United Kingdom parliamentary expenses scandal lodged against the High Court ruling, and the requested details were made public on 23 May 2008. Prior to "The Daily Telegraph"'s revelations in May and June 2009 and the official publication of expenses claims in June 2009, and during the Freedom of Information cases, there were a variety of exposés that covered the controversial John Lewis List (a list considered to indicate amounts that could be claimed without question) and individual MPs’ expenses claims. Examples of items publicised prior to the May 2009 disclosures included: In May 2009, two months prior to the official disclosure of full expenses claims,
United Kingdom parliamentary expenses scandal were published over an extended period of time, with the focus moving to different MPs daily. As a result, there was significant pressure on MPs who did not know whether, and for what, they would be discussed, as well as a general deepening hostility that grew over a relatively long period. On 22 May 2009 Nadine Dorries, the Conservative MP for Mid Bedfordshire went on record in saying that many of her colleagues "feared a suicide" and that MPs were "beginning to crack". She likened the atmosphere in Westminster to that surrounding Senator Joseph McCarthy's "witch hunts" of suspected Communists