Posts tagged MPs’ expenses

When I was a regular court reporter in Queen Victoria’s day we took contempt of court seriously. Some papers today ought to refresh their memories

A wholesome public figure whom we all know said in my hearing this week “there’s a crisis of public life”. By that he meant that the politics of relentless scrutiny, which prefers to play the man, not the ball, is driving good people out of responsible positions.

That’s fine if you want “monks or millionaires” running the country, he said. I didn’t give it further thought until I opened this morning’s papers and saw three MPs and a Tory peer all over some front pages.

They were all appearing at Westminster magistrates court on expenses-related charges. Guilty? I don’t know and nor do you, though we both probably have views. That’s my point.

The Daily Mail’s splash headline is “‘Thieves’ who think they’re above the law”. Note those delicate quotation marks around “thieves”. It’s a perfunctory nod to the law, which requires court reports to reflect the proper presumption of innocence, even for rapists, child molesters and politicians.

When I was a regular court reporter, under Queen Victoria, we took it seriously. Woe betide papers that didn’t.

But in 2010 the Mail’s strap line gives the game away. “With brazen cynicism, three Labour MPs [where's that Tory peer gone, I ask myself?] charged with expenses fraud argue a court has no right to put them on trial.”

Actually it’s not quite brazen cynicism. But it’s certainly prejudicial to say so in a court report. On radio, TV and in print there was plenty more. Some papers, including this one, sent their sketchwriters.

Thus my old friend, Simon Hoggart, has written an uncharacteristically testy piece that takes a passing swipe at costly and overdue renovation work at the Palace of Westminster.

You would never know from the article that the authorities have just spent millions renovating the Commons press gallery where we all work rent-free. The office under Big Ben where Simon and I have worked for years in Stygian darkness now has a window, two actually. Daylight at last! Few reporters wanted the upgrade; we were happy in our squalor. Few MPs wanted to upgrade us. Officialdom and our old mate ‘ealth and safety drove the project.

Back to the magistrates court. Surely, we have spent a lot of the past week debating the need to ensure that Jon Venables gets a fair trial for whatever offence he’s allegedly committed under whatever name he lives under? The mob is in full cry over him too and his rights deserve defending.

But they have been abused, roundly so by great swathes of reporting – as Simon Jenkins also pointed out this week. It happens all the time. Will anything be done about it? I doubt it, and there’s an election coming.

The politicians are afraid of the press, which can do truly scary things to them. I don’t need to remind Guardian regulars about the News of the World phone-hacking, far more extensive than admitted, as becomes clearer by the week.

When Nick Davies and Rob Evans reported that the NoW had paid out another £1m to buy off Max Clifford’s phone-hacking law suit – not a man to cross is Max – how many other papers picked up the report? None that I saw.

It didn’t suit them, as it would have if an MP had been – allegedly – drunk at the wheel and they’d been tipped off for money by a copper.

Why not? Plenty blag for information too, so the information commissioner concluded. You won’t have read much about that either. Professor Brian Cathcart explained it well in MediaGuardian the other day.

And while we’re on the subject, there’s another little report in today’s Guardian which you might usefully read. Facebook is threatening to sue the Mail for tweaking a scary piece written by Mark Williams-Thomas, an ex-police detective specialising in paedophile cases.

He’d (allegedly) told the paper that the social network on which he’d posed as a teenage girl – and been inundated with dirty propositions – was not Facebook, but they said it was anyway. It fitted the story they were writing about poor Ashleigh Hall.

That happens a lot too; take my word for it. Make the facts fit the story. But it needn’t happen. In many years at the Guardian I can only recall one instance of a “fact” (which later proved untrue) being inserted late at night against the advice of the reporter whose name was on the story. There was a big fuss afterwards.

So let’s go easy on unconvicted MPs once they’ve been charged, on Venables too. Due process matters. And don’t tell me that applies to Tony Blair’s deficient handling of the Iraq war, as demonstrated (again) by the Chilcot inquiry. I agree.

But before you get too smug read this. It’s a rare take on the Iraq war by a rare kind of witness. Nigel Biggar is regius professor of moral and pastoral theology at Oxford and he marshals a powerful case against the “Bliar Blair’s illegal and murderous war” brigade.

Whether or not Biggar knows what he’s doing raising his head above the parapet is another matter. Doesn’t he know what happens to people in public life who cross the prejudices of the Daily Beast?

If readers in the quiet streets of north Oxford hear unusual noises just before dawn it may be a freelance trawling through the Biggar family bins on behalf of the Beast. And change your mobile phone number, Prof.

Good luck.