The Expenses Scandal and the media: an avoidable disaster?

Steve Bell's take on MP's expenses - copyright of The Guardian

The Great Expenses Scandal of 2009 was the biggest storm to hit the turbulent climate of the Westminster Village for many years. Although political corruption has been a feature of public life for as long as the national consciousness can remember, it had registered on such a huge scale. Even where sex scandals, cash for honours, questions and passports have passed over and left the detritus of ministerial careers in their wake, the cumulative effect of the revelations of office, home and travel expenses of 630 MPs shocked the British public.

For anyone who worked in Westminster, it can't have been surprising. Anyone who has ever worked for an MP wouldn't bat an eyelid at some of the claims. Like many other people with daily lives built around a series of expenses claims, some Members of Parliament just didn't bother themselves with form-filling and bureaucracy for the reconciliation of receipts for dinners with parliamentary colleague or a second home mortgage repayments. And because they'd taken their eye off the ball in quite a spectacular way, MPs were oblivious to the potential damage to their reputation caused by a liberal interpretation of the rules. In any other organisation, an officious finance officer and robust policies would refuse the most extravagant claims, but Commons clerks knew it was the job of MPs to account for their mistakes – and be held accountable for them.

The media should have been on to this sooner – after all, it wasn't as if MPs expenses had never been under the microscope before. What made the 2009 scandal so dramatic was the way in which it broke. The Daily Telegraph pounced on the opportunity to buy and then pore over the contents of stolen computer discs from the House of Commons, weeks before they were due to be published online anyway. It was a significant leak, not without its own ethical problems (the Times had first refusal) – but breaking the story relied on indiscretion and misconduct in itself. There did not appear to be any particular political agenda behind the leak, with Tory grandees and old Labour stalwarts alike under the spotlight – marking an 'all-out' assault on MPs by the media.

Westminster just didn't know how to handle it. The marriage between politicians and the media had broken down irrevocably, on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour. The roles changed, and the relationship rebalanced. As Professor Ralph Negrine of Sheffield University put it:

“During the expenses scandal – a witch hunt – politicians could not find a way of dealing with broadcasters [who] became more accusatory and interpretive in their approach.

“MPs could not justify themselves – their problem was 'how can we explain ourselves?”

Although every party was affected in some way – proportionally less so for the LibDems - there was no coherent strategy as to how to deal with the accusations. Party headquarters would distance themselves from disgraced candidates – and brief against those who have been deemed beyond the pail – leaving angry, betrayed and bitter MPs to pick up the pieces, attempting to salvage what remained of their reputations. 

A notorious casualty was the MP for Norwich North, Dr Ian Gibson, who when faced with being barred by Labour's star chamber in standing at the next General Election, resigned as an MP, triggering an immediate by-election and subsequent loss to the Tories. Dr Gibson had come clean over selling his London flat cut-price for the benefit of his daughter and her boyfriend. The so-called 'star chamber', deemed this unacceptable, Gibson's resignation was accepted, and an otherwise hard-working figure of integrity left public life. 

 

In the end, it was the Labour party's judgement to make – as it was for the Tories' with Sir Peter 'Duck Island' Viggers and other deposed Members. But fundamentally, the media won this battle, and the aftermath of the MP's expenses scandal had an enormous impact on the makeup of the House of Commons at the 2010 General Election, with new, 'clean' candidates replacing their disgraced predecessors. As Negrine points out, “during the 1980s and 1990s – news management and spin worked. But it did not work during the expenses scandal. Before this, politicians had space and opportunity to make their case”. 

 

Now, the dynamics of the relationship presumes politicians are in the wrong from the outset.

The 'dark arts' debated

The idea of a panel of journalists debating phone-hacking, alongside other interested parties, was always going to be an interesting discussion and one worth having, not least because the ethics of the 'dark arts' are very rarely de-constructed in public. I went along to yet another evening debate at City University last week for a session entitled 'How far should a reporter go – the lessons of the News of the World phone-hacking story' expecting to hear from a group of people split down the middle on the issue.

The specifics of the News of the World case were not really discussed, on the presumption that the chair and panel members found it safer to discuss broader themes around privacy and journalistic surveillance. I suppose it would have been tempting to steam away furiously on an anti-Murdoch rant, with equally strong opinions from the other side of the fence, although as panelist Nick Davies pointed out, every major national newspaper has engaged in phone-hacking – it just so happened that it was Clive Goodman and the News of the World who happened to get caught.

