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.”