Fall from grace

He is one of the most notorious players in the MPs expenses saga. When Anthony Steen told a radio interviewer that public outcry over his five-figure expense claim was born of ‘jealousy’ over his large house, his infamy was sealed.

When David Cameron got wind of the interview, given in May this year, the party leader warned the Conservative MP for Totnes: ‘one more slip up and you’re out’. In fact, Mr Steen had already decided to quit Westminster at the next election - not because he thought he had been wrong to claim £87,729 over four years for a variety of services including the care of 500 trees at his Devon property; rather because public reaction to his expenses had stung him so badly.

He has been vilified by the press and mauled by the electorate. But as his 36 years as a serving MP whimper to a close, Mr Steen claims he is a victim of ‘rough justice’.

Besides insisting that his expenses claim contained ‘nothing improper’, the 70-year-old former barrister argues his fate ill-behoves a man who has devoted his life to public service, working tirelessly to better the lives of the nation’s most deprived communities.

Does he have a point? Or are his efforts to put the record straight the misplaced actions of a desperate man?

It’s a bright autumn morning, and sunshine streams through the elaborate glass ceiling of Portcullis House, the imposing Westminster office block for MPs.

Its expansive lobby brims with MPs gossiping like pupils at the start of term - today is parliament’s first day back after recess. Mr Steen samples a blueberry cupcake from the canteen. ‘Not bad,’ he decides (though later he tells me that he prefers toasted teacakes).

If Mr Steen and his colleagues hoped the lengthy summer break would bury the expenses furore, they were wrong. This is also the day politicians took delivery of expense repayment demands from civil servant Sir Thomas Legg. ‘I wouldn’t tell you if I had,’ Mr Steen responds when asked whether Sir Thomas wrote to him. ‘I am not going to talk about it. I am merely going to say that very committed MPs are standing down because of this.’

Compassion

There is merit to Mr Steen’s claims that his decision to abandon national politics, not a consideration before the expenses row, robs parliament of a compassionate advocate for the dispossessed. ‘My history is one of social caring and community involvement,’ he says.

‘Service is ingrained in our way of life,’ he suggests of the comfortably-off Jewish family he was born into. ‘I didn’t feel that we should have all our successes removed, but I did think we had a moral duty to do things for those less fortunate than ourselves. That’s my basis for being an MP.’

In the early 1960s Mr Steen set up as a barrister in London’s Gray’s Inn, acting for tenants and landlords. It’s easy to scoff when, with plummy vowels and public school charm, he describes himself as ‘a poor man’s lawyer’.

Nevertheless, once a week the young barrister offered free advice to tenants. ‘At the Mary Ward Legal Advice Centre at Tavistock Place in London,’ he says. ‘And I had a pseudonym, which was Mr MY because barristers at that time couldn’t offer legal advice free.’

‘I acted for tenants who were being pursued by big developers for possession… [arguing] that they should be properly rehoused,’ he explains. ‘When dealing with landlords the deal as far as I’m concerned is you look after your tenants. I always had a written commitment that I would go into court on their behalf provided we did this for tenants.’

There are faint strains of the righteous indignation of his expenses defence when he adds: ‘I think that’s a very acceptable way of acting, and I think I did rather well on that.’

Simultaneously he was working as a youth club leader in East London. ‘I set up a nameless, committee-less organisation in London when I was 21 or 22 which was to recruit young people to give service to people less fortunate than themselves,’ he says. He then embarked on a four-year speaking tour of London schools, ending up, he says, with 15,000 young volunteers. The organisation now had a name: Task Force.

His efforts caught the attention of Labour prime minister Harold Wilson, who asked him to head up a national young volunteer force.

Des Wilson, founding director of Shelter, was a Task Force trustee. ‘Steen was idealistic - I am in no doubt he was genuine - energetic and had considerable charm. I always got on well with him, despite operating from a contrasting political position,’ he recalls. ‘I was sorry to hear of his recent decline and fall.’

