Telegraph editor is adamant he did the right thing over expenses

It was interesting to hear Will Lewis' comments yesterday on the Telegraph's exposure of MP's expenses.

The Telegraph's editor clearly believes that his paper has performed a public good by making Parliament more open and giving the electorate the chance to make a clean sweep with the old practices and denying that their publication has undermined democracy.

For my mind there have been two problems in the coverage.Firstly that there was no differentiation between claims that were accepted or rejected.Secondly that the paper has been selective in the members that it has targeted.

In particular the coverage over the first weekend which concentrated on the Labour party.

This gave the weekend papers time to mull over the implications from only one side of the political spectrum.It turned out that many Tory claims were far more outrageous than those of the Labour party.

Whatever the implications of the paper's actions,and its ramifications will be with us for many years,Lewis has set a precedent in publishing.