My views on the subject changed somewhat during the course of the evening, and made me realise that there's a whole tool-kit available to the investigative journalist which isn't always questioned – let alone justified - in the pursuit of a public interest story. There are indeed, as the chair Andrew Caldecott QC pointed out, 'many layers' in such a case.

The first big surprise of the evening was the argument put forward by Max Mosley, former president of the FIA, and offspring of the notorious Mr and Mrs Oswald Mosley, fascists and Hitler sympathisers. As you might expect, his successful suing of the News of the World pitted him against the activities of the paper – but for which he didn't make any money out of. It wasn't difficult to disagree with Mosley's defence of privacy, in which he scalded Daily Mail Editor Paul Dacre's self-assumed right to pillory on the paper's front page “someone who has a slightly more adventurous sex-life”. What did Dacre think sex was all about, Mosley asked? “Turning the lights off,waiting for three minutes then adopting the missionary position?”. More seriously, in response to the position of Roy Greenslade (Professor of Journalism at City and former Mirror editor, playing devil's advocate), who argued that the activities of celebrity 'role models' are fair game for adjudication by the national press, Mosley thought that if the morals of those public figures are considered unhealthy, “we shouldn't be publicising it”. (I did feel slightly sorry for Greenslade for having to put forward such a weak argument, but I'll be polite about him here as he's one of my lecturers).

The second biggest surprise was the view of Sir Ken McDonald, former Director of Public Prosecutions at the CPS. Having not heard him speak before, I expected an establishment, Civil Service standpoint on the question of how far journalists should go. He's also someone who's had his private life scrutinised by the jury of the press. Yet, according to McDonald “we could all imagine circumstances where we want journalists to break the law”. Privacy was, he argued “in danger of defeating the broader agenda of press freedom”. Supporting this view, the French press for example, were “not praiseworthy” in their supposed deference to their own public figures, failing in their pursuit of investigative journalism.

One of the more bizarre proposals of the evening came from Nick Davies, suggesting that because reconciliation between the free press and privacy was so problematic, there needed to be some sort of mechanism or process to deal with the question of public interest. Max Mosley seemed to prefer a judicial option, whereby a judge would make the decision pre-publication of an article. But Davies pondered as to whether there could there be some sort of 'tribunal of wise men or women', where the decision to authorise a journalistic investigation of an individual could be later made public, if say, the 'victim' were to sue. Picture, for a moment, the legitimacy of a tribunal made up of Dacre, Dominic Mohan, Richard Wallis, and Peter Hill – all editors of major national titles. I'm not suggesting any of them are fundamentally unethical people, but they're paid to do a job and ensure that their papers sell in an increasingly competitive and commercial environment.

With these sorts of pressures on them, there's no way that it a tribunal could be workable, let alone result in truly ethical decisions. Any members of such a panel would be the result of a judgement of someone, somewhere, who may or may not make a more valid editorial judgement than the individual who edits a newspaper. That's not to say that I agree with the casual fishing around for stories that some on the panel practised or supported (including ex-NotW features editor Paul McMullan) - I just don't believe that fundamentally speaking, journalism can allow for such cumbersome processes. What's really needed is a change of culture but that's a debate for another time.

We have a uniquely free press in this country, and some excellent, fearless journalists working on them. I'm not sure if we'll ever resolve that difficult question of public interest, or see the sorts of safeguards some people would like to see to protect the privacy of individuals, but that genuine spirit of inquiry for the public good is always worth fighting for. And the issue of phone-hacking isn't as black and white as it seems.

Wikileaks, the moral high ground, and the question of accountability

Julian Assange was swamped by a media scrum at the end of his talk

"Who put Wikileaks on the moral high ground?" A very interesting question indeed, posed by the right-leaning Times columnist David Aaronovitch at a debate to which I was invited at City University last Thursday evening, where, as a lot of people who read this probably know, I've just started a journalism MA course.

