MPs face expenses Groundhog Day

Why have they put themselves through this pain all over again? Why bother blacking out the details we already know thanks to the Telegraph’s Expenses Files revelations? It’s a mystery. Some claim the Commons authorities turned down pleas from MPs for the material to be released in its raw state, the argument being that the information belongs to the Commons and it has a corporate data protection responsibility. But what’s clear is that MPs have gone even further by pulling entire pages – dozens of them – from their records. We castigate Tony Blair for shredding his files, but is that much worse than those MPs who have deleted swathes of information from their records?

There will be plenty of new details out tomorrow – Shaun Woodward’s £18 umbrella, Pat McFadden’s satellite TV subscription, Yvette Cooper’s cost of travelling without a rail ticket, alan Johnson’s £8200 paper folding machine, Ed Balls’ £200 on 500 posters of himself, Ed miliband’s recordings of himself (£35.36). David Cameron is repaying almost £1000 he ‘over-claimed’. Today’s publication suggests we are back to square one when it comes to transparency. When the Telegraph launched its investigation MPs were quick to assure us that it would all be published this summer anyway. How dishonest that sounds now. The scale of deception – I fear there is no other word for it, whatever the reasons behind it – is extraordinary, from backbenchers right up to the Cabinet and the Prime Minister himself. Vanity? Mendacity? Fear? Whatever, it ain’t pretty.