The Disk: the real story of MPs' Expenses - Full Film

[Music] Jack Straw claimed of food council tax on his second home it's all been laid there in the last couple of weeks slipping your address as an extravagance to faff the Conservative MP absolutely outrageous not a good morning for the government's two years as completely unacceptable James Pannell is accused in The Telegraph today of avoiding the payment a capital gains match according to the Telegraph they know they are next it's a lot of claims for guessed it 249 16,000 pounds for installing a wet room people are extremely angry across the political spectrum all MPs appear to be in it for themselves we're just normal people and we pay every day out of our salaries to go to work for a fuel for a train we pay for a lunch yeah we pay for everything under the summaries mortgages everything and now we're actually looking at a group of people that effectively we employ and they're taking everything and their wages to state and the mood became I would say angry we're paying for you and you're taking it twice the probably deserves to know what was going [Music] [Applause] [Music] good morning and welcome more awful stories of MPs expenses Dodgers today would you like to have a look at the expenses of every single MP the expense of scandal just keeps on going they're absolutely sensational stories we knew instantly it was going to be almost like a demolition this was the biggest political scandal since Profumo if they're a disgrace we'd be crucified after his eyes they tried to send the police round to shut us down it was wrong and we must accept that and we've got to do something pretty quickly to sort it out Gordon Brown has pledged to crack down on ministers found to be abusing the expensive system these are just a few of the MPs hanging on by their fingertips tonight some face very awkward questions one of the problems with the system that we have had is that it appears to have allowed things like that to happen [Music] my name is Chris Evans and I'm the editor of The Telegraph 10 years ago back in 2009 I was head of news Robert Wynette's I'm the deputy editor here and at the time I was the deputy political editor my name is William Lewis and I was honored to be the editor of The Telegraph Christopher Hope back in 2009 I was the white all editor matthew bailey at the time of MPs expenses i was the news editor i just i was telegraph i was report a telegraph I'd be at Sunday Times for four years before that and yeah I was about three or four weeks into being a paragraph it was only a year or so after the financial crisis and I think you know that has to be remembered as the context because we were in a recession the economy was tanking it was just after the financial crisis had hits and people were beginning to digest the reality of what's the collapse of LeMans Bear Stearns was gonna mean for people around the world but particularly in the UK politically we were in two years into Gordon Brown's Premiership and it wasn't going very well for him the Tories were under David Cameron were mounting a pretty serious challenge to him in the polls there's a feeling of oh I think of drift in the country a lack of trust said he aimed at the flat your system of bankers not being punished for all all of the chaos wrought obviously we were beginning to see the Gordon Brown Premiership and the first wobbles so it was it was into that kind of environment that the the story began to hit paper was under new ownership we were quite a new team we had a young editor we had been through a really radical change program we had tried to be the most forward-thinking integrated newsroom there is out there we recruited some of the brightest sand the best from across Fleet streets and it was a good time to be involved in something like this the untold story of MP's expenses is that quite a lot of people turned it down before before we did it and and I was the head of news and I was reading the papers every day and I could see that these bits of MPs expenses were appearing in various places and I was I was asking various people who worked for you where do you think this is coming from and and why why can't we have it we first got wind of the env expenses scandal really from from the Information Act when some test requests went into Parliament to ask what a were MPs claiming for but and they should have given a huge amount of information quite quickly because under foi there's quite tight time limits to give the information and the MPs passed Commons just wouldn't do that when the Freedom of Information Act was brought in in 2005 one of the first things that everyone did at that time was to put in these requests to get details of MPs expenses so the telegraph the Sunday Times independent campaigners like Heather Brooks had all been pushing very hard for several years to try and get this information I'm Heather Brooke I did a lot of campaigning and reporting around the Freedom of Information Act and I took the additional cost surveillance case to the High Court for MPs expenses I was trying to look at the whole system in a holistic way and so I saw these little stories coming out like they would go after one person it was a scandal and then it would be brushed aside and I was like you just scratching the surface again like the problem isn't like the bad apple it's the whole pie you know it's rotten for several months indeed several years we knew that there was this great trove of expences data out there there was a few months so we suddenly started seeing quite a lot of information come out there's stuff about Jackie Smith's husband the Home Secretary Jackie Smith was one of the first to face the scrutiny media sources say she was not at home at the time she lives with her husband Richard Tim Nick I am really sorry for any embarrassment I have caused Jackie we were aware that there was probably someone out there who had this disc we knew that MPs expenses were going to be published because various people had been campaigning for their release and had fought various court battles it later transpired that had the Telegraph not done its investigation then most of the dita have emerged because what the MPs were planning to do was to publish this stuff with all the salient details redacted blacked out so you couldn't really make sense of what was going on and indeed that's why this material was offered to us and to other papers because the people involved in the redaction were so outraged that what they could see was going on but that wouldn't be known because of the fact that it was being carefully excised a mine manager gave us a basic outline that we were going to be dealing with a new process to do with MPs expenses and that process was the reduction of certain information that we will be told to remove initially what happens is a lot of information is presented on the screen in front of you our honest receipts or letters from the feeds office whatever and initially you're not actually reading the content because you're concentrating on learning the process once you've cracked the process she's my day two in the morning then you're starting to take in some of the information and the first inkling you get is is when you hear er it's just a society in disbelief people are just frustrated not angry to start with because you don't actually comprehend just what it is that you're looking at until the penny drops people were starting then to correlate between their own lives and an MP and what they were actually planning for the mood became I would say angry by saying wait then I'm gonna be kind you could cut it some days with a knife and just exasperation totally guys were back from Afghanistan were told us they're running working to earn money to buy equipment it's a fact that they don't have enough equipment or the equipment might be inferior they sign up to do a job they understand that they know they're gonna take losses the members of the Armed Forces that's what they signed up to do they take no problem with that but when you see your own MPs who have sent you to war effectively what they call coining it over and above what they should be coming it's not the expenses that you owe me it's the claims of what they were for our most energetic and tenacious report at the time was was Robert Burnett so I said to Rob will you please go and find out who it is who's Hawking this stuff around and asked them if we can have it I also had a conversation with the then editor will Lewis and said I really think we should be going after this and and he was as keen as mustard I wanted to find out