Wikileaks claims to be "an organisation to promote justice through the sharing and communication of knowledge". This, it has done, through the release of many hundreds of thousands of classified documents, emails, reports and correspondence: from Sarah Palin's Hotmail to shocking footage of a US helicopter attack killing innocent Baghdad civilians (note my deliberate value judgment there - I'm not in the game of criticising those who hold to account those who have been perpetuating barbaric and illegal wars).

I can't say I've looked at the site more than once before, when it leaked a slightly out-of-date BNP membership list, which was covered by a BBC News article amongst many other outlets. It has, after all, become something of an essential item in the investigative journalist's toolbox. But, like many people, I wondered what made Wikileaks tick. It is broadly seen as having a left-leaning, anti-war agenda, so there's an obvious political ideology in there somewhere. And, if so, who are the ideologues who call the shots? Who redacts information from the thousands of leaked documents that could be deemed to put peoples' lives in danger? More worryingly, is Wikileaks completely indiscriminate in the way it simply takes information from many, many sources and publishes it without making any kind of judgement on it first?

Taking the view that it would be preferable to pick up on and quote from aspects of the site first hand, I've unfortunately found it rather frustrating to write this blogpost since Thursday's debate because the site has been shut down for 'scheduled maintenance', making it difficult to make a more rounded judgement on what Wikileaks is all about, and why it exists.

The debate was framed by David Aaronovitch, who posted his own thoughts in Saturday's Times, as well as Julian Assange, the curious, evasive, and socially awkward face of Wikileaks. Chaired by the veteran broadcaster and panel chair Jonathan Dimbleby, I came away from this bizarre event not that much more aware of what the raison d'etre of Wikileaks actually is. The audience, of mainly students, academics and other journalists, consistently asked questions about what keeps Wikileaks going in the background (apart from its indeterminate number of volunteers), and consistently, didn't really get any answers.

And, like most of the rest of the audience - a sizeable chunk of mainly journalists or journalism students - I wanted to know what editorial judgements Wikileaks makes, if any. When faced with serious accusations that the actions of the site you run has contributed to civilian deaths in a warzone, you might be expected to respond to those accusations robustly, and with empathy. Someone asked whether it was a goal of Wikileaks to have people protected, and if so, how did they do this? What did they actively do? Did we trust Assange's 'harm minimisation?'

"We are a publishing organisation - we do nothing else. The public decide whether to fund us. You decide whether we continue on this course of action, looking at the fruits of our labour.

"I find it hard to see another organisation which is immediately accountable to the public".

This last point was fascinating, because, despite being asked at least once, Assange couldn't reveal a list of donors who funded the organisation. Maybe this is for a very good reason, but it's clear that a set-up of this nature can't compete with the likes of established national newspapers and mainstream media outlets. We know who runs them, we know who funds them - we quite often disagree with those who are in charge of these organisations and the political line they take, but it's pretty much all out there in the public sphere.

Assange wouldn't be drawn on whether Wikileaks was being bankrolled by the Chinese government, as has been rumoured, nor would he comment on any of the increasingly public disagreements with former volunteers such as Daniel Schmitt (also known as Daniel Domscheit-Berg) who, as a BBC Radio 4's PM programme pointed out last week, has had some serious disagreements with the way Wikileaks is being run, to the point where Assange has suspended him - and it doesn't look like he'll be going back.

"Fundamentally, [Wikileaks] needs transparency in the way it is working, and the way it deals with its finances" said Schmitt, suggesting that Assange, as the leader of the organisation if such a figure really does exist, needs to "focus again, calm down and get a holiday". Schmitt claimed also that the people he had been working with "are no longer involved as far as I can tell".

Responding to the allegations, Assange denied there had been any mass departures: "There have been no resignations other than a media statement. We're a complex organisation with a large, extended network. We make no apologies for not being transparent about the protection of our sources.

Asked whether Wikileaks was too focused around himself, Assange said "Of course it is founded around me. I started it." He also claimed that the level of public interest in Wikileaks was "annoying". Assange is beginning to panic now that the spotlight is beginning to shine very brightly on him. And, until someone more credible than Assange is put up by Wikileaks to defend the organisation and its guiding philosophy, I can't square that question of accountability.

Update on 13/10/10: City have now released the full video of the event, available on their website.

