Product Description

The Daily Telegraph’s expose of MPs' expenses, which dominated the news agenda for more than six weeks, made history by leading to the resignation of the Speaker and several Cabinet ministers, as well as taking Gordon Brown to the very brink of losing his grip on power.

It is a story which began in the unlikely setting of a Chilean vineyard, when Robert Winnett, the paper’s deputy political editor, first learnt from Gordon Brown's controversial aide Damian McBride, that a disk containing details of every MP's expense claims may have been obtained by a whistleblower.

Winnett was destined to become the reporter who would secure the disc and its contents for his newspaper, landing what has been described by some commentators as "the political scoop of the century". Together with Gordon Rayner, Winnett ran a team of reporters who pored through more than a million expenses documents. Astonishing details began to emerge: Gordon Brown's peculiar cleaning arrangements; Oliver Letwin's tennis court; Sir Peter Viggers' duck house; Douglas Hogg's £2,200 bill for cleaning his moat; house flipping and tax dodging; and the suggestion of deliberate fraud.

No Expenses Spared is the riveting inside story of the biggest political scandal to hit Parliament for a generation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8029 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-25
• Released on: 2009-09-25
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

About the Author
Robert Winnett is the deputy political editor of the Daily Telegraph. During his 11-year career on Fleet Street, which started at the Sunday Times, he has been behind some of the country’s biggest political scoops including exposing the cash-for honours scandal under Tony Blair and Derek Conway’s controversial employment of his sons.

He has been short-listed for three “scoop of the year” awards at the British Press Awards and has won other prizes for his work. He has worked on some of the biggest stories including the global credit crunch and several British elections.

Gordon Rayner is Chief Reporter of the Daily Telegraph, a position he has held since joining the newspaper in 2007. He began his career at the Banbury Guardian before moving on to the Sun and later the Daily Mail, where he helped uncover one of the biggest scandals of Tony Blair's premiership by revealing the e-mails between Cherie Blair and the fraudster Peter Foster which proved No.10 had lied over the "Cheriegate" affair.

During his 14 years on national newspapers, Gordon has reported from more than 20 countries and covered many of the biggest stories of recent years, including the death of Princess Diana, the trial of Harold Shipman, the Soham murders, the 7/7 suicide bombings and the ongoing financial crisis.

Customer Reviews

thrilling!
Unlike the previous reviewer I've actually just started to read this. Really exciting. Reminds me of State of Play or All the President's Men. I don't regularly read the Telegraph and probably never will be a convert to that newspaper but last summer these guys did us all a massive favour in brilliantly highlighting the total lack of respect a large number of our MP's had for the tax payer.

I'm about halfway through and this reads like a thriller - exciting and jaw dropping. You have to keep pinching yourself to remember that this actually really happened only a few short months ago.

Essential, gripping pre-election reading
I've little to add to the other five star reviews except to say that I think that far from carping about the fact that payment was made for the original CD, the whistleblower should be put up for an OBE. Ditto the Telegraph journalists. It is an unputdownable account of what happened and I hope that it serves to keep the scale and nature of the MPs' misdeeds in the public eye at election time. I suspect that it is also a book which will continue to be read by students of history and politics for many years to come. I've found myself laughing out loud in some places of the book at the MPs' cheek. In my opinion it should be filmed as well.

gripping read - great subject matter
The book arrived yesterday, I read it cover to cover, finished it today, un-putdownable
It's an excellent and entertaining read on several levels:

- the subject matter, a good reference in case we've all forgotten about how all the MPs were paid so much but so many of them were greedy and some of their activities are currently the subject of police investigation

- a reminder of how some MPs seemed to think that they were above it all (all parties) and that it was an affront for anyone to challenge them

- a reminder of how the different political parties reacted

then there's Micheal Martin...

However, the gripping tale told is one of how the Telegraph dealt with the situation, providing rich context and background detail, including the sense of excitement and fear: the fears of being hoaxed, the fears of being prosecuted, the fears of other newspapers stealing their thunder or running spoilers. The narrative concerning the lives of the reporters and editors before during and after around the publication of MPs expenses reads very authentically, with only an occasional sense of the authors having reached for the dictionary of superlative words and phrases.

If you've seen the BBC six parter "State of Play" then this book describes a real life situation that could be called "State of Play 2". Actually, so "State of Play 2" (intended as a compliment) that if you hadn't been there watching the story unfold you might have thought the book were a work of fiction. It's fascinating, a great read.

The book even opens with a generous nod to the journalist (Heather Brooke) that had spent several years grinding away at this issue with repeated FOI requests only to have the story taken away from her by the newspaper getting the disc. (I heard her speak at recent event in London, she displayed admirably slight chagrin at having been scooped).

You will enjoy every page. One to join "The Triumph of the Political Class" and "Taking Liberties"