MPs' scandal and dilemma for lobby journalists

Roy Greenslade
27 May 2009

Every night for the past three weeks, all those parliamentary journalists who are not fortunate enough to work for the Daily Telegraph have been involved in an embarrassing routine. They wait on tenterhooks until 10pm to read the latest instalment of the Telegraph's revelations on MPs' expenses.

Then, with only a small window of time available to them, they must read, analyse and write their accounts of the fiddles, "mistakes" and circumlocutions of accused MPs to fill the later editions of their own newspapers.

The puns come easily to the lobby correspondents required to play catch-up and act as rewrite men for their Telegraph colleagues. "We're playing second fiddle," said one. "It's a flipping nightmare," said another.

There is a weary acceptance in the lobby - the relatively small group of accredited journalists who enjoy privileged access to Government spokespeople - that the daily agenda is being set by the Telegraph. But reactions are mixed.

While the majority believe that the Telegraph has handled its exclusive well - "it has been brilliant," said one rival - there is a groundswell of concern, especially among veterans, that the disclosures are either not always entirely accurate and fair, or that they are politically biased towards the Conservative party.

"It's very frustrating to follow up what's in the Telegraph," says The Guardian's political editor Patrick Wintour. "It is also very hard to discern the truth or otherwise of the allegations at speed. It can take a day or two to decide whether rules have genuinely been broken."

He was certainly not alone in holding this view but, as with every correspondent I spoke to, he is not in the least doubt about the severity of the charges against MPs and the consequent public hostility. All of them, incidentally, support the Telegraph's public-interest defence for having paid to obtain the information.

"If we had waited until the Commons published their expenses, all the addresses would have been redacted, so the business about flipping would not have been exposed," said The Guardian's Nick Watt.

Like other correspondents, he pointed to the fact that they have not merely acted as Telegraph stenographers. In follow-up stories, rival papers have pursued new angles.

There is a general agreement that the exposure of MPs' expenses is the biggest parliamentary story of their careers. The Daily Mirror's Kevin Maguire, co-author with Matthew Parris of a book entitled Great Parliamentary Scandals, believes the current scandal is in a different league to previous instances because they involved individuals.

"This time it's a mass slaughter," he says. "It's as if MPs are lined up in front of a machine-gun."

Like other journalists, he is not entirely without some sympathy for the politicians. But, again echoing the views of his colleagues, he vehemently denies that the story exposes shortcomings by the lobby. He points out that there have been instances before the Telegraph story in which MPs were found to be guilty over expenses, citing the cases of Caroline Spellman's payments to her nanny, Michael Trend's suspension for abusing the allowance system and Derek Conway losing the Tory whip for paying his sons at the public expense.

It is acknowledged that lobby correspondents do need to keep "on side" with MPs because they are valuable sources of stories.

But the idea that there is still some sort of cosy club, in which journalists get too close to MPs and fail to scrutinise their activities, no longer holds true, especially since the reform of the lobby that began under Tony Blair's communications chief Alastair Campbell. All briefings are posted on the Government website, thus reducing the amount of confidential information passed on by official spokespeople, as was common in the former off-the-record days.

It means that the lobby correspondents still rely on discreet conversations with their contacts to provide them with leaks and information.

So, as with all specialist journalists - be they covering crime, sport or, like me, the media - when stories break that involve a source, a value judgment has to be made. Is the story sufficiently important to run and therefore damage the relationship with the source?

To get around that problem, it is well-known that lobby journalists simply feed stories they find too hot to handle to their news desks so that they can be covered by a general news reporter, leaving them with clean hands. At least one dejected lobby correspondent believes that he is watching all his contacts disappear in front of his eyes. "They are being hung out to dry day after day," he says.

There is even a feeling that every correspondent will have to start anew after the next general election if reports are proved true about a mass resignation of standing MPs and the possibility of the public rejecting any candidate from the current besmirched parliament. In order to overcome that cataclysmic possibility, some MPs have been taking into their confidence lobby correspondents representing regional papers across Britain.

One journalist, Ian Wylie of the Manchester Evening News, spent most of last week sitting with MPs in the Commons as they produced to him copies of their receipts and claims in order to exonerate themselves.

"I felt a bit like a stern headmaster sat with a potentially very naughty schoolboy or schoolgirl facing detention," he says, adding that it was one of the strangest weeks he has experienced in almost 30 years of covering Westminster.

Strange indeed. And we have not heard the last of it because there are many questions yet to answer.

Is every MP as guilty as it now appears? Why did the Telegraph take the risk of buying the disc after a similar deal was rejected by The Times and The Sun? In the forefront of those trying to find out are, of course, lobby correspondents.