Ed Miliband: the 'honest optimist'

It was supposed to be the speech which broke the mould. Less than three days after being announced as Labour's new leader, a fresh, wide-eyed idealist bounded up to the stage. With an overriding theme of youth throughout the speech - in a marked contrast to the weighty years of experience of his predecessor - this was not an occasion at which the old guard would feel comfortable.
Ed Miliband hammered home, directly to the Shadow Cabinet, his personal beliefs of where New Labour had gone wrong - "I understand that the promise of the new politics of 1997 came to look incredibly hollow after the scandal of MP's expenses". He spared a more traditional vitriol for the Coalition, occasionally verging on the sanctimonious, and constantly referring to government being something that Labour had the right to take back: "If we are not the party, nobody will be". A personal jibe at David Cameron enforced his view of Britain simply being in reckless hands: "You were once the optimist but now all you can offer is a miserable, pessimistic view of what Britain can achieve. And you hide behind the deficit to justify it. We won't let you get away with it".

This speech was both different in tone and content from the dramatic set pieces of Tony Blair and the solid, statistic heavy reports of Gordon Brown (although Miliband teased the audience briefly with an old Brown line "thank you for what you did", interminably repeated at large party events to acknowledge activists' tireless work). Instead, Miliband projected a more fragile, nervous understatement. After all, until just a few weeks ago it was not expected that he would win. There was even a hint of this last-minute nature in the jokes, some of which would not have been out of place in a best man's speech, scribbled on the back of an envelope the night before: "I stole David's football, so he nationalised my train set". And, reflecting the theme of youth and the new generation, an affectionate but pointed remark aimed at Jack Straw "what was it like to meet the man who invented the wheel, Jack?" only served to underline the boyish qualities of the new leader.

Ed Miliband's comradely, fraternal language echoed a political training spent in debating halls. Overwhelmingly, this was a speech to a pitched to "friends" at a Labour Party branch meeting or a left-leaning thinktank - both environments in which Mr Miliband is inherently more comfortable - and not the conference hall of an aspirant Prime Minister. More precisely, it addressed the sort of people with whom he has spent the past four months, and not Great Britain.

Overshadowed by the failure of his older brother's campaign to clinch the leadership, there were key questions of legitimacy to answer. Did Ed possess the oratory skill of his brother? Many people doubted as to whether he could articulate a vision of Labour that was forward looking and believable. Proving that the Labour party had caught up with a sizeable and aggrieved part of the electorate over the Iraq issue, Miliband boldly repeated the conviction which characterised his campaign when he spoke to the party at large:

"We were wrong. Wrong to take Britain to war and we need to be honest about that...wrong because that war was not a last resort...we did not build sufficient alliances and...we undermined the United Nations."

Pacing towards a crescendo finish, Miliband adopted a poetic, tub-thumping rhythm not dissimilar to Blair and Brown, with regular nods to the party's heritage. This was a man brought up by passionate activists, which showed as he comfortably referenced the pivotal figures of the Labour movement who, at one time, as Miliband of Brothers told us, most were present in his parents' dining room. Although there was much in the speech to reassure party members, at no time did he excite the audience beyond the polite reception you might normally expect from a Labour conference.

This was a positive, upbeat speech, honest about the past and hopeful about the future. Opposition parties and the press alike were unsure of what to make of his inaugural address; labelling him either as a thoughtful, candid newcomer or a dangerous, left-wing union bidder. But, with just three days in the job, there was a general consensus that he wasn't quite ready for Downing Street just yet. After all it took David Cameron nearly five years to make that transition, and Neil Kinnock, a front-row advocate of Ed, never made it after nine. The recent history of British social democracy reminds us there's a bigger story behind new leadership rejecting past ideas and going on to win elections - particularly when you've been blessed by a predecessor. Another Clause IV moment could yet happen.

My hopes, dreams and ambitions for journalism

Today I’m taking my first steps towards a new career – something I really should have done quite a long time ago in fact – with my first evening of lectures at City University for an MA in Political Journalism.

The summer has given me plenty of time to read around my subject and I feel that as a new student, I’m already developing a worthy critique in my head of today’s journalism and its strengths, opportunities and dynamism, but also its weaknesses, frustrations and, in some cases, lazy and shoddy misreporting. The excellent Flat Earth News by Nick Davies has been a good starting point and I’d highly recommend it to anyone who wants to get a better idea of why journalism isn’t working as it should. And it should work better, because there’s an awful lot going on out there which needs to be taken note of by journalists and which is in danger of slipping away from public consciousness.

