Telegraphed

Yesterday, it was my turn. 

At 10.13 am, I received an e-mail from the Daily Telegraph, which began, portentously:

Dear David Jones,

The Daily Telegraph is investigating the expense claims made by MPs under the Parliamentary additional costs allowance system since the 2004/05 financial year. (As if I hadn’t noticed.)

We are considering publishing an article in tomorrow’s newspaper (20^th June 2009) which will contain details of your expense claims.

We are aware of the provisions of the statutory instrument passed by Parliament last July and will therefore not be publishing members’ addresses or any other details which could compromise security.

However, as a matter of legitimate public interest and concern, we intend to publish the following details about your expense claims under the Additional Costs Allowance and Incidental Expenses Provision. We would invite you to respond to the following points.

The e-mail continued to outline two substantive allegations, the first of which was untrue and would, if published, have been defamatory.  The second was so ludicrous as to be laughable; I’ll let you in on that one a bit later.

The e-mail concluded, almost chattily:

Please could we receive your comments by 5pm today so that they can be given due weight in our inquiries and properly reflected in any article we decide to publish. Please could you also inform us if you do not wish to comment.

Many thanks for your time and I look forward to hearing from you shortly. I can be contacted on 07*** ****** or ******@telegraph.co.uk.

I composed a suitable reply.  That took some time.  I wanted to make it absolutely clear that the first allegation was wholly false.  I explained that I regarded the matter as very serious and that I was “reserving my position”, which is a useful turn of phrase understood by lawyers and journalists alike.  I sent the reply at 1.04 pm and said that I would be available to speak to the journalist that afternoon.

At 3.55 pm, having had no acknowledgment of my e-mail, I telephoned the journalist and asked him to confirm that he had received it.  He apologised, said that he should have got back to me, and confirmed that the Telegraph would not be publishing the allegations.

It would have been nice if he could have phoned me to say so, rather than wait for me to call.

And the second allegation?  Well, it ran as follows:

Using your office expenses, you spent £9.79 on a Welsh dictionary. Please could you explain in what way you felt this was an appropriate use of public money, and why it was necessary given that you have lived in Wales most of your life.

To which I replied:

I represent a Welsh-speaking constituency and I frequently deal with correspondence in the Welsh language.  My constituents are entitled to correspond with me in whichever language they prefer and I encourage them to do so.

Although I do speak Welsh, it is not with such fluency that I am able to deal with correspondence that is often of a technical nature without the assistance of a Welsh – English dictionary.  I use the dictionary regularly and exclusively for my constituency work.  In fact, I find it hard to see how anyone with any knowledge of Wales could not understand that a Welsh – English dictionary is an essential tool for correspondence in Welsh.

I thought I’d share that one with you.