ANALYSIS:A paper that had not knowingly published an agenda-setting story for years has seen its profile soar on the back of revelations of MPs fiddling their expenses, writes ROY GREENSLADE.
JOURNALISTS ARE overly tempted to use hyperbole. But the newspaper story that has been gripping Britain for the past month – the scandal of MPs’ expenses – merits overstatement. It is truly unprecedented, exceptional and incomparable.
It is without parallel in my 45-year career, an extraordinary story in so many ways. Its political effects have been devastating, wrecking the electoral chances of the government and forcing the resignations of the House of Commons speaker, several ministers and even more MPs.
It has also brought parliament itself into disrepute.
Its longevity is unique. It has run continuously for 27 days, with new facts emerging on a daily basis, thereby breaking all records for a single story. Nor is the drip-drip-drip of toxic revelations showing any signs of drying up any time soon.
It has reversed the fortunes and status of the Daily Telegraph, a newspaper that had looked to be heading towards the dustbin of newspaper history.
It had not knowingly published an agenda-setting exclusive story of any worth for years. Aside from ramping up sales, it has lifted the paper’s profile to unmatched heights.
Most importantly of all, the tales of Westminster fiddling and finagling have caught the imagination of the public like no other political story in my lifetime.
Everyone is talking about it. Everyone has a view and it’s fair to say that the overwhelming majority are angry.
In the last three editions of the BBC's Question Time(its equivalent of RTÉ's Questions and Answers), MPs who are noted for their ability to dissemble and bluster have been howled down by audiences often incoherent with rage.
Radio talk-ins are dominated by the subject. People line up in high streets to take part in vox pops on television and current affairs news programmes. They all want to register their fury, to show that they no longer trust either politicians or “the system”.
One of the major reasons for the public’s having been antagonised is the knowledge that MPs strove for years to conceal what they were paid over and above their salaries.
They did all in their power to frustrate journalists, led by a feisty freelance called Heather Brooke, who tried to use the freedom of information act to discover details of their expenses. She began her quest for transparency almost five years ago and soon found that all her requests were refused.
In the course of her inquiries, and those of two other journalists, she began to realise the crucial importance of a little known parliamentary institution known as the fees office. It soon became clear that the bureaucrats in that office were virtually allowing MPs to write their own cheques.
As Brooke inched towards victory in her campaign, the House of Commons speaker, Michael Martin, took legal action to prevent the publication of expenses. The high court judges found in Brooke’s favour in May last year, ruling that disclosure was in the public interest.
The Commons then announced all MPs’ receipts would be published in October 2008. They were not. Then they promised to do so in December. Again, they did not.
After more pressure, the Commons set a new date: July 2009. They wanted more time in order to redact (an arcane euphemism meaning delete) certain details, most notably the addresses of their second homes.
Clearly, that decision made someone within the Westminster bureaucracy just as upset as Brooke and, at this point, the story gets murky. That person, whose identity we may never know, either removed or copied CD disks containing the expenses receipts of all 646 MPs.
The disks found their way mysteriously to John Wick, a former SAS officer who now heads a corporate intelligence company. He then hawked them around Fleet Street, initially asking for £300,000.
Rebuffed by the Timesand the Sun, he approached the Daily Telegraph. Its journalists were quick to seize on the import of the information, though they also realised that the raw data would only be the beginning.
Much digging, delving and checking would be required to turn the gold nuggets into polished articles.
The paper agreed to pay a sum of money, which it has refused to disclose. My best guess, based on a conversation with a valued Telegraphsource, is that it was about £75,000. Whatever was paid, there cannot be any doubt that, in commercial terms, its chequebook journalism has been worthwhile for the paper. It has benefited from priceless publicity. It initially added 90,000 copies, boosting its sale to 900,000 a day, and it is thought to have retained 50,000 extra sales ever since.
I would also defend the paper’s journalistic ethics. It was not paying for an interview or an individual’s story, which might well be coloured by payment, but to obtain documents. They could not be tainted by money.
Nor should we pay much heed to the complaints of MPs who say that they were about to allow publication. They had broken their word before. Anyway, if the receipts had been censored as they wished, journalists would not have been able to expose two of the greatest examples of wrongdoing: the “flipping” of second homes in order to ramp up furnishing expenses or avoid capital gains tax, and the phenomenon of claiming mortgage repayments on houses that were already sold.
It is even possible that some of the most extraordinary excesses – such as the cleaning of a moat, the purchase of a “duck island”, the tennis court repairs – would never have come to light.
So the Telegraphhas a straightforward public interest defence for paying for the information. There has been almost no criticism of the paper's actions from even the most censorious of commentators.
Of course, it has milked its scoop for all it's worth, keeping not only MPs on tenterhooks but rival newspapers too, not least the embarrassed Times.
I interviewed several lobby correspondents a week ago who told me how they have to sit around until 10pm every night, waiting for the first edition of the Telegraph to drop in order to follow up the latest set of stories.
“It is very frustrating,” said one, before joking: “We’re just playing second fiddle.”
Without exception, however, they all admire what the Telegraphhas done. So does the public. But what happens next? The results of tomorrow's European and local elections will be the most interesting in many years.
Roy Greenslade is professor of journalism at City University London
