Culture Secretary Apologises : End of Story?

April 04, 2014, 2:37 PM GMT+0

John Humphrys asks: should Maria Miller's apology to the House of Commons suffice?

Maria Miller, the Culture Secretary, came to the House of Commons on Thursday to apologise for her handling of her expense claims. She was obliged to do so by the Commons’ Committee on Standards. Her apology lasted thirty seconds. Her critics say it was derisory and her treatment by the committee too lenient. Some say she should resign. But the matter has also raised the festering issue of the regulation of the press. The editor of the paper that first ran the story told me that he was threatened by government figures. So should Mrs Miller’s brief apology be the end of the story?

The issue of Mrs Miller’s expenses was first raised at the end of 2012 by the Daily Telegraph, the paper that had first leaked details of MPs’ expenses in the last Parliament and caused a huge scandal to erupt. It ran a story questioning the arrangements she had made between 2005 and 2009 concerning her two houses: one in London, in which her elderly parents lived, and one in her Basingstoke constituency. The Labour MP, John Mann, called for an inquiry into whether she had made false claims and enjoyed unjustified financial benefit at the taxpayers’ expense.

This inquiry was conducted by the Parliamentary Commissioner of Standards, whose job is simply to ascertain the facts. It is then the responsibility of the House of Commons Committee on Standards to decide what action, if any, should follow.

The Commissioner cleared Mrs Miller of making false claims, in particular in relation to which of her houses should have been regarded as her primary residence, but concluded that she had over-claimed £45,000 with respect to mortgage interest payments and council tax. The committee concluded that neither she nor her parents had benefited financially but that she should repay some of the over-claimed money, namely £5,800.

The committee, however, was scathing about the way she had cooperated with the inquiry, accusing her of approaching it in a narrowly ‘legalistic’ way and submitting ‘incomplete’ evidence. Their report said: ‘If the commissioner had been able swiftly to establish the facts relating to Mrs Miller’s mortgages … this might have been a relatively minor matter. Mrs Miller has also breached the code of conduct by her attitude to this inquiry. This is more serious.’ The committee asked her to apologise.

Her boss, the Prime Minister, expressed his own view. He said: ‘If we look at this report, yes of course these issues do matter – but she was cleared of the original allegation made against her. An overpayment was found which she is going to pay back. She’ll make a full apology, and I think people should leave it at that.’

Mrs Miller made her ‘full apology’ on Thursday afternoon. It lasted thirty-one seconds. It did not satisfy her critics. John Mann said: ‘Frankly, if you obstruct, deliberately and calculatedly, a parliamentary inquiry by the independent commissioner into your behaviour and have to apologise to Parliament for doing so, how can you possibly remain in the Cabinet, running the country?’

Her Liberal Democrat colleague, Vince Cable, came to her defence. He said that if she had been shown to have done anything wrong, she would have had to go, but that as this was not the case, there was no need for her to resign. But others have criticised the committee for letting her off too lightly. The former Labour cabinet minister, Peter Hain, said he thought it had treated her ‘leniently’. Others, outside parliament, have dismissed this leniency as a case of MPs ‘marking their own homework’.

This case might have been simply an example of how politics usually works. Opponents attack, supporters defend and the public is left to come to their own, probably rather cynical, conclusion. But there is a further dimension to this particular case.

Maria Miller, as Culture Secretary, has responsibility for the media. At the time the issue of her expenses came to light controversy was raging over the future of press regulation, following the phone-hacking scandal and the report of the Leveson Inquiry. A senior journalist claims the two were very much linked.

Tony Gallagher was the editor of the Telegraph at the time. He told me on Today that his paper had come under pressure from the government over the story about Mrs Miller’s expenses and that he had felt ‘threatened’. Specifically, he alleges that Mrs Miller’s special advisor had contacted the reporter covering the story, implicitly making a link with ongoing discussions about Leveson, and that he himself had been phoned by Craig Oliver, No 10’s director of communications, about it.

Mr Gallagher said: ‘I got a call from Craig Oliver pointing out that she [Maria Miller] is looking at Leveson’. Referring also to the special advisor’s call, he said: ‘These seem to be examples of an attempt to lean on a newspaper and prevent it going about its legitimate business’. Mr Gallagher clearly felt that the government was trying to link the two issues with the implication that if he carried on with the expenses story the outcome, in relation to press regulation, would be worse for the paper.

In Mr Gallagher’s view the episode shows why politicians should have no role in press regulation, even the arms-length one recommended by Leveson. He said: ‘Maria Miller provides a cast-iron example of why politicians should have no power on the press. Bear in mind this story came to light just after the Leveson Inquiry was published, and bear in mind the menacing way the minister, her special advisor and Downing Street reacted to that story, and threatened me, the newspaper and the reporter in question. It’s actually a clear example of why MPs and politicians in general should have no locus over a free press. Ironically you would know nothing about this story were it not for a free press.’

Craig Oliver denies that he put pressure on Mr Gallagher in the way he alleges. He said: ‘It is utterly false of Tony Gallagher to suggest he was threatened over Leveson by me in any way. My conversation with him was about the inappropriate door-stepping of an elderly man [Mrs Miller’s father].’

  • What, then, are we to make of all this?
  • Do you think Mrs Miller has been let off too lightly or not?
  • Do you think her apology was adequate?
  • Do you think it is fair to accuse MPs of ‘marking their own homework’, or do you think the current system of investigating and punishing MPs for alleged misdemeanours is adequate?
  • Do you think the government did try to lean on the Telegraph about the story, linking it to the discussions about Leveson, or not?
  • And where does it leave you in regard to press regulation?
  • What role, if any, should politicians have in it?

Let us know your views.