The Foul Stench of Labour Sleaze

Back in the 1990’s at the end of John Major’s premiership, much was made of so-called “Tory Sleaze”. A few Conservative MP were (rightly) pilloried for accepting cash for asking questions in the House of Commons. Yes, ASKING questions. The sums were very small, around £1-3,000 per question but the whole issue became known as “Cash for Questions”. It was seen as symptomatic of the terminal decline of the Conservative period of Government and helped to ensure the landslide defeat in 1997.

In came the new Labour administration with a young and fresh faced Prime Minister Tony Blair who promised to be “whiter than white” when it came to the standards observed in public office. This was quickly blemished by the Bernie Ecclestone affair when Labour were found to have taken a donation of £1m into the party at around the same time as Ecclestone’s Formula 1 motor racing empire was exempted from legislation to ban tobacco advertising. But the impression stuck that Tories were sleazy and Labour was run by “a pretty straight sort of guy” and therefore could be trusted.

An under-cover Sunday Times investigation has blown the last vestiges of this impression out of the water today with the finding that Labour Peers were prepared to accept sums of up to £120,000 to change laws to benefit individual businessmen. The article names the four Labour peers as Lord Truscott (a DBERR minister), Lord Taylor of Blackburn, Lord Moonie and Lord Snape. A variety of other party’s peers either did not return the Times’ calls or refused to co-operate once they knew the terms. So this was not just asking a question, it is actually Labour peers agreeing to take money to change laws that affect all of the rest of us.

The House of Lords Code of Conduct states that peers ‘must never accept any financial inducement as an incentive or reward for exercising parliamentary influence’ and the chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, Sir Christopher Kelly said: ‘I understand that the Leader of the Lords is investigating and I will await the outcome of that investigation to see whether this is an area the Committee needs to look at further.’

This is very serious for Labour. It has the smell of a decaying administration about it but also the sight of Labour politicians profiteering at a time when the country is dire economic straights is potentially deadly. The Conservatives should not be afraid to keep up the pressure on this matter, in the same way that Labour did in the run up to 1997.

UPDATE: It has been suggested to me that in order to be impartial I should have included the fact that the Lib Dem General Election central campaign in 2005 was 50% funded by the convicted fraudster Michael Brown who donated £2.4m of other people’s money to the party.