Telegraph paid £110,000 for MPs’ expenses leak
Finally, in its new duck-adorned book, the Telegraph reveals how much it paid to the source for the MPs’ expenses data: £110,000.
It doesn’t really sound that much (and much less than speculated figures) when you consider that the group pays Boris ‘chicken feed’ Johnson £250,000 a year for his weekly column.
Assistant editor Andrew Pierce, who has previously refused to disclose the details of the deal, defended the payment on this morning’s Radio 4 Today Programme:
“So far the tax payer has been reimbursed by MPs £500,000 and there’ll be more. We’ve got a much better commons as a result of it and I think the Telegraph took the decision – not lightly – but we were given 24 hours to read that file: it blew our minds when we saw what was in that file. It was money well spent in the public interest.”
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