So why am I doing this? For the last six years, since my undergraduate degree, I have, in the main, been working in various civil service and public sector communications roles which, although they’ve developed my basic skills in writing good copy and finding stories, I’ve never been responsible in that time for any public or externally facing communication. My interests have always been more around speaking to a wider audience and that passion for the drama of politics and a long desired professional aspiration to journalism have never once waned. Right now seemed an opportune moment to embark on a new career once it became clear that British politics was experiencing a moderate earthquake – of which I’m sure the aftershocks will be felt for some time. A tired, chaotic government has been swept from power, the two-party system is on the verge of being dismantled, the Liberal Democrats are in government and there’s a wave of unpredictability washing through public life which makes things constantly fascinating for the observer of the British political scene.

So, I’m hoping that in order to help make sense of this brave new world, this Masters will help nurture a strong interest in good quality, investigative journalism that is – dare I say it – ethical, and that I can find a new career in helping to peel off what sometimes seems like increasing layers on, and barriers to the machinery of government. I’m not pretending to speak from some pious lectern on what’s wrong with the world – either in politics or in journalism itself – but I want to be able to do things my way, through a prism of values which might seem lofty or impractical – but hopefully true to myself and with independent, rigorous thought and research.

I am an optimist and an idealist by nature and I hope that, if you were to ask me, in five years time ‘where have your ideals and principles gone?’, you won’t witness my detached soul scuttling off down the road to the world of sensationalist celebrity gossip and the sort of pseudo-journalism I don’t think I’ll ever be interested in – let alone be any good at!

Keep following me on this blog, which, I’m advised, needs to be updated at least two or three times a week. I’ve had a blog since 2007 and I don’t think I’ve ever got anywhere near close to that sort of regularity of posting, but hope that over the next year at least, I can promise some occasionally interesting, insightful and thought-provoking articles. And, if you’re a potential future employer or you run a political or news website and you like what you read, please do get in touch.

So, pull up a chair and we’ll have a nice cup of tea as we put the world to rights.

Why 'lobby groups' aren't working - and why it's all over the press...

A few weeks ago I blogged on the role of political campaigning in democracy - and in particular the role of groups such as 38 Degrees in 'lobbying' MPs and Ministers.

I'm fairly sure that Dominic Raab MP didn't read my post but he and his now infamous elusive email address went big in the press today, as a result of his attempts to fend off 38 Degrees and their 'independent minded' supporters who apparently struggle to construct their own, independent, sentences and arguments.

Here's the Guardian's article and Iain Dale's take on it.

Head to head: Oona vs Ken

Oona's helped out Ken on his own campaign trail in the past

One of the annoyances of having a party leadership selection process running in parallel with a London mayoral candidate selection is that Facebook sends me countless invites to hustings events for either. Last Monday 26 July I ventured, in a rare move, out to Southall in West London to what I thought was a Labour Party leadership hustings organised by the Co-operative Party, an organisation with which I hold much sympathy. The latter part of my assumption turned out to be right - as it turned out, when I arrived, there were significantly fewer chairs at the top table than I was expecting. And a surprising lack of party staff to move things along. Nonetheless, our good friends at the Co-op had attracted a significant number of people to the event, compered by the ever-droll Steve Pound MP, which turned out to be an excellent chance for Ken Livingstone and Oona King, as the official Labour mayoral candidate nominees, to make their case.

I have to admit, once I arrived I did have fairly set views on my preference for London mayor, and have been used to having them challenged quite a lot recently by my boyfriend and others. I voted for Ken in 2008 and, for the last few years, and I've been of the view that, with a better campaign less-focused on the inner-London boroughs and an appeal to a more aspirational Labour vote, he could win City Hall back off Boris. After all, Ken's got something of a reputation as a comeback kid, what with his battles with the Labour hierarchy in the early 2000s and entering Parliament in the 1987 General Election, only to leave Westminster in 2001 once he'd returned to London local government. Of course, he's far from perfect, what with his confrontation with Evening Standard Journalist Oliver Finegold and various other skirmishes. But I have a lot of time for a politician with boomerang-like abilities - and his passion for, and ability to speak to, and for London. His words after the 7 July tube and bus bombings were well-judged and sensitively aimed.

