Behind the British MPs expense scandal

By Ruona Agbroko

April 4, 2010 10:19AM
Ben Leapman* is dressed formally and frequently fiddles with glassware as he talks to South Africa's top journalists and academics at the upscale Rand Club in Johannesburg.

Mr. Leapman, Deputy News Editor of the Sunday Telegraph, was one of three journalists who fought a five-year battle to have MPs expenses disclosed under Britain's Freedom of Information Act.

His passion for his job is obvious as one gushing, inquiring guest takes the place of yet another. And another.

I have had not much trouble getting this interview, other than waiting for the horde of fans and his two-day speaking schedule to ease up. Since I haven't been told to talk to a PA, dribbled about or told to submit my questions beforehand, I begin to wonder if it is actually Ben Leapman I will be interviewing.

When he finally has time for our impromptu interview, I can just see the middle of his head of curly hair from where I am, standing next to him in kitten heels. He looks like British musician Simply Red, without the flaming hair colour or the freckles and comes off as quite ordinary, actually. But as Britain's Members of Parliament (MPs)-and the rest of the world-now know, Mr. Leapman is the poster-boy for the words "never judge a book by its cover."

In the beginning

Mr. Leapman tells NEXT his investigation into lawmakers' misuse of taxpayers' money began as far back as 2004 when Britain's Freedom of Information Act was about to be made law.

"The Act was going to force public bodies including parliament to disclose all information. At that point in 2004 the House of Commons published some information about how much MPs claim in expenses for their second homes. They did this because they hoped it meant that when 2005 came and the new law came in, then they wouldn't have to release any more information," Mr. Leapman explained.

Apparently, there were more questions than answers.

"It told you how much each MP was claiming but not what they were spending the money on. And it seemed that some of the MPs that didn't really need the money were claiming the full amount. And I didn't know why, and there was no way of finding out why at that stage."

Mr. Leapman says he was further alarmed when he called an MP who gave no explanations other than; "that's just the rule, old boy; that's what we're allowed to do."

But he had to wait until 2005 to "send a letter under the powers of the new legislation asking for fuller details of the MPs spending."

He was not the only one bothered. Two other journalists had also put in requests asking for details of the expenses claimed by certain MPs to be released, with Mr. Leapman being the only one who went a step further by seeking the publication of MPs' second-home addresses. All the world knew was that The Information Commissioner bunched the cases together and ruled in their favour, asking that some information be disclosed.

However, Mr. Leapman says behind the scenes, things were not so encouraging; "It took the Commissioner two years to grant our request. In that time, he never once called me, or spoke to me, but had meetings with the House of Commons."

The House of Commons not only labelled the ruling "unlawfully intrusive", it also tried to seek an amendment of the Bill, aiming to exempt lawmakers' expenses from being made public. However, an internal dispute among opposition parties and mounting public disapproval conspired against this.

The House of Commons finally bowed to a subsequent High Court verdict, and announced in April 2009 that the publication of expenses, with certain information deemed "sensitive" removed, would be made in July 2009.

Getting the scoop
The House of Commons needn't have bothered. On April 27, 2009, one of several disgruntled employees processing the expenses files for censorship before their intended publication by Parliament handed all the details to Mr. Leapman's paper.

The Daily Telegraph gathered 45 people including reporters, lawyers, designers and sub-editors into a room at its headquarters and swore them to secrecy. The team went through about 19,000 documents each day and the paper would kick off its devastating series of scoops on 8th of May 2009, just 11 days later.

No Expenses Spared, a book by two journalists who worked on the Telegraph team also revealed that other newspapers had missed out on the scoop because they were interested in one particular party while the whistleblower wanted an all or nothing approach.

Mr. Leapman tells NEXT that the interest of the public was the only motivation behind the Daily Telegraph's method of publication; "We wanted to expose all of the parties. If parliament had had its way, all 650 MPs would have had their expenses published on the same day and for the public that would have been less satisfactory, because it would mean less scrutiny. By pushing all that information out at once, there would have been less focus on the wrong doers and a fixation on prominent MPs. In fact, some of the backbencher MPs had the biggest scandals; that's where the famous duck house claim came from. Whether it was Labour first or Lib Dem second, we needed to do it a bit at a time because that allowed for greater scrutiny."

