A PR boss who helped expose the MPs' expenses scandal has told how he risked professional ruin because he wanted to help the country.

Henry Gewanter, of Chiswick, arranged for the Daily Telegraph to land the exclusive scoop after an associate asked him to help House of Commons whistle-blowers make the information public.

Mr Gewanter, managing director of Positive Profile, said: “As soon as he told me what they had, which was every receipt from every MP from every party going back five years, I knew we were handling dynamite.

“I knew it would be a huge story, I knew it woud be tremendously powerful when it got into the public domain.”

He said he was not paid to handle the story, but did it because he believed some MPs' behaviour had been “absolutely disgraceful”.

He added: “It’s quite clear it was a huge risk we were running, but I just thought it was so important I had to do it anyway.

“I was very careful, I never actually handled the data. I knew what it contained but I did not see it or touch it at any point.

“There were two main considerations in getting this job done, the first was to protect the sources of the information, and the second was to protect the security of the data.

“It never came into this company... the last thing I wanted was for them to arrest me when I had the data in my pocket.”

Mr Gewanter, who said he was “thrilled” with the shake-up the story had caused, attended a public debate on parliamentary expenses in Chiswick Town Hall last Thursday, and was surprised Hounslow MPs Alan and Ann Keen did not turn up to defend their second home allowance claims.

He said: “We all commute to work every day to our jobs, but they don’t seem to need to do that, they seem to need a nice place in central London.

“Why are we funding a property portfolio for these people? Taking advantage of this system to build up a property portfolio is not what being an MP is about.

“In my mind that’s not strictly in the spirit of what expenses should be for, and it’s certainly not wholly necessary to do your daytime job. They could just take the Tube like everybody else.

“We all do it every day, why are they so special?”

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