Category: Blog

This morning the "Today" programme asked what was new in the Labour funding story! Mr Humphrys ruminated on when they could call a halt to running items on it, implying his impatience with such a turn of events. What is remarkable about this story is how quickly it is changing and how it is snowballing. If Labour do not make a more definitive statement soon about who knew what when, the press will continue to pick away at the Labour version to show just how much was left out.

John Humphrys should try reading the newspapers – as he usually does. That would tell him what is new and what remains to be found out in the story:

1. Mr Brown’s personal fundraiser did know about the Abrahams donations – we were originally told only the Labour General Secretary knew. What was Mr Mendelsohn going to say to Mr Abrahams when they met? Why didn’t he tell the Prime Minister? How long did he sit on the knowledge? If he accepted the advice that Labour thought this was legal why did he want to change it?
2. The Daily Telegraph has posed questions on where Mr Abrahams got all the money from.
3.We need to know who Margaret Jay told about the nature of these donations, and whether Hilary Benn passed on his intelligence about it.
4. Did the Gordon Brown campaign turn down money from Mr Abrahams and if so why?
5. Which events did Mr Abrahams attend and why was he invited?
6. Who made the decisions and who put in submissions for any planning perimssion Mr Abrahams obtained?

Some of us spoke out against the lop-sided extradition agreement the UK government struck with the USA. Under it the US authorities have wide ranging powers to detain UK business people, whilst the Uk doesnot have the same claims on US suspects. I still think the arrangements are unfair and need revision.

It was not helpful that in the first high profile case, the Nat West 3, they have switched from protesting their innocence to entering a plea bargain, pleading guilty to a serious crime and accepting 3 years in prison if the Judge agrees.I understand that they might revert to arguing their innocence to charges if the Judge does not agree.

I was standing up to protect the innocent from the delays and difficulties of transatlantic justice where there was no case to answer in the home jurisdiction. My case is weakened by the any switch to pleas of guilty in the first high profile case to hit the headlines, but it does not undermine the principle. There will be entirely innocent people, who do not have to stand trial in the UK because the Uk authorities do not think they have committed an offence who may now be under threat of extradition. I do not think the government has put in enough safefgurards, and it is notable that the US does not accept for itself the regime it now imposes on us. It is still necessary to revise this inequity despite the setback of this case.

Today we held a debate in Opposition time on the missing data of 25 million people and their Child Benefit records.

Mr Darling told us little extra, repeating his original Statement of 20 November and claiming that he had been right to say the banks needed extra time before he went public with the news. He failed to tell the banks between the department first knowing on November 8th and contacting the banks on November 16th, implying his cocnern about leaving the banks enough time came to him late in day. He conceded that the "junior official" involved in the loss was in fact a junior "manager", and confirmed that in March when data had been sent in a similar way without mishap a senior manager was involved.

His junior Minister, Jane Kennedy, winding up the debate told us a bit more. Apparently the Treasury and HMRC are changing their arrangements for data transfer, limting the volume and frequency of transfer, encrypting more and improving the authorisation and postal arrangements. It was difficult to understand why Mr Darling did not tell us all this at the beginning of the debate. Maybe he did not because this implies it was a systems failure, and not an occasional mistake by juniors.

Will this make our data secure? It is difficult