more I was like well that's you got to keep going guys I mean you have a sense of obligation we were totally mystified no talking to all the people that I would normally talk to in and around Downing Street on the one hand that they were equally mystified and there are all sorts of rumors going around about was there a whistleblower out there was there someone inside the fees office who was leaking this stuff so it's just a case of picking up the phone and just sort of putting feelers out and saying look if this is out there we're interested in just spreading the word that we were sort of in the market for this stuff if it was available I'd known Robert Winnett we'd worked at sunny times together and I known that he was chasing the disc I mean it was kind of at the time as very much everybody wanted the MPs expenses disc so I knew Rob was after it I knew he was sort of having communications of people that might lead to it and I was actually I was on holiday between my two jobs and every cell phone every Interop being like if you get it tell me I'll work I'll happily work for free even though my dog hasn't started someone had phoned Rose prints in the lobby when she was working one Sunday with some information about this a guy at the other end said hello would you be interested and looking at a disk of every single MPs expenses and I said yes I've heard and by pure coincidence this was an American PR guy who I'd known ten fifteen years before because he was a personal finance public relations guy Rob not so long afterwards came back to me and said I think I know who is Hawking this stuff around and I said great let's let's organize a meeting let's let's get them in so I called him and then I remember meeting him I think in quite short order because of the calls that have been flying around the next morning in a wine bar just off the Strand he said he for tea knew someone who was involved in all this he was a man called John wick and I think again within 24-48 hours I had met John wick and I'd brought them both into the office to meet Chris Evans who was then the head of Newsom we began talking to them about how this might work John wick I run a risk management company based in UK I got involved with the NBA's expenses because some people came to see me who had been working on the redaction of mb's expenses who were concerned as to what was going on I wanted to get it in out into the public eye they had tried once and it hadn't been successful they thought that I'd might be able to advise them how to do it we had a company we use for public relations guidance and I talked to the MD of that and asked how I talked to the media the person we were talking to was a guy called John wick who has a military background and he came to explain to us how the person who was providing him with this information were were people who are in the room dealing with the redaction of information which was gonna be released under the Freedom of Information Act we actually could see what was can be removed and in essence the public would never see what we'd sing and that's the real frustration because the detail is all in the unredacted not the redacted these people had sat there day after day week after week becoming increasingly angry we're just normal people and we pay every day out of our salaries to come to work for a fuel floor train we pay for a lunch and we paying for everything out of a Sony's mortgages everything and now we're actually looking at a group of people that effectively we employ and they're taking everything and their wages just like ordinary people I've got to pay for everything under their salary and wages so when you've worked in kind of way just what you paid everything for that's what I've always done what you're doing it's abuse and I think it was that sense of anger that was relate to him and said look this is a real real scandal we're not insiders in Westminster we're just noir people who pay our taxes and you just will not believe what what is going on here and someone needs to be told about this and so one Monday morning he and I sat down with two gentlemen one called John and another called Henry and Rob and I tried to persuade them to to let us see what they had and they would have slightly confused state because hitherto nobody had really expressed interest in what they had to say what they had to offer we we were one of the first to have a website The Telegraph so I said to them look not only will we we treat you fairly we'll also treat the MPS fairly we'll publish all of it every single MPs expenses there was a financial aspect to it as well Chris Evans and myself had a discussion which we said look well The Telegraph don't pay for stories in this way we're not a tabloid newspaper it's not something we do but you know this is sensational these people need some insurance that you know they could lose their careers I remember very clearly Rob and I leaving that meeting which was in room just over there I'm walking across to see the editor in his office which was just over there and I said to him we're gonna need to offer them some money and we thought what what's the most we could possibly offer them and we said well maybe maybe maybe we can persuade the editor to offer them 30 thousand pounds so we walked into wills office and he just said hundred thousand pounds honestly that the payment thing is a red herring right I mean this is one of the most important bits of journalism if not the most important bits of journalism in the post-war period I can't think of a more impactful bit of journalism for Britain and British society highlighting such profound wrongdoing and systemic abuse the highest levels of government and Parliament's the next thing I remember was Rob actually bringing the disc into the office and it was a Friday afternoon it was a sunny Friday afternoon I was waiting for him to come in and he had this brown envelope and it wasn't a disc at all it was a strange red plastic box we opened up and we were just looking at it and it sort of came up all these different and files and everything and we went straight for Gordon Brown we opened it up and up came his his I think the first thing we saw is this itemized phone bill and Rob just went we're going to jail we looked at it and and lo and behold it seemed to have a lot of MPs expenses on it because we had one hard drive and we needed the next morning we knew that several journalists would all be starting to work on it we had to copy it across and so we've got another hard drive and it starts the copying process across and then we realize it would take about 40 minutes copying across so we went to work amongst for lunch in the interview I left it in the middle of the telegraph office while it was copying across region hindsight seems to complete madness we are about ten days before we started publishing we were on this extraordinarily tight deadline we formed a team in it it's now known as the bunker but it's an office at the back of the office and we put together deliberately a range of people from people who've just joined who were relatively inexperienced to some of our most experienced journalists people who are tenacious and passionate but but with a range of experience from from the very young to the very seasoned and people I thought would would spark well off each other the team we put together and I remember going around each of them individually at the time and telling them roughly what it was was Gordon Raynor who was our chief reporter at the time Rosa Prince who worked alongside me in the lobby who was a real experienced political correspondent Chris Hope who even then had a reputation for digging into things Holly Watts who I'd worked with on investigative staff including expensive stories at Sunday Times Martyn Beckford who again had a reputation as a sort of forensic journalist who is very good at going through data and digging out figures and so on John Swain who was a rising star at the time had just come off a graduate trainee scheme Caroline Gamal who again was one of our more experienced news reporters who was excellent at going out and talking to people on the doorstep and and Nick Allen who again was one of our top news reporters again relatively young they got a phone call to say can you come in tomorrow at half-past seven for a training exercise and I've been the newspaper since 2003 so I was quite used to regular retraining and training and I explained to them what was going on and I said there would have to be a cover story about some sort of digital training to explain why they were off their jobs for two weeks