Lynne Featherstone

So – the House of Commons Commission stuffs up, puts me on a list of MPs who have had to pay back monies. I get an email from the Telegraph almost immediately asking me to clarify the repayment! Having not had to pay back anything because I haven’t done anything wrong (and the Telegraph should know as they crawled over my expenses early in the scandal and declared me a ‘saint’), I was furious.

What happened was that a reimbursement from a supplier got included for some reason in the list of MPs paying back expense claims. The House authorities apologised, said they had made an error and would remove me from the list and send me an email confirming their error.

I emailed the ‘clarification’ to the Telegraph and they emailed back wishing me a good weekend. Phew – though all sorted too late to stop the mistake appearing in print in The Times. But at least The Telegraph checked and didn’t run the wrong story!