Trusts and Convictions
To secure a conviction the detectives will need to find hard evidence that honours were an inducement for donations to the city academies or to the making of loans to the Labour party. Not an incredibly difficult thing to do since we have the evidence of Des Smith, a former council member of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSA Trust), which helps the government to recruit sponsors for Blair's academies. He told an undercover Sunday Times reporter that big financial donations to help set up the schools would guarantee a gong. He put it plainly "the prime minister's office would recommend someone like [the donor] for an OBE, a CBE or a knighthood".Asked if this would be just for getting involved in the academies, he responded: "Yes ... they call them services to education. I would say to [the SSA Trust] office that we've got to start writing to the prime minister's office... you could go to the House of Lords". It is a fact that donors to the Labour party who also supported Blair's flagship policy, through the SSA Trust, got honours. Blair got a double whammy, he got cash for the party as well as financial support for a controversial policy. By disguising the donation to the party as a loan the honour could be respectably awarded for "services to education" without anyone knowing about the bung to the party made through Downing Street. The SSA Trust provided camouflage. When exposed by the Sunday Times Des Smith recanted everything, "confessed" his naive errors, then disappeared back to teaching.
Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925. Section 1 (1)
If any person accepts, obtains or agrees to accept or obtain from any person, for himself or for any other person, or for any purpose, any gift, money or valuable consideration as an inducement or reward for procuring or assisting or endeavouring to procure the grant of a dignity or title of honour to any person or otherwise in connection with such a grant, he shall be guilty of a misdemeanour.
Des Smith's admission is prima facie evidence of what we all know. If you wanted a peerage, a seven-figure loan to the Labour party and the same again donated to a city academy obtained it. Levy induced it. He covertly procured the money for the Labour party. The public donations were the cover story. Take the case of Sir David Garrard, a city academy backer whose £2 million loan to the party was followed by the Prime Minister nominating him as a working peer. Was it really a coincidence? If it was nothing to be ashamed of, why did they tell donors not to openly donate the cash as they intended, but to lend it secretly? If it was honest, why did they mislead the Lord's Appointment Commission about the true nature of the financial relationship between Blair's nominees and the Labour Party?
Levy loves trusts, he did a lot of his music business through tax efficient offshore trusts. In 1995 he set up the Labour Leader's Office Fund "blind" trust to finance Blair's private office. Theoretically it was a blind trust, but we now know that it was not so blind that donors did not get peerages. Such unaccountable and unblind trusts were rightly banned in 2000 under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act. David Osler in Labour Party Plc: New Labour as a Party of Business estimates that before the law tightened things up £2.5 million was raised for Blair's office through the trust - outside the Labour party's structures. We know that at least two donors to the "blind" trust subsequently got peerages - Bob Gavron and Alex Bernstein. Other peers are suspected of having made donations to Blair's blind trust. A pattern for the future was set, Levy lands the donors to a trust, Blair makes coincidental recommendations, peerages arrive in the post.A pattern of behaviour is not proof, nor will circumstantial evidence be enough. What the police investigators will need is documentary evidence, they will need, forinstance, to look at the papers provided to the Lord's Appointments Commission, do they contain falsehoods? Who assisted in that and in doing so attempted to procure the grant of an honour. Did those people have any dealings with donors? Downing Street advisers' appointments diaries should make interesting reading. Who did Des Smith mean when he referred to the "the prime minister's office"?
Guido understands that the Specialist Crime Directorate's* Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur is treading very carefully with the investigation. Officers led by Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Yates need to seize the diaries of key people quickly before they get "mislaid". If the diaries show that a donor met anyone involved in the process of procuring honours, than clearly both the donor and the procuror will have to be questioned. Merely writing letters to those concerned requesting to talk to them next month is not good enough - the police need to go in to Downing Street and get the evidence now.
17 comments:
Not going to happen though is it?
Bliars placeman in the Met, his namessake, the P.C. P.C. will do his duty, there will be a half baked investigation and finally a statement to the effect that no wrong was done.
Crooks.
Excellent post Guido- may I urge you to provide continuing public guidance for the PC PC's further investigations. In due course we will need a pre-hindsight record of what they should have been doing.
Have you ever thought of joining up?
from the Times today reporting Aldridge's appointment to a Brown pet project weeks after making the secret loan
"Gordon did not know anything about the loans. He has never even met Rod Aldridge.”
C'mon Guido prove that assertion wrong!! there must be a photo somewhere
In the same piece it says detectives will interview Levy within 3 weeks. I confidently expect all diaries e-mails and log files to have been accidentally wiped in a freak electro-magnetic storm over Downing St.
Harriet Harman couldn't make Question Time last night and Tony Benn had to be called in at the last minute (it was obviously past his bedtime as the camera caught him yawning a few times). I'm sure the withdrawl had nothing to do with all this loans business. Certainly not.
no, and it didn't go unmentioned in the programme either!
Made for a better QT though, I'd say.
Rarely agree with a word that Benn says, but I'd sooner listen to him than Harman anyday.
he has never even had a meeting with Mr Aldridge
sorry I should have added
Gordon Brown's spokesman speaking to the Telegraph says
"he has never even had a meeting with Mr Aldridge"
Obviously claiming the head of a big outsourcing firm hadn't ever met the man who micromanages the purse strings wasn't going to stand up to any scrutiny.