and we locked them all in a room just around the corner which no longer exists and said right can you go ferreting four stories I think I just remember like people arriving and be a bit kind of like you know fine people like I think Chris hope you had to get up really early so Gordon John Swain was there as well and I don't think it was you know we just they will just have grumbled their way in and then the movement from low-level grumble to total delight work started yes everyone externally was told that we were working on a new training scheme which was an emergency backup system and we asked him not to talk about it share any information beyond that room even though it's the toilet they weren't they were told not to talk about it so right from the beginning we were drilled into us that this was secret that we couldn't tell anyone we didn't even tell our two other colleagues over in in Westminster it was just a total news blackout my girlfriend worked for the Daily Mail so I was very conscious that I couldn't share the information that we had the disc I think she thought that our relationship wasn't going to last very long so when the first when the first paper came out that was somewhat of a relief to me I do remember there's some muttering about an IT program and then no one was seen and so for those first few days before going and joining the bunkered It was as though it was in this net no one knew where the bunker was it was in this mysterious part of the building when and none of the reporters in there were being seen because they were coming in before people were arriving and leaving after everyone else had left so my feeling in that room was one of extreme excitement because as a journalist you want to try and kick the tires shake the system and it's very rare that you ever get a chance to make real change real journalism and a chance to really serve hold that that plays Parliament to account it was a bubbling of excitement and people were obviously curious but then in fairly short order they plugged in which their disk of heat for each of them and they suddenly started looking this at this stuff and it was amazing how quickly everyone suddenly became totally obsessed with it the bunker itself it was rotten you walked in and it was it felt like had really low ceiling it's no bunker was rotten it had no windows and it simply had a bunch of computers in it it was sort of fluorescent light basically had this motley selectional journalist sitting in it even when we started it wasn't the most pleasant places because one of the IT guys used as a changing room fair when he arrived in his cycling gear so he he stole all his like crazy in one of the filing cabinets and it started as a fairly pleasant work environment but every evening we're eating takeaways in there the cleaners weren't allowed in because we were paranoid that someone was gonna go through the rubbish so it quickly deteriorated into a fairly unpleasant student like dicks the reason that it wasn't cleaned was because there was a rumor that we had it was quite a febrile atmosphere and we I can't remember where this rumor started but we came to believe that the news of the world was trying to infiltrate the cleaning staff and whether or not this rumor was true it was decided that we shouldn't allow any cleaners in hello viewers we've all done the government Parliament sweaty Dan sushi around us takeaway food the olive expenses is quite simple for MPs they need money to survive in two places firstly in their constituency they've got to be able to live there with their family and talk to around 80,000 people who live in the area and help them through all sorts of issues and of course drawing a week for a few days it must be in Parliament to vote on government bills meat ministers and fly the flag for their local constituency so they're required to have two homes but of course most people only have one home so what's fair well what was seen to be fan and is still the case now is they given help to live in London where their second home should be and that's where the expense ISM came in so they were given as allowance to spend on a second home when you open up this disk you don't have a whole list of MPs and misdemeanors you just have thousands and thousands and thousands of receipts so you're taking a leap of faith that there is something in there it's not it's not obvious what there is and as you open each one you'd have be left with a number of options for each MP you can look at their their ACA their living allowance their IEP which is an office office expenses and you just click on it and then within each file there'll be a year and for each MP there'd be five years and each file the piece of fifty pages of all that all their claims we had to start looking through what were PDFs of documents there was no way of electronically searched through these things it was it was just literally handwritten most of it so you couldn't search for anything you literally have to look at each every single page and just click click click you're really lifting the lid on the public persona of the MP and looking into their quite personal communications with the fees office people like Holly Watts were very very good at detecting patterns and thinking things were too similar and so on and so forth so so they spent about two weeks locked in this room going over stuff and preparing some stories for publication and we were trying to put it into some sort of order so we'd be able to compare claims and so on from one person to the next they could see patterns in things if if for example the amount someone was claiming for a mortgage hadn't changed for years and years and years and years and years and couldn't really be explained by a fixed rate then you think maybe this is not a real mortgage and we were starting to see things like the addresses where people lived and the fat people were claiming multiple addresses of moving between houses which we just had no idea was even possible under this under the scheme until we saw it there and full Technicolor so had we not known what the address was that they put down on those forms we would never have known that they were switching between one address and another to claim on more than one property we wouldn't have known if two MPs who were married or living together were claiming for the same address we wouldn't have known that their devoted capital gains tax when they're sold properties because we couldn't have checked Land Registry records to see the it's Selden a property how much it had sold for how much profit they've made what Parliament proved when they published the expenses themselves was that they had intended all along to gave the public pretty useless information which would have meant they got off scot-free we had a meeting in the morning which is when Toni Gallagher came in and essentially Chris presented him with the plan for the next day and the and it was the cabinet we had a very orderly process about how we were going to go after different MPs so we're going to start with the government and start with the cabinet and within a few days we were going to go to the Shadow Cabinet and then we were going to do you know senior well known MPs the Liberal Democrats when we devoted a day to Northern Ireland MPs and then it was a matter really of just going after junior ministers ex ministers and MPs who had colorful stories to tell we were trying to go eyeballs on every single document those around 2 million pages that was quite quite difficult doing in a few weeks so once we started looking at the the expenses disks we had after when Davis is involved in giant letters for each MP I said it's got to go in a bespoke letter it had to start saying these are the allegations we put you or these are the things we want explanations on why did you behave like that or is this correct or why was this item claimed for and then the MPs were given a time frame to respond by usually the end of that day it was also my job to get the tone right don't be too aggressive be neutral give people a chance keep the presumption of innocence at the forefront of your mind this is what we found out what have you got to say from the start we were concerned this could be a hoax that is the big concern for any journalists how true is the document you're holding are they real or fake yeah look I remain paranoids until the moment of publication you know that Hitler Diaries moment lives long in everyone's memory but that was always the risk we wouldn't know that until we started approaching the people who were gonna write about and we couldn't