The Metropolitan Police has confirmed it is ending its investigation into who leaked politicians' expenses information to the media.

The Met's Economic and Specialist Crime Command met lawyers from the Crown Prosecution Service yesterday to discuss misuse of Parliamentary expenses. The group will meet again, but for now there has been no decision to start an investigation.

The Met said: "We have considered a range of offences and although the leak of documents is not something that the MPS(Met Police Service) would condone, we have looked at the likelihood of a successful prosecution and whether a prosecution is appropriate given other potential sanctions that might be available."

The Met explained the decision: "The public interest defence would be likely to prove a significant hurdle." Police noted that the documents were not related to national security, and were mainly due to be released anyway.

It is believed that an ex-SAS man, John Wick, acted as middleman in selling the discs on.

Although much of the information was due to be released anyway the issue of "flipping" - switching your main residence so as to claim for maintenance and improvements - was only revealed because the uncensored forms were released.

After watching this government's repeated failure to look after our private data, it is hard to feel sympathy when information about how they pissed our money up the wall is leaked.

In not entirely unrelated news, the Speaker of the House Michael Martin has resigned. In an extremely brief statement Martin said the House was at its best when united, and in order to maintain that unity he would relinquish the post of speaker.

He quits 21 June, and there will be an election for a new speaker on 22 June. ®

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