Mr Steen himself has never been at ease with his political position, explaining that he nailed his colours to the Tory mast by chance. ‘Some people have said, why did I go to the Conservative Party, because really I’m a right-wing socialist. And the answer is: because [former Conservative foreign secretary and Task Force trustee] Selwyn Lloyd marched me off to Conservative Central Office and said to me I think you should be a Conservative MP.’ Had a Liberal got there first? ‘I would probably have become a Liberal.’

Social conscience

He describes an ideological mismatch which would later fail to impress Margaret Thatcher. ‘I don’t think my social conscience quite fitted… Although I had enormous admiration for Mrs Thatcher I think she had a little less of that admiration for me. I don’t necessarily think she appreciated compassionate Conservatism.’

Mr Steen’s critics would be surprised - maybe even put out - to learn there is plenty of evidence of that social conscience operating throughout his political career. In 1976 a 30-something Mr Steen was elected to Liverpool Wavertree, a constituency on the city outskirts. It contained Bellvale and Netherley, ‘two huge council estates’, occupied by the city’s former slum dwellers.

‘You know the pattern,’ he says, communicating a clear preference for mixed communities. ‘They didn’t have work, they were in terrible standard accommodation, there was nowhere for the kids to play, the school was a long way away and a lot of people were living on benefits through no fault of their own.’

With his wife Carolyn, a respected child psychologist, Mr Steen set up a swathe of community initiatives, including play schemes run by local mothers. ‘The job of the state is to help those people, support them, support themselves as well.’

A decade on, a boundary change forced him to seek a new seat, and he made the move to Devon. Housing remained a priority. In 2000 he launched a private members bill ‘to do with the size and scale of council estates’. It aimed to outlaw the building of estates of 25 homes or more without the necessary infrastructure. He says it’s the one law he wished he had passed.

Detractors will argue such comments trip easily off the tongue when coming from a privileged mouth. Perhaps. But Mr Steen hasn’t made life easy for himself. He admits to neglecting his family during three-and-a-half decades as an MP.

‘I’ve been working seven days a week for the last 35 years; last weekend was no exception with a surgery starting at 9.45 and ending at 3.45… and the whole of Sunday spent dictating, and signing and still more coming in,’ he says.

And he has won the respect of peers as chair of an all-party group of MPs tackling human trafficking, a role which has taken him patrolling London’s streets with the police, often at night. It is his passionate determination to address the trade in human beings that has kept him going through the pain of the expenses fallout, he says.

‘This is a social problem of European dimensions. It is not a social problem that Britain can cope with on its own,’ he says. ‘When I leave [parliament], I’m making preparations now to see if I can continue what I started here. I’m in touch with 28 parliaments; all the parliaments in the European Union. And I’m trying to set up similar parliamentary groups there.’

Clare Short, the independent MP who resigned from the Labour Party over the Iraq war, is vice-chair of the group. She is dismayed by Mr Steen’s fall from grace.

‘This man’s absolute dedication is being wiped out in the blink of an eye, and that seems wrong,’ she says with feeling. ‘He’s given a lifetime of public service and not been financially greedy. He gave that one stupid interview and he was picked on. People ought to know. They think, “Oh, he’s a monster.” He’s a very decent, hard-working MP who’s taken up very unpopular causes.’

Mr Steen is the first to admit public perceptions of him fail to tally with his achievements. ‘I’m quite sure they’d be surprised,’ he says.

But, as he limps into his last few months in office still smarting from the spring’s attacks, he knows he will do well to shake the public perception of him.

And Mr Steen cares what people think. In his outdated way, he requests ‘contact sheets’ of his photographs ‘so I can point out the ones I like’.

Unfortunately for Mr Steen, a lifetime of service a sound bite does not make. The thought clearly haunts him. ‘It was 28 minutes that interview. My indiscretion took 15 seconds.’

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