do that until we knew who they were we were ready to publish because once that started it would start a chain of events that we couldn't stop and so until you get someone saying this is true you know and we're sorry but I'm gonna say they're sorry when I do it I don't believe it the first person to respond was Jack Straw who provided an explanation as to why he felt affairs council tax on time only he could have known that so at that point we knew that this information was genuine when Jack straws confirmation came through in his considered a response that's the first time I allowed myself to get excited and Jack Straw came back around 244 I think was in the day explaining why he did a claim for council tax and hid it was a clerical error and he'll sort it out and once he said that single point about causal tax we knew we're in business because the document was true we had a really really big scoop and the fire was gonna come I was just over the moon because I thought he was the justice secretary he was in charge of the vehicle machine if anybody was gonna go for an injunction and trigger it it was him and it wasn't it was a hands-off yes I made a mistake I've paid the council tax back and I thought I think I'm on record is saying as soon as I heard that we're in business [Music] in those days it was much more common for newspapers with big scoops to spoof for the first edition so you would run a first edition that was an MP's expenses so no one would see it in time to change up and you'd have the exclusive all to yourself in the second edition and there was a sort of back and forth during the day about whether we were going to do that but if we were going to do that I had to get on with actually doing an ordinary paper and I remember ironically it was a really scratchy news day there wasn't much going on and I was sort of scrabbling around looking for a story now remembered Joanna Lumley had had some big Rauh about the Gurkhas with with the government and it was I sort of had to propose splashing on that even though my heart of hearts I was sort of distracted by the fact we had this other there's bombshell sitting in this bunker then we decided we would pursue it to me we agreed with the vendors to go ahead and do it and then there was a there was a sort of strange hiatus where we we all sat down and asked ourselves whether we should and shouldn't proceed there was a lot of tension the day before because we're putting the letters together and then there was a lot of excitement when the letters started coming back in and people responding so we knew it was like a really you know it was a big deal and it was true and I think the main broadcast has been invited in said Nick Robinson was in the office John Craig and I think Tom Bradbury so I'd spent some time with them about it's like an evening explaining what we're going to do I called the political editor of the BBC the bill etcetera of ITN and also the editor of sky to say we've got something you're going to want to know about it I knew one or two of these characters so I did say look I wouldn't be calling an S it was important and I really wouldn't be inviting you in and this would be thought it was worth your time I really think you don't want to miss this to get a phone call like that from a press office or a big media group like The Telegraph was rare if not unique my phone went it was a mate at the told RAF you need to come in he said we've got something to show you believe me getting the reply you've got to come in and he said it in a way that I knew he meant it I headed to the telegraph Victoria headquarters remember going up a long escalator up to the newsroom taken into a room the door was shut and then I was told the Telegraph had the disc was splashing the paper on it tonight we could give you the information he can't take it from here but we think you'll think it's a big story then I remember 10 o'clock on the evening for publication putting the main news channels on every single one of them that was the the main first story and you think at that point right we've got something here [Music] good evening Gordon Brown is among a group of 13 cabinet ministers whose expense claims are being revealed in detail by a national newspaper [Music] [Music] the embarrassment begins tonight for the government it will follow we're told four other parties and four people at lower levels can you claim 17,000 to do out servants quarters in your van so that is undisputed is it not total disgrace I've done nothing criminal that's been awful thing if you know it's about jealousy [Music] I think it's very bad expected mark libecki you've been fingered a bit by The Telegraph his authority seems to be draining away people are right to be angry but she's still in her job it goes for the prime minister he must behave as well I think you should get the facts right within a few days it became obvious that's the public were outraged by what they were reading and and all of a sudden we were no longer a small group of people within the Telegraph the sort of veil was drawn back and people got to really see how taxpayers money was being used Gordon Brown was probably on the phone to our then editor shouting almost every day and of course it was hard for him because he was prime minister and suddenly the reality of what MPs had been claiming while everyone else was tightening their belts exploded I'm Andy Coulson former director of communications Michael Duggar I was the chief political spokesman number 10 Downing Street further than Prime Minister Gordon Brown we had decided to go with the cabinet the ministers and then the opposition now we were later accused of that was political bias and we were favoring the Tories well actually Labour were in government we had to go for the government first but it did give the Tories about two or three days to get their their ducks in in a row to a degree but that said they still got pretty lambasted the Telegraph set out with a with what I thought actually was a you know a reasonably clear process on how you would approach these stories that you would give us time some time there's an argument as to whether or not enough time but some time to consider these allegations before you enter press we were given you know enough time this sort of the usual amount of time a journalist would give you to respond to a story they're writing for the following day but it was an incredibly detailed complex story and trying to piece all of that together and you're dealing with you know different cabinet ministers their officers they're in meetings you're trying to pull them out you're trying to do it drawers to try and establish the facts before deciding how to respond but it really hit Downing Street like a tsunami did that story what kit became clear like within days is that they were taking apart the whole system and I was like wow that's actually surprising they're not going after one partition they're not going after one party they're looking at the whole system MPs have been dreading the moment this summer when all their past expenses receipts were due to be published the MPS really thought it was okay so you're claiming expenses on a second home when you have three and you've got an income coming in from it they were sort of so shocked and appalled to find out that people really didn't think he was okay but um yeah so that was it when they were hanging out they still were like well this is outrageous you just don't understand the system and you're making and we're like no we do understand the system and you have to be fair not broken the rules but it is not looking great that you're getting all helipad heads trimmed remember margaret Moran getting in a shouting match and gestured with Rosa Prince about how dare she ring her so she had done up one house at public expense at a great deal of public expense and then she'd decided oh no that's not my main home my main home is actually miles away I phoned her up and she was incredibly indignant and defiant of her screaming at me in a very undignified manner and I think in the end she just hung up on me I remember Shahid Malik came out I was literally giving an interview on air I seem to remember attacking us for for what we said and he took a call from the cabinet secretary or someone in there the other saying you need to resign now or you need sir you need we're suspending you because it appears like you briefed Samir sealed and they're sort of playing out in real time in front of us there was a group of MPs from Emory people at Elliot Morley David cheetah who had fraudulently claimed for