Press Complaints Commission upholds MP’s complaint over expense reporting

Here’s the main part of the ruling against the East Kilbride News:

The complaint was made by the MP for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow, Michael McCann. The article related to his Parliamentary expenses, which had been published following the release of the figures by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA). Mr McCann argued that a claim made in the article – that his expenses “include £1150 in hotel bills to fund his trips to Westminster, while he also claims for a rented property in central London” – was misleading because it suggested that he had claimed for hotel rooms at the same time as paying rent on a property. In fact, the hotel bills were incurred before he had the property.

The Commission found the claim in the article could have misled readers into believing that the claims for hotel bills and rent were made concurrently, rather than consecutively. The newspaper should have clarified this following the complaint. It failed to do so and the result was a breach of the Code.

The newspaper published the adjudication with due prominence last Wednesday. However, in doing so, it made some minor amendments to the text and failed to publish a proper reference to the PCC in the headline. As a result, it republished the adjudication in full today.

At the time of writing, and despite the original correction being published last week, the words which caused the complaint are still on the local newspaper’s website and in fact come out higher in a search for “Michael McCann” hotel than the PCC’s ruling.

UPDATE: The story has now been pulled from the newspaper’s website, though its headline and snippet are still currently appearing in search results. However, clicking on them or on the link above now takes you to the newspaper’s front page.

Read more by or more about , , or .
This entry was posted in News.
Advert

One Comment

Post a Comment

Lib Dem Voice welcomes comments from everyone but we ask you to be polite, to be on topic and to be who you say you are. You can read our comments policy in full here. Please respect it and all readers of the site.

To have your photo next to your comment please signup your email address with Gravatar.

Your email is never published. Required fields are marked *

*
*
Please complete the name of this site, Liberal Democrat ...?

Advert

Recent Comments

  • Tristan Ward
    If the party tacks to the left, I think we are toast. Why should anyone vote Lib Dem if they can vote Labour (for cautious "progressive") or Green (for wacky "...
  • Matt (Bristol)
    I think the specific problem you have as a party is that now both Labour and the Tories are turning away definitively from the consensus of policies that held f...
  • Geoff Reid
    Caron's final short paragraph should be taken with the utmost seriousness. After 63 years I am not going to resign my membership. I have invested a lot of my l...
  • David Raw
    According to the Daily Telegraph....... "Lib Dem leadership rivals ‘building war chests to oust Davey’ ............. "Daisy Cooper and Josh Babarinde have r...
  • David Warren
    My main concern is that although we have 72 MPs and the chance of a few more in target seats in the rest of the country we are recording derisory votes. It has ...