observer this weekend. it may or may not be true but it seems the public-spirited public servant tried hawking it to the times who didn’t open the chequebook and then the torygraph bid the requisite amount. i am not condemning the leaker on this but it might also be good for openness if we hear who this person was and what they did; they could also put their case.)
i know it won’t happen but at least i trust i am now being clear.
i also take it the people who complain have never taken a paper clip from work or given themselves the benfit of the doubt with an expenses claim or taken a day off work ‘sick’ (because that is stealing too chaps).
no news is free – websites make money as well. if not, would commercial concerns like newspapers have them? an interesting example of a story being spun was the account that the person supposed to scrutinise mp’s expenses was bullied into shutting up – poor chap – then they added rather confusingly that the person has ‘no formal accountancy qualification’ and earns 120K… do we see where they are coming from on that?
and who benefits from this baying??? maybe we should light the bonfire for the peedos and immigrunts while we are at it.
calm down dear – it’s a tiny percentage of the money pissed away by one bank. let’s look at the facts and sort it out.
Dear Carl,
Whilst I have some sympathy with your analysis I think that the Damian Green affair and the expenses leeks are different in terms of their political context. The former was relatively localised to the executive the latter is of far broader import affecting the ability of Parliament to function and perhaps more importantly the authority of Parliament in the eyes of the UK population. This is important because this story has grown up against a background of corruption and incompetence that originated in the private sector and, at a time when Parliament should be at its most effective ensuring that the damage done to the economy is repaired and that the financial markets are properly regulated we are instead embroiled in a story about the public finances and the competence of MPs to regulate their own affairs honestly. The difference in terms of scale is marked, the banking crisis costing billions whereas the expenses issue, whilst not insignificant, amounts to a few million at most. The levels of dishonesty involved are probably comparable but the difference is that the public body is accountable whilst the private sector – underwritten by the tax payer – is starting to post increased profits and returning to pre-crunch levels of unearned remuneration. The private sector is also adept at avoiding paying taxes on its unearned wealth and so arguably has as much public finance interest as the expenses affair.
As such, I think it’s fair to ask “why this story now?”. Do you think that it’s coincidence that it’s the Telegraph and the Mail & Express with their business links that are leading the charge on this?
I have to admit that the above does sound as though it should be prefaced with the phrase “I don’t believe in conspiracy theories but..”, however I think that anything, including a police investigation, into how this story arose and the shadowy links between big money, journalism and politics would be welcome although I admit that any investigation is likely to concentrate on a poor-low level leaker and do little to enlighten us.
Regards
R
Simply,
Unless the Telegraph present the leaked info in a misleading way, I don’t see that there is a problem.
Better out than in.
do the media present anything in a way that is other than misleading???