mortgages so part of what we're doing was checking people's mortgage claims against whether mortgages existed which seems like a basic thing to do which you thought the parliamentary authorities did but they didn't a number of MPs were not just over claiming on their expenses but actually claiming in a way that was criminal even though we thought this would be big and it was icing and it was huge the level of miss doing and even criminality was on a scale that even at the start we couldn't have imagined Polly watts was going through very carefully and slowly putting all of the addresses into a spreadsheet to work out what they're claiming where they were living and gradually we got these matches ping and you find out that two MPs were living at the same address and both claiming expenses and that's where it got the area of alleged fraud and that's what we thought wow this could really mean this could end political careers and possibly send some MPs to jail you could see that Eliot more he'd been claiming eight hundred pounds a month for mortgage it didn't exist and it very quickly became clear that he was he claimed about 16,000 pounds over a period of about 20 months and at that point we just knew that he was in very serious problems I think the arrest of MPs MPs standing down and he's being suspended mp's being offered peerages I mean never mind those that went to jail an awful lot of them had their careers ended either because they were forced to stand down or they were shoved into the Lord's or they were given a knighthood but it ended a lot of careers in addition to those that went to jail as I headed home from Downing Street having done a live for the BBC's 10 o'clock news my mobile phone when I picked it up and I heard the raucous sound of jeering embiez and one in particular was holding the phone and was saying to me he was clearly drunk and he was clearly angry you don't like our expenses we're gonna come for you we're gonna get your expenses published see how you like it then he held the phone into the bar at the House of Commons there was a roar of approval it was at that moment I thought this story's not just big in some nasty the immediate reaction to what the Telegraph did was not hurrah for the Telegraph this is a work of journalistic genius it was more has this organization committed contempt of Parliament shall we drag the editor to the the bar of the House of Commons and can we get the police involved or shall we have a raid from Scotland Yard on the telegraph offices there were a number of MPs who wanted to pursue you know some form of or at least in at least an investigate if you like the possibilities of legal action against the paper and particularly against the editor will alert later when we realize quite what we were dealing with there was a lot of concern about about being arrested about the legality of it all about the safety of it all yeah yeah we're very worried about the the threat of legal action although we were confident that we had all the information so there was nothing wrong but we were worried that the police would might become involved or that Parliament would do something I remember hearing a Labour MP on the radio suggesting that we still be investigated and possibly arrested because the material was probably stolen I've got a strong memory of taking a phone call from a very senior figure at Scotland Yard who'd been urged to mount an investigation into what we had done and then he rang a couple of days later to say he was suspending the investigation because it was clear no a galaxy had been committed my name is Paul Robert Stevenson I used to be the Commissioner of the mattress to until 11:00 there was an approach by the house authorities to the Metropolitan Police Service that we should be looking at the circumstances as to how this leak took place and suggesting there might be some sort of criminal offence I have to be honest from the outset I thought that was rather fanciful I guess the clearest cut element would have been if this had been a matter of national security it clearly wasn't a matter of national security it might have been a matter of national embarrassment and personal embarrassment for a lot of rather stupid and irresponsible people for there was another relief certainly I know it was a massive relief for will and for us all remember that first day when we were still worried that we might be prosecuted a couple of the commentators came out and wrote really supportive comments about how this is important for press freedom remember Quentin lots of the Daily Mail doing that and thinking that they were that this was big that they were supporting us and that the whole of Fleet Street was coming together I remember Simon Jenkins column in the in the Guardian saying you know saying the Telegraph had done the right thing and more and more it's a graduate so there was that feeling that tide swung behind us it was it was it was just ludicrous I have to say the word ludicrous comes back again and again these are public figures in receipt of public money supposedly representing the public in Parliament and they were they were they were sort of on the fiddle from my perspective as a newspaper executive what one of the most gratifying things was the way in which the team gelled I mean III picked the team and they were great they got on really really well and you could see they were they were firing off each other you know they had different skills and different personalities in this small hot very smelly room by the end of a week or two and it worked very very nicely we didn't we didn't really leave the office I don't think I mean we'd go and go see for a meal it's a few hours and then come back in again and you know it just was absolutely relentless a member of the comment staff who didn't know what was happening put his head round the door and sat down hi anyone want to go for a drink he was sort of at 7:00 or 8:00 at night there must be 10 of us in there and we all put our heads up and just stared at him we couldn't even speak we were all so absorbed and shocked and and just swept up in in what we were looking at that no one could even respond so he saw 10 pairs of eyes looking at how many he just went I guess not and wandered off okay we had this ongoing wall the wall of death or something out of gory glory so we had we got to the point quite early on of printing out photographs of the MPs and sticking up and crossing them out one by one pictures of MPs who have to pay back money or apologize or so the thumbnail next selection by the end of it it was it was in full of different MPs who done different things and I think there came a time where the room had to be dismantled because we were changing the office plan and somebody took it all down and put in a box carefully for posterity and left it somewhere safer than the the cleaners threw it all away but they well these things happen well this at one point I was like sorry I was like what's the weather like outside and he was like it's raining and we just had no way of knowing whether it was rain not and it wasn't raining but he didn't want us leaving the office is that it was intense I was half firefighting half making sure that stories needed to have statements or be reacted to we also had a number of people that wanted to talk about the story although they weren't actually involved with it so in many ways it was also like herding cats one of the funny things about term mp's expenses was that it really did benefit sales enormously at a time where newspaper sales were declining and we noticed I seem to recall that there was one particular area I think it was in South Wales where newspaper sales were going up and up and up and we couldn't really account for it and then somebody said eventually they worked out that it seemed to be where there was a an HMRC office where they looked at mp's tax returns and it seemed that everybody there was was buying extra copies in order to find out what they could gain on MPs whether whether that's true or apocryphal I don't know but that's that's what I was told I think it's a disgrace I think it's outrageous how the MPs are going to spend our tax money on their frivolous lifestyles the first rule if you're a politician dealing with a rolling story where there are new revelations every day where you're not in control of the flow of data when you've already lost public opinion is to get ahead of it not to be constantly racing to catch up Brown was always racing to catch up always angry always resentful David Cameron tried to leapfrog him setting up his own sort of internal