But, I'm coming around to the idea that despite Ken's ability to come back from the abyss, London may have moved on. I hope that Oona King genuinely does have the fresh ideas and the new approach which she claims she has. Because, if there really is a palpable hunger within the London Labour Party, and the London electorate as a whole for Oona's qualities, then she really may be in with a chance of ousting Boris Johnson. Several London councils went back to Labour control in 2010, and despite the huge swing to the Conservatives in 2008, the Labour vote still held up very strongly in inner-London boroughs in particular.

Maybe this means that on this occasion, the debate is less about the policies, and more about the ability of a single personality to elucidate a metropolitan, socialist politics. After all, as Oona herself said at this hustings, she was previously one of Ken's greatest supporters- she just happens to think that she can do the job better now. After Ken's big falling out with Labour ten years ago, few party members would disagree the triumphs of Ken's congestion charge policy, investment in the East London Line and his vigorous campaigning for the 2012 Olympics and Crossrail as a catalyst for investment in London for the present, and future. Why would Oona want to undo those (perceived) successes?

The point of this hustings however, was to differentiate between King and Livingstone and their specific proposals for London. On balance, I found Oona to be the lighter of the two on matters of policy. Oona is clearly disadvantaged as the less well-versed in London politics, although arguably this is irrelevant given her experience in Westminster during the New Labour years. Most bizarrely, when faced with a question on Fair Trade (to be expected with a Co-operative party audience), Oona evidenced her credentials with her campaign within the House of Commons to ban Cadbury's chocolate in favour of Fair Trade products. That's all very well Oona, but surely London's ethical trade with the rest of the world is bigger than what you stock in an MP's tuck-shop? I don't wish to denigrate the good intentions of the Fair Trade movement - I support it wholeheartedly - but I expect a mayoral candidate to have bigger ideas than that. It's the sort of politics which I practiced in my student union nine years ago...

There were several questions around transport, and one subject in which a dividing line was evident was on dedicated schoolbuses for London's schoolchildren. I've been in favour of such a scheme since a report was published on the subject five years ago, and found the deadlock between the two candidates rather irritating. Ken adamant that such an idea won't work as "there's no more road space" whilst Oona extolled the virtues of it - quite rightly pointing out that parents,pupils and the public alike want security and safety on their morning and evening journeys - giving the travelling public a break during the school run. Ken did not present any tangible evidence as to why present dedicated TfL schoolbus journeys (of which there are very many in London) could not give way to a dedicated 'yellow' bus system with specially recruited drivers and monitors to look after their young passengers as exists in the USA. Ken further defected Oona's proposals with costs - £350 million to lease or £500 million to buy outright a fleet of buses. It didn't help that in these straightened times, Oona hadn't identified where the money for such a fleet might come from.

My own question was on policing numbers, and whether both candidates thought that the current standard of policing could be maintained with fewer policing officers. The Safer Neighbourhood team is all over my area like a rash, which is a good thing, and it's no surprise that (touch wood) that my bit of Balham has a particularly low burglary rate. Both Oona and Ken were pro-directly elected invididuals to look after policing, which is what we've already got of course with Boris at the head of the Metropolitan Police Authority. Ken had concerns about central government undermining local efforts to deal with crime (the Shoot to Kill policy being cited as an example - where ACPO (the Association of Chief Police Officers) and the Home Secretary had decided on a particular policy decision and the Mayor had not been consulted. A true test of the coalition's decentralising mettle could be to be more comfortable with policing policy decisions being made by directly elected individuals, as opposed to central government. Will traditional law and order Tories be able to resist the urge to intervene if these directly elected individuals become more widespread in other areas?

Both candidates gave inspiring final statements - Ken highlighting his view of the role of the London mayor in an uncertain world where ordinary people are now facing unprecedented cuts, and that "London needs to be at the place where the new world is being born". Oona, once again, summed up by asking the room "Do you want to win London?" implying that the opposite was a distinct possibility for Labour supporters if they failed to back her as Labour's candidate.

Me, I'm still undecided despite a strong case being put forward by both candidates (and with both having very different credentials). But I suspect that whatever happens, the public will have decided that, despite a bike scheme here and a 21st century Routemaster there, people will want a serious candidate in these less stable economic times.