This will now be amended to "hasn't ever discussed party finances" and so on until the whole sorry mess comes out in 5 years time in TBs memoirs
Guido
Perhaps a better use of your undoubted investigative talents might be to find out why the tory party is being so coy about it's sources of loans and why DC is steering clear of the whole subject.
The only way to finally get rid of any suspicion of honours / places in the house of lords being bought is to abolish the honours system ( unlikely unfortunately ) and make the upper chamber elected only ( which now seems a likely prospect ). All through history political parties have (mis)used the honours system to reward their supporters it is nothing new despite the gasps of mock horror in the press at the moment, the gentlemen of the press have benefited from this as much as any others eg Sir Larry Lamb, Baron Wyatt of Weeford etc etc . Whilst this does not excuse the overiding of democratically agreed Labour party policy by No 10 and the serious political misjudgement that was behind it, it is in fact the way British politics has been run for a long time.
The way foward from here must be for all parties to come clean over their past sources of funding however embarassing this might be ( perhaps CCHQ are worried about recieving visits from plod too ) and to ensure that in future all sources of funding are open to public scrutiny.
Cameron didn't organise a single peerage.
Blair has appointed 292 peers.
The LibDems and Tories have undoubtedly been up to it as well. Even the UUP has been at it. Nevertheless Guido is not buying this "they're all at it" defence.
Tony Blair makes the recommendations. Downing Street has been procuring Lordships for Loans, not Cameron or Ming.
Every country has honours of some sortwhether its knighthoods and Lordships or The Order of Tireless Tractor Builders Tractor (Third Class).
The trick isn't abolition, it will be to seperate political office (seat in the Lords) from the honours. Once they are simply a nice gong and maybe a title for the missus, will people be so ready to stump up the dosh for them? Will anybody care if they do?
RM
Remittance man:The trick isn't abolition, it will be to seperate political office (seat in the Lords) from the honours. Once they are simply a nice gong and maybe a title for the missus, will people be so ready to stump up the dosh for them? Will anybody care if they do?
From memory, Blair's working peers have a generally bad attendance record, which is why he still has trouble getting measures through the Lords even though he's packed it with pals. So, on that basis, yes there would still be a market for a voteless gong.
Actually - might be worth Guido researching whether Blair's Buddies have provided or obtained value for money for their peerages. What is the productivity of a "working" peer?
Mr Norton,
Point taken. I have argued elsewhere that the whole honours thing should be removed from political control altogether, maybe a commission of existing honours holders reporting directly to HMQ with a directive only to nominate those who have genuinely contributed something to Britain.
As to reforming the Lords, we just need to find a way to make it representative without all the problems of cronyism, influence peddling, patronage and, not least, the overwhelming urge of all elected officials to pander to the lowest common electoral denominator.
The ideal of the second chamber is a place that reviews, dispassionately, bills passed by the lower house (which is rife with all of the above mentioned vices).
How we do that I'm not sure, but somehow I'm sure the pols in the Commons will bugger it up if we're not careful.
RM
As to reforming the Lords, we just need to find a way to make it representative without all the problems of cronyism,
Lloyd George had to hold two elections in 1910 before the King would agree to create peers..............yet in the era of universal suffrage the Voters are not consulted, no referendum, no discussion.
The insiders just amend the Constitution at will, taking control of policing, passing an Enabling Act,messing with the Lords.
Time to repeal the Parliament Acts and allow the Upper House to reject Money Bills
Yes, and while we're at it let's allow the unelected, hereditary, head of state to dismiss the government, in a Gough Whitlam stylee.
No thanks.
BJ,
Someone's gotta have the ultimate say, so why not the Queen? The last time any monarch dsiolved parliament, except at the request of the PM was just before the Civil War. The last time a monarch refused to sign a law into existence was in 1702. Quite frankly, given the fact that we have had some pretty stupid governments in the last three hundred years this illustrates a great deal of restraint and respect for the democratic process.
Oh, and before you wheel out the Goff Whitlam story, his government was disolved by the Governor General of Australia who informed the Queen only after the fact. By the 70's GG's were chosen in Canberra not London. The de facto Oz head of state kicked out the Oz government.
RM
I see that Des Smith has been arrested by the MET in connection with this!
Hereditary peers are a much, much better system for a second house than what's currently going on in the UK. As a Canadian, I've too much experience with an appointed second house. People aren't in general buying a seat, rather Senate seats (aka working peers) are handed out to party functionnaries, failed candidates, and drinking buddies.
Comparing the effectiveness and reasonableness of the Hereditary Peers to curent Working Peers, US Senate, Canadian Senate and Australian Senate, I say that the Hereditary Peerage system wins hands down. You get a body that is representative but also insulated from day to day blows of politics.
A Hereditary house is more likely to dampen the extremes created by certain elected mps. The government can create peers to pass legislation if necessary, but it is going to be more careful with handing out perpetual votes. It also provides a useful cudgel for a relatively decent labourite to keep his backbench in line. Were that Tony was more reticent about constitutional change and that the Parliaments Act was revoked.
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