inquiry system it was from the get-go we were clear that this was full square in the you know in the in the realm of public interest whatever the technicalities of it this was this was clearly you know any investigation a piece of work that was in the public interest I am angry about what has happened it is out of order some of this is an abuse of taxpayers money and I'm gonna deal with it and you talk to yourself about the daily mail testing David camera the advantage of not being in government so by definition your pitch the country is about change I certainly think after the MPS expenses scandal the the appetite for change was a greater one I think it was harder for labor and government because we've been in power it happened on our watch it didn't really figure so much in the election I don't think in terms of people's you know desire to vote labor or conservative but it definitely impacted on people's desire not to vote for anyone in one sense it was a sort of fascinating exercising how different people kind of react when under pressure and when faced with accusations that are quite personal nature actually and I remember one particular question time I think it probably must be in the middle of the first week Margaret Beckett was honors representing the government and the audience started booing I'm really going it are you going to pay back 72,000 pounds that you've taken no I'm not because as I as I pointed out a moment ago and there are two reasons for that one of them is and I realized at that point that the public the tide of public opinion was actually was not just outrage but it was it was anger really really angry the rules the system for MPS was written because they're honourable members there were and you just read over there was quite explicit it has to be holy and necessary to do the job as an MP what could be more plainer than that they don't need scatter cushions bottles of gin plugs it's not the system that sarong it's the people the MPs themselves I like the fun ones I like the ones the you know I forget who it was claiming for her he'll come back to me her name would claiming for dog food and Scotch eggs and the guy who claimed from a pepper army from a minibar mark Francois and I absolutely insisted just because I'd loved the advert from when I was a kid on having the headline described him as a bit of an animal just because I like the pepper army ever and I was we did have good moments of light relief remember Phil Wallace arguing with Martin Beckford about the facts he claimed for his wife's tampons because the money got paid back going through all this information you got you got sir so by inside Dieruff say ginger crinkles and that was one of the things which one an MP is claimed for so I went out and bought ten packets from Sainsbury's and gave them out in the office and so we survived the diet of ginger crinkles for at least a day or two I had a great letter from Austin Mitchell the Labour MP who was the only MP who decided to react with humour and he wrote a long letter explaining that he was very sorry for claiming for ginger crinkle biscuits and he was also extremely sorry for claiming for us and gin and some vodka and he said that he didn't drink and that therefore the alcohol must have been claimed by his wife and that he would he would immediately assess whether she was an alcoholic and put her in rehab if necessary Richard younger Ross whose town in telling he planned for a bookcase called the Don Juan which I love the fact that Christians had paid for pictures of himself you know and and was Christian one with a trouser press you know again to someone claimed for a trouser press and it was so Alan Partridge I remember Natasha Engle who is now quite a senior MP she says the backbench committee remember her phoning me up she she was so she couldn't bear the anticipation she couldn't even wait for it to be her turn she phoned me up ahead of time and said I bought all these glasses from John Lewis I know I shouldn't have and I feel really bad and can you please do the story now it was they were in such a state Lee's MP is waiting for the earth calls there were really clear patterns that came in from EMC beginning which was stuff like it was done on the financial year so at the end of when they were they got to March they'd suddenly realize they hadn't spent all the money they'd want to do so they would just bolt to John Lewis and like Nietzsche just go mad I remember Tom Watson who's now deputy leader they've gone to John Lewis and had fun at the public expense and at the time he'd lost a lot of weight since but Tom Watson was very overweight he must have obviously checked his own expenses and he spotted the thing that I spotted which was that head chart for a pizza cutter so I remember him phoning me and saying please don't put the pizza cutter in please we're old mates don't put the people who cut around and I had to say I'm sorry the cutter is going in I think was Nick Allen was just he served at one point was like gather around people and this was a few weeks in I can't remember how long we've been there and we were quite cynical at that point quite jaded and we dragged ourselves over and Nick was like look and we were like what is that and he was like that is a duck house I just should have involuntarily said via what the hell is a floating duck island for 1645 pounds as I remember it Matthew Bailey was in it was sort of sitting in my eyeline and he responded and slightly Frisian language you know what what is a floating duck island and I remember the duck house as well and I definitely out in a word that rhymes with it but I yeah I mean they were proper kind of you know I'm doing it now you know you sort of you sort of accept and shook your head and just thought you know I don't I don't know how that happened people started to sort of come over and look at this and then he flicked on his screen and you could see it on Google Maps you could zoom he presumed right into the middle of this lake and it was this little square and there was the duck house you can see it from space that was a good day that's how you end up with you know MPs on TV and radio you know talking about how proud there are they are they are that their house you know is compared to Balmoral do you know what it's about jealousy I've got a very very large house some set people say it looks like bowel mold it's not particularly attractive it just doesn't me nicely you know not a great moment there be Labour MPs would want to talk about their expenses and talk about perhaps what the telegraph had got and they would come in and they'd be very sheepish that be very quiet a lot would be very upset and in tears and I would sort of say trying to cut to the chase look what we're talking about here is this overly complex mortgage arrangements or is it consumer goods you know being like somebody's claim to clean their moat and it was just like this you know like roser and full-out rate and she was just like she was just really cross and she was it's like I mean how could somebody blame to clean their moat for God's sake you know I was genuinely taken aback and shot at that yeah I was the moat so this was Douglas Hardwick it was Rob who rang Andy Coulson because it was very early on and saying yeah it's bad it was bad and saying there's a moat now mr. Hogg always said that he never specifically claimed for the moat that it was part of a deal with the fees office to allow him to claim the full allowance to maintain his estate but the public is stank but as to the claims that I made they were agreed in what in advance and Iraqi and fall within both the spirit and those moments the moat the duck house no they weren't subtle they were you know they were crystal clear dan damaging moments for for the Conservative Party and we all and we all knew it some veteran politicians are horrified at the wounds inflicted mention expenses and the fury was switched on like that it was the symbol if you like of one rule for them and one rule for everybody else now would have been a powerful story at any other time but this wasn't any other time it was coming in the wake of the crash of the banks and more importantly coming in the wake of the bailout of the banks a time when it appeared that men largely who wear suits yes who live and work in Westminster were alright but ordinary people were suffering and so the news that you could claim for your dog food feared duck house enraged a country that was already pretty enraged it really touched a nerve with people the sense that there was this organized racket against the people that had