‘It was quite a scary couple of days'

"People were writing, calling and emailing in their thousands daily to say ‘well done to the Telegraph, it is a scandal, the MPs should not be claiming all this," Mr. Leapman recalls. But as the world cheered the Daily Telegraph on, he admits to NEXT that the journalists were far from comfortable.

"On the very first day of publication there was a big concern amongst myself and my fellow journalists at The Telegraph that the police were going to raid our offices and come in and arrest journalists. It was quite a scary couple of days."

Michael Martin, the Speaker of the House of Commons asked that an investigation be launched by the London Metropolitan Police over how The Telegraph got the information, rather than what the information revealed. The police shortly after, announced it would do no such thing. Mr. Leapman says the weight of public opinion apparently prevailed.

"There was a very strong public reaction against the politicians and in favour of the information being published. I think at that point, the government realised that by sending the police to make arrests of Telegraph journalists, it would have made it look much worse; if the police started arresting journalists for exposing politicians, the government would have been in much more trouble than it already was."

Nigeria's FOI Bill

Mr. Leapman hardly bats an eyelid when told about Nigeria's Freedom of Information Bill, which is yet to be passed as law, for ten years running. In fact, his shoulders lift in a shrug.

"My feeling on that is that there will always be politicians who are very nervous of passing FOI bills because clearly Freedom of Information laws are useful to members of the public and to the press to expose scandals and misspending by politicians or senior public figures. There will always be politicians who try to stop such bills becoming law, even in the British Parliament they tried to prevent this from becoming law.

"I think it's important for the public and the press in Nigeria to campaign on that and continue to insist that this is an essential part of legislation to democracy which needs to go through-and quickly."

Threats?

Slight in build, and frequently smiling, Mr. Leapman looks harmless. I ask if he knows he would be easy to tackle and whether he has gotten threats. He laughs heartily, saying; "I have not had anything worse than going out and having a few MPs saying; ‘Look who's coming along, don't talk to him' to one another."

In reply to my involuntary expressions of surprise, he insists; "That's as bad as it gets really because British politics is quite genteel, and you don't tend to get too much violence or real threats as in other parts of the world. We could never have published stories like this one in other places because there wouldn't even be legislation to enable you get the information or the intimidation would be more. But the British press is lucky compared to journalists in most parts of the world."

Fallout of the MPs Scandal

Days after the House of Commons finally released heavily "blacked out" details of the MPs expenses the Daily Telegraph published a 68-page supplement. Mr. Leapman says but for the paper, taxpayers would never know that a male MP went as far as claiming expenses on female sanitary products, and other such ludicrous claims that were withheld for fear of embarrassment.

Also, for the first time in 300 years, the Speaker of the House of Commons resigned, while 392 MPs are almost done repaying about £1.12m.

But it hasn't all been bleak or all about the MPs.

Mr. Leapman says Heather Brooke, one of the journalists also involved the landmark case has written her accounts of the MPs scandal; The Silent State was published on April 1. Also, both Leapman and Brooke were characters played by actors in "On Expenses", a BBC 4 real-life drama which was broadcast on February 23, this year.

"For myself and the other two journalists who put in the first Freedom of Information requests, we obviously all wanted the story to ourselves as a scoop and at the end, the Daily Telegraph got the big scoop so to that extent, there were professional jealousies, but ultimately what was really important was to expose this to the public and that is what has happened," Mr. Leapman told NEXT.

It would seem the professional jealousies were justified. The Telegraph titles sold over 60, 000 copies more than usual everyday, while The Guardian UK weighed in on the scoop to launch its "Investigate your MPs expenses" online campaign which saw 20, 440 unique readers review 170, 000 documents in the first 80 hours. That was not all; six days after the Telegraph started its expose, the BBC political and current affairs television programme Question Time had its highest viewer figures of 3.8 million in 30 years.

I ask Mr. Leapman if he is professionally jealous. His curls flick about briefly as he shakes his head no.

"The fact that other news organizations were doing other things on the MPs expenses shows the issue remains topical and is in the safe hands of the British press," he answers, between smiles.

The smiles turn into outright laughter when I ask what he thinks of Jeremy Swift, the renowned British actor who played him in the BBC Four drama.

"Oh, he looks vaguely like me," Mr. Leapman replies without missing a beat.


*Photo credit: www.telegraph.co.uk

FIRST PUBLISHED IN NEXT NEWSPAPER, NIGERIA: http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/News/World/5549457-146/story.csp