I haven’t yet read the recently published book, NO EXPENSES SPARED, the tale of the MPs’ Expenses fracas as told by the Daily Telegraph’s Robert Winnett and Gordon Rayner, but even the few short paras of puff published in their paper last week suggest a certain amount of obfuscation. It contains, they say, the first interview with the ‘mole’ in the Parliamentary Stationery Office, which processes the expenses claimed.

I doubt that it’s real. The suggestion is that this mole, presumably - if he’s real – a civil servant employed by Parliament, was motivated by his disgust that MPs were claiming excessive expenses, while our soldiers in Afghanistan were choosing to buy their own kit to supplement MoD issue. This Richard Littlejohn brand of harrumphing indignation (which seems to be emerging as the Telegraph’s house style under its fizzy young editor) does not convince and nor does this suggested motive fit with my knowledge of the true beneficiary of the Telegraph’s munificence (whose name I forbore to reveal on June 8^th in www.peterburden.net/archives/152 , and still feel I cannot justify releasing.)

This approach is reflected in a cod piece which appeared online on the paper’s site on Saturday morning, cobbled together somewhat incoherently (with very sloppy editing) by the dodgy old former SAS officer, John Wick, who acted as gofer between the seller of the data and the Telegraph. Wick looks to me like the sort of fellow who would make you think twice before buying a second hand bicycle from him.  

The point of his piece is obscure; he says confusingly, for example,

“At no time has the Daily Telegraph indentified the source and yet the various other media outlets have inferred the leak came from either the military personnel, staff of the Stationery Office or even the civil servants themselves.”

It seems, though, that they have.

He goes on to explain the substantial sum paid by the paper to the leaker as follows:

“On the issue of the payment from the Telegraph, it is I who placed a requirement to have money paid for the data and not anyone else involved. It was there to pay for legal advice before the campaign started, to have contingency funds available if charges were made and legal representation was needed – and to give financial support to those persons whose involvement in the campaign could affect their and their families’ livelihood.”

Oh, I see.

All the print commentators still miss the point that the real problem was not at the MPs were paid these expenses (which simply brough their remuneration up to somewhere near a fair rate for the job) but that they hadn’t the bottle simply to put the case over for a salary comensurate with their function as the nation’s legislators.

The papers were so thrilled to find that MPs were, for the time being, even more disliked by the public than themselves, they weren’t going to offer any excuses.

The rational conclusion is that we should field half the number of Members of the House of Commons and pay them at least twice what they’re getting now. Th talent pool from which they would be drawn would immediately grow and improve in quality.

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