Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis challenged over 'biases' by Ashford MP Damian Green
12:19, 30 November 2022
updated: 13:53, 30 November 2022
Consumer rights champion Martin Lewis has been grilled over his "biases" by a Kent MP who likened him to a figure from Ancient Greece.
The campaigner, whose work in the guise of the Money Saving Expert has made him among the most trusted figures in the land, was appearing before a Parliamentary committee when he was questioned by Ashford MP Damian Green.
Mr Green described the financial guru as being "treated as an oracle" when interviewers quiz him during his frequent media appearances.
In Greek legend, the oracles were women chosen by the gods to deliver divine advice to mortals.
"You said, I think in answer to the first question, that you’re biased and that you accept that you have biases, that we all have biases," Mr Green said during yesterday's session of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport sub-committee.
"And yet, being interviewed, even when you're being interviewed as a campaigner, you are treated as an oracle by programmes - on the Today programme I've heard you being interviewed - and they don't challenge you in a way they would challenge any of us, or even more a government minister.
"Does that, in an odd way, worry you that everything you say is taken as, sort of, tablets of stone, even when you are expressing a bias?"
Mr Lewis responded by saying he never seeks to present himself as anything other than an advocate for consumers, a "very specific and declared agenda" he believes the public is able to understand.
He said: "I'm not sure I agree with the premise that I'm not challenged and I have felt challenged on many occasions when I've given interviews.
"However, remember my bias is declared and open, and I am introduced as somebody who comes from a consumer perspective.
"So if you take it within that perspective, people know what I'm arguing."
Mr Lewis launched his Money Saving Expert brand - now the UK's biggest consumer advice website - in 2003 and he sold the site in 2012 for a sum believed to be in the region of £87 million.
"My definition of bias is bias on a pro-consumer basis," he told MPs during a session examining misinformation and trusted voices
"I'm coming from a very specific and declared agenda.
“So I'm not sure what the challenge necessarily is on that, apart from to say, 'well, you're not representing business and the economy'.
“Well, I'm not. I'm not suggesting I would. So, I'm slightly struggling with what you're saying."
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