The leaks to the press of the purported details of Sir Christopher Kelly’s report are generating a mild degree of interest in Westminster, although it remains to be seen how accurate they are.
Good to see, however, that MPs’ sense of humour hasn’t been completely dulled by the revelations.
Last night, a whip was chivvying Members through the Aye lobby on the evening’s last vote.
“Come on,” he chided. “Haven’t you any homes to go to?”
“We won’t have soon,” came the dry, unattributable reply.
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 (20th 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.
The Public Accounts Committee has criticised the BBC for refusing to supply the National Audit Office (NAO) with particulars of salaries paid to presenters.
Edward Leigh, the Committee’s chairman, has called on the Government, in particularly forthright terms, to do whatever is necessary to ensure that the NAO has access to details of the publicly-funded salaries:
“It is disgraceful that the NAO’s lack of statutory audit access to the BBC puts the corporation in the position to dictate what the spending watchdog can and cannot see.”
According to the BBC’s media correspondent, Torin Douglas:
The Corporation’s governing body, the BBC Trust, says staff have a right to privacy under the Data Protection Act, balanced against the public’s right to know how public money is spent.
I seem to recall a similar argument being deployed recently in another context. It wasn’t entirely successful, as it turned out.
An absolutely beautiful day, baking hot; a foretaste of what the Telegraph (yes, I still read it) promises is going to be a “barbecue summer”. I hope so. The last two were washouts and we all need our vitamin D.
The Whitsun recess began only just over a week ago. In many ways, things have stayed very much the same. Today’s Abergele surgery was a fairly typical mix of housing and traffic, leavened with a string of constituents livid, and with good reason, over council plans to construct a wholly unnecessary relief road. A few did touch on expenses, saying they were becoming sick of the story and wanted a general election. Apart from that, it was bread and butter; business as usual.
And yet, so much has changed. The parade of tumbrels has continued in the pages of the Telegraph, pursued closely by its doubtless seething competitors. How many of them, I wonder, are now kicking themselves that they didn’t stump up whatever was asked for the notorious DVD?
The casualties of the investigation grow daily in number; as I write, thirteen MPs, including the Speaker, have announced that they will be standing down. How many more will follow suit in the days to come?
Few have come out of this episode well, though David Cameron’s resolute actions have apparently gained approval. Gordon Brown, however, has no comfort whatever to take from the events of the last three weeks. He maintains a stubbornly low profile, doing no media at all. Iain Martin even speculates as to whether the Prime Minister is still alive.
Tomorrow, it is back to London on the gratifyingly fast new Virgin afternoon service. And then a few days’ wait until the Euro and local elections, which those who understand these things tell us will be dire for Labour.
What then? Will one or more cabinet members finally decide that the game is no longer worth the candle and tell Brown he really has to go? Or will everybody bottle it, sit on their hands and allow the whole ghastly, depressing charade to continue for another twelve months, while the economy declines, the nation drifts and the electorate seethes?
Today, the Telegraph (which I do intend to continue reading) publishes a leader of sound common sense. Don’t vote UKIP, it says; it is a wasted vote. Don’t, even worse, vote BNP; it is a profoundly anti-Christian party, a negation of everything our parents and grandparents fought against.
And yes, I have got a vested interest, I know; but I believe that everyone who wants to see an early end to this profoundly horrible, dispiriting period in our national life should vote Conservative.
If the Tory vote is strong and the Labour vote collapses, it may, just may, persuade even this disturbed, self-deluding Prime Minister to acknowledge at last that the game is up, that the country is disgusted, and that the only way he can hope to salvage an ounce of respect from his fellow-citizens is to call an immediate general election.
A measured, almost Cantuarian, leader in today’s Independent, entitled “The pursuit of MPs is becoming a witch-hunt”.
The following gives a flavour of the article:
No one disputes that The Daily Telegraph had a marvellous story on its hands when it acquired details of every expense claim made by MPs going back four years. And the newspaper had every right to expose questionable conduct from our parliamentarians. Our democracy functions best when our politicians are kept under close scrutiny by the media. Yet the manner in which this newspaper has been delivering these revelations, day after day, is in danger of doing more harm than good to our body politic.
I am sure that this cannot be the same Independent that sent the following e-mail to MPs last Thursday:
PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL
The Independent on Sunday is preparing continued extensive coverage of the MPs’ allowances and expenses issue, for publication this week.
You will be aware that some details of expenses details claimed over the past four years have been revealed by the Daily Telegraph in recent weeks.
However, rather than rely on that newspaper for information on MPs’ claims, we are compiling our own details of expenses and allowances claimed over the past four years.
In the interests of balance, we would be grateful if you could provide full details of your claims during this period, or indicate where the information is already available – for example, in a local newspaper. Do you believe the expenditure detailed within them is reasonable, and that you represent good value for money for taxpayers? Are you satisfied that you can justify every item included in your claims? Please specify, in the light of current concerns, any items you now consider to be questionable.
Yesterday, I gave the Daily Post access to all my expenses files for the last four years.
Their report may be found here.
Apart from the joky headline (which is pretty gentle, anyway), I can’t complain about the way they’ve dealt with it.
When Sir Patrick Cormack rises to make a point of order, the House takes notice.
Today, on his 70th birthday, he felt constrained to do so:
Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire) (Con): Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. The times that we are living in are unprecedented, as far as Parliament is concerned. What is at stake is the institution of Parliament and its integrity. May I just say that I very much hope that you will take account of the fact that profound concern is voiced in the motion that is to go down tomorrow? May I ask you to bear in mind that the condition of the House today is rather like the condition of the country at the time of the Norway debate, and could you reflect on that?
The Norway debate is well known to Parliamentarians as the debate that saw off Neville Chamberlain. It is famous for Leo Amery’s quotation of Oliver Cromwell:
You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!
Coming, as it did, from arguably the most respected member of the House, Cormack’s intervention was the Parliamentary equivalent of an Exocet. Its damage to the Speaker remains to be assessed.
The Speaker’s statement has not, I fear, settled the issue. His announcement that he will confer with the party leaders over the next 48 hours, with a view to discussing reforms to the expenses system was, to use an over-employed cliché that is for once the only way of putting it, much too little and far too late.
I have spent most of today on the telephone, speaking to constituents. By and large, they were people who would not normally bother their MP, but they were both seriously angry at the conduct displayed by certain Members and seriously concerned about the constitutional health of their country. They want it put right. Put simply, they want a decent Parliament.
The Speaker this afternoon tried to contend that Douglas Carswell’s motion of no confidence, which was tabled earlier today, was merely an EDM, i.e. a motion not to be debated. That caused real anger within the House. He then backtracked and conceded that it could be debated, but only at a time of the Government’s choosing.
This means that the ball is back in Gordon Brown’s court. He will have to decide whether to allow Parliamentary time for the motion to be debated. This is one decision he cannot funk; even he, surely, must be aware of the anger both within and outside Parliament.
But this is a wholly poisonous state of affairs. In reality, even if the Speaker goes, it will be almost impossible for the people’s confidence in Parliament to be restored in the twelve months that remain of its constitutional span.
The only way to begin to address this foul, appalling mess is to defer to the will of the British electorate. They have been affronted and they have been let down; they now deserve to be heard and to deliver their judgment.
The Prime Minister, in all honour, must call a general election without delay.
