Two former foreign secretaries are facing accusations that they were prepared to use their positions and contacts to benefit a private company in return for payments of thousands of pounds.
Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind have been named in an undercover investigation by the Daily Telegraph and Channel 4 Dispatches. Both men have strongly denied any wrongdoing.
The two senior MPs were secretly filmed by reporters claiming to represent a Hong Kong-based communications agency called PMR which was seeking to hire senior British politicians to join its advisory board.
At one meeting, Mr Straw is said to have described how he operated "under the radar" to use his influence to change European Union rules on behalf of a commodity firm which paid him £60,000 a year.
He was also said to have claimed to have used "charm and menace" to convince the Ukrainian prime minister to change laws on behalf of the same firm.
The meetings to discuss possible consultancy work were said to have taken place in his House of Commons office - a potential breach of Commons rules.
Sir Malcolm, who chairs the parliamentary committee which oversees Britain's intelligence agencies, was said to have claimed that he could arrange "useful access" to every British ambassador in the world because of his status.
While members of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords have been caught up in so-called "cash-for-access" scandals in recent years, Mr Straw and Sir Malcolm are by far the most prominent figures to face such claims.
A Labour Party spokesman said: "We have seen the disturbing allegations against Jack Straw in the Daily Telegraph. The chief whip has spoken to Jack Straw.
"He has agreed to refer himself to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and in the meantime he has agreed the best course of action is to suspend himself from the parliamentary Labour Party."
A Downing Street source said: "Sir Malcolm Rifkind has referred himself to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards."
In the course of the investigation, the Telegraph/Dispatches team contacted 12 MPs. Six did not respond and one said his contacts were not for sale.
The undercover reporters met Sir Malcolm at the fictional firm's Mayfair office in January, where he is said to have told them he could meet "any ambassador that I wish to see" in London.
"They'll all see me personally," he said. "That provides access in a way that is, is useful."
In a second meeting, Sir Malcolm was said to have suggested that he would be willing to write to ministers on behalf of the company without declaring the name of the firm.
During the meetings, Sir Malcolm is said to have described himself as being "self-employed", saying "nobody pays me a salary". He is said to have discussed his usual fee for his services as being "somewhere in the region of £5,000 to £8,000" for a half a day's work.
Mr Straw met the undercover reporters at his office in the Commons where he is said to have explained how he helped ED&F Man, a commodities company with a sugar refinery in Ukraine, change an EU regulation by meeting officials in Brussels.
He is also said to have claimed he overturned a law in Ukraine which would have hindered the firm's operations, by taking its representatives to meet the then-Ukrainian prime minister, Mykola Azarov.
"It's a combination of sort of charm and menace," he is quoted as saying. "I mean he (the prime minister) understood."
He is said to have explained that he normally charges a fee of £5,000 a day for his work. He made clear he would not take on the role while he remained an MP, but is said to have suggested he could be more helpful to the company if he became a peer, as different rules apply.
Sir Alistair Graham, a former chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said it was "shocking" that two such experienced MPs responded to the approaches in the way that they did.
Sir Malcolm told the programme: "I have never undertaken nor would undertake any lobbying as an MP on behalf of any private organisation for which I was receiving remuneration. You suggest that I showed myself as 'willing to act as an MP for hire'. That is untrue.
"There was no suggestion that I was being approached as an MP... Their approach to me was because of my previous experience as a minister... Ambassadors tend to respond not because I am a current MP but because I was foreign secretary.
"I said I would not be prepared to write to ministers on behalf of PMR or any other company...The most I could do would be to inquire from them information...which was already in the public domain."
Mr Straw, who is standing down at the general election, said in a statement that he made clear from the outset that any discussions he entered into related to what he might do once he left the Commons and not while he was a serving MP.
He said that despite his requests, Dispatches and the Telegraph had not supplied him with a transcript of his conversations with the undercover reporters so he could not identify the context of any of his remarks.
"I now face the horrible situation in which what I said is being used to suggest wrongdoing when there was none. But I've spent long enough in politics to know how some of the remarks I made in what I had thought was a private conversation will now be used," he said.
"In view of this, and in order to clear my name, I have written to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards to make a self-referral to her. I have also written to Rosie Winterton, opposition chief whip, to say that pending consideration of my referral by the Commissioner, I shall voluntarily withdraw from the parliamentary Labour Party.
"I am mortified that I fell into this trap, despite my best efforts to avoid this, and my previous public criticism of colleagues of all parties who have done so in the past. Of course I am kicking myself.
"However, I am clear that there was nothing that I said in the meetings which was improper. I am proud of my record as member for Blackburn and a parliamentarian over 36 years."
No comments:
Post a Comment