been going on for many years and by our own diligence and good fortune we've been able to lift up that stone and and shine a light and where one had never been shown before what will have angered the public was the MPs were claiming for exactly the sort of things that they'd have to go out and buy out of their own pocket the stuff that sticks in my mind is really the flipping houses I mean these people who are building up property empires by moving from one house the next claiming the mortgage interest you know paying for the renovations to these properties I mean sure the small claims are funny and they added to the you know the the public shock about the whole thing but I just did not realize less all of that that some of these people were getting rich well I was astonished even as someone who'd been heavily involved in this and had been aware of some of the abuses I was astonished the venal nature of some of these claims the most egregious ones were they were the were the house-flipping claims which never got held to account and they should have done some of those were astonishing and the MPS some of those MPs got reelected and they shouldn't have done MPs who behave now which should have got reelected this was you know just not on at his lowest level and an outrage at its highest in there was there were there are the argument in defense of it you know and several people tried to make it as you as you know often against our advice you know it just did the sort of reaction to would be it was laughter Matt did a fantastic cartoon it was not necessarily unfair which simply had two MPs walking across the bridge I saw has a parliament and she said as soon as I saw what I'd been up to I knew the speaker had to go the speaker at that time Michael Martin made a catastrophic and historic error he saw himself as a kind of shop steward a trade union representative for MPs he saw his job therefore as defending them and their reputation and the reputation in the House of Commons against what the public were reading in the Daily Telegraph and hearing on their TV screens so instead of becoming the agent of change the manage said we have to improve things this man who said remain mistakes we can reform the system he was the guy making excuses which is why in the end he was kicked out the first for hundreds of years the biggest scout the expenses crisis got plain I think the speaker's run out of Road and you ought to go frankly and everybody's interests including his own we have an unprecedented situation where the speaker has I'm afraid be one of the blockages to reform of MPs expenses where he's blocked release of freedom of information and we're I'm afraid he's thought it's in parlons interests to sweep everything under the carpet rather than to move into a new regime [Music] some people lost their jobs some people deserve to lose their jobs by the way so there's a bit of natural justice in in some instances I think I was sad for colleagues who I felt who had got really mixed up in a bad system and through no fault of their own you know the rules were how they were at the time the culture was what it was at the time they had come into this I don't think they'd acted in a way that was dishonorable or that they were out necessary to enrich themselves I think there were individuals who were but there were far more who weren't I still think the vast majority people who come into politics do so for public service I felt particularly bad when I had to ring katyusha who was a junior Treasury minister who accidentally or inadvertently included in a file and note to her accountant about reducing a capital gains tax on on one of her houses and she had to resign because of that and she had a like me she had a very young child and when I rang she was at her home and she I could obviously hear that you know she had a screaming baby in the background and because I had a screaming baby of him at my house I did feel then I did feel a bit because I knew it's gonna be a front page and it's there and I knew is gonna be the end of her ministerial career I remember the night after Elliot Morley I was emailing my sister and I said I was feeling kinda sad about what happened to her at Morley and it was you know that his life was ruined and that was going to be devastated him and his family and everybody else and she was like what you might have created a situation where you get better better politicians in the future and the thing is I mean I'm not sure if that's what happened I think there was this enormous sort of rage from the general public that was justified but I think it just created a really profound cynicism a lot of MPs I think went through a difficult time as a result of of the stories that we did and we were very mindful of that I think one or two in particular found it very challenging during the process I did make sure that I contacted the leaders of the three main political parties obviously every MP was given fair notice of the stories and they were given a chance to comment on it and to tell us that we it was inaccurate and they got a fair share of commentary in each story but I was concerned that they were one or two funny a particularly challenging and as a result of that went the extra mile in my mind to ensure that they could be protected at the biggest parliamentary scandal that we've seen for 200 years and I want to apologize to you on behalf of the Labour Party for the behavior of some of our members of parliament The effect of this scandal on Gordon Brown's government I think was terminal David Cameron who was the coming man he was the leader of the Opposition he said he took a stand saying this is wrong I will sort it out but Gordon Brown was slow at that I think it's that summarized that he was so almost clinging on to power by then it became quite apparent through the following 12 months they are real we would have a real problem winning the 2010 election looking back now it's easy to forget quite held dangerous these times were for Gordon Brown large parts of his cabinet were unhappy with his leadership large parts of the Labour back benches were unhappy there was constant talk of replacing him combine the economic crisis combined his lack of personal political skills and charisma with the expenses crisis and he had a very dangerous mix indeed these were dangerous times the legacy of the MGP Spencer scandal is that the system is cleaner that the rules are tighter that they're properly scrutinized but independent body and that some of the masters from which claims could be submitted previously have never been outlawed so that's a good legacy in terms of politics the the last thing impact I think was really important people people got to see where their money was going they got to see the abuses in the system they got to see that the way the system should be reformed well I don't know whether it would have ever come to light otherwise I suspect not I suspect that some of the pair of you was known to some people already but it hadn't come to light until until the leak to the Telegraph and until that release and I do think and I don't want to under to the Telegraph here but I think there's a great public service done to ensure that we we did something to clean up the our parliamentary system and the standards that were being applied there I think you did lead to a whole new cadre of of MPs coming in the 2010 intake in the House of Commons was one of the biggest ever I think a third of the MPs were elected for the first time I think the public has always been hugely cynical about politicians and skeptical of what they what their motives are and what they get up to I think that is not going to go away anytime soon but ultimately in a democracy that's entirely healthy and if you don't have tight scrutiny of MPs you have a corrupt regime as we see in lots of other countries fundamentally damaged politics I think it damaged the political system I think it damaged Parliament it created a real anger towards politicians which i think is still there a deep speech and a deep cynicism and without we journalists we weren't trying to create you know an alternative we were just knocking down what would happen what been you know it has her consequences I'm not sure if it's all from a telegraph of course not but you know it was it was something that people identified with in a really furious way I think the relationship between the public and and sort of political class if you can put it that way it was already strained pre expenses I think expenses was a major point of sort of dislocation and that I'm not sure well I don't think we've ever recovered from it's only got worse I think you can draw a straight line from the expenses and scandal to brexit I'm not saying that's the reason why it happened I'm not even saying that there are people who walked into the you know into the voting booth with you know a dark house or a moat in mind but I think it was there actually buried deep you know that sense that you can't trust them that sense that they're you know that they're in the end Nell they won't do what they say they'll do I think that that was part of the part of the process and part of the unfortunately par the reason why you know that we've got such a gap now between the public around Barnard and our politicians which I think in long term can only be bad for us it was a time and politics was not in any great regard we've been through the Great Crash everybody was looking at professional people I'm wondering whether they're you know quite up to scratch and here the people are really in the country not up to scratch so it was quite it was quite sensitive moment and I think Parliament was obviously in the frame this scandal breaks it is inherently ludicrous rather than scandalous in my view it was the ludicrousness that made it a great story I think there was a sense that it had far more impact than we anticipated in that it led to a new speaker it you could argue it contributed to the downfall of the Labor Government's it certainly contributed to the contempt in which MPs were held at the time and and for many years thereafter actually I think there's been a sense that and I would say incorrectly that MPs are all in it for themselves and they've all got their snouts in the trough and I don't think we ever intended it to be like that I have one or two nagging doubts about the fallout i i watched who was arrested and who went to prison and i thought it was just a bit too easy because they were they were dispensable people they were to some extent the less valued MPs and I I wonder to this day whether whether there were others who might have been arrested and sent to prison instead because it seems to me that just enough happened to satisfy public disquiet but those those who bore the brunt were not big players at the time the sad thing about this saga is it has reinforced the idea that was out there the idea frankly I hear every time I get into the back of a cab in London they're all the same mate they say to me they're all on the take they're all in it for themselves it wasn't true and it isn't true but the expenses crisis risks making it looked like it was true did the expenses crises create brexit of course it didn't but combined with other things it may well have created the circumstances in which people no longer trusted what they were told by politicians on the whole I think most MPs take the attitude that it was painful and unpleasant but it needed to happen and we're not going to blame the messenger but it took a while for that generally to become the consensus and there are certainly a few who hold a grudge I still think there is a tendency in Parliament's towards secrecy and a lack of transparency and we see that in the standards committee now that effectively its MPs judging themselves it's still pretty hard to get information out of the British state and I'm not totally up to speed on the latest with MPs expenses but you know the thing I was trying to do with this whole campaign that lasted five years was to enable a member of the public to just go online or go into Parliament and look up their MP's receipts that all the receipts of like what they were claiming on the taxpayer you still can't do that I think the MPs expenses disk was a single moment in in British politics in terms of transparency and the importance of freedom of information the details that MPs publish today are a little more limited and what we get is and not quite as juicy as it was in the past but being able to go back to the old days of hiding all this information than just assuming this had bung on top of your salary along since gone and in that sense freedom of information has been very important I don't know that any lessons have been learned from MPs expenses only today there are stories about how much MPs pay themselves and and we're not really clear about what our MPs are worth you can find some people who say they should earn no more than a nurse or a teacher and other people who say that they should be on the same salary as a footsie chief executive you hear that quite a lot from a peaceful enough on the other hand it did show how transparency helped decent journalism how courage buy a news organization can force an organization to change when it thinks it's above the rules and above the law I hope that the legacy of the expenses scandal is that there's a more transparency in public life we get to find more things out about the way in which our money in particular is spent but I also hope that it leads to a long term change in the value of investigative journalism and that people realize the value in getting involved in these projects you know the value it brings to the public the value it brings to organisations and that that's something that lasts for many decades to come still people say what a great story what a great story how fantastic to be part of that that's right it did feel like there was a kind of a revolution of the pan it was such a big story at the time you could argue that this was the biggest political scandal since Profumo in the early sixties that was sex this was money I mean it seems extraordinary to me that's been ten years because I can remember it so so clearly and and it's one of those things the you you know if people ask what you do and what you've done in your career you mentioned that and everyone knows what you're talking about and and in there's a real sense of you know achievement in having been a part of that team and playing some part in in telling that story remember that picture that photograph taken towards the end of you know if you've got that picture trying to dig it out and this Rob sitting in the middle and everyone looking absolutely ashen-faced the purple eye drooping brought this slightly head on one side I was just a sixer lost it clearly because it was five to six weeks I'm going for it I just went off on my own to Victoria Station and sat on McDonald's and they a big quarter pounder with cheese on my own and I don't think I thought a thought I just stared off into space and munched it and it was the greatest cheeseburger or item of food I think I've ever had I can't remember exactly how many weeks after it but Chris Hope coming in saying the punk has been taken down the bunk has been broken up oh yeah we want to have a look and it had all been all the panel's have come down and it was all just an open office yeah so it wasn't there anymore that's quite sound it was such a privilege to work with that team we knew we were making history now a very proud of helped I am naturally a huge believer in the importance of investigative journalism and I am obviously well-placed to know how hard it is to bring stories to life to put things like this in the public domain it wasn't easy it took a lot of hard work by a lot of reporters who work for me and it took a lot of courage on the parts of the editor and of course since we did mp's expenses we've had the Leveson inquiry and various other attempts to limit free speech and I think we should always bear in mind the importance of things like MPs expenses and every time someone tables a motion to limit the powers of the press to say this or say that we should look back to MPs expenses and ask ourselves would we be able to do that now if this or that were the law of the land [Music] you

Channel: The Telegraph

Views: 812,941

Keywords: Telegraph, News

Id: ZWH0ang_fBU

Length: 74min 17sec (4457 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 03 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/rose98734]

For politics afficionados, it's worth watching this to get an idea why voters became so disillusioned with politicians. (It's a Telegraph piece because it was the Telegraph that broke the expenses scandal story).

It had huge implications: for exampe one of the reasons the Labour party chose Ed Miliband to become leader rather than David Miliband following the defeat in 2010, was that Ed Miliband had a clean sheet, but David Miliband had been claiming £££££'s.

[u/ukpolbot]

The Telegraph

The Disk: the real story of MPs' Expenses - Full Film
Learn more about the story at:
🕘 1:14:17
📅 2020-01-03
👍 121 👎 4
UKPolitics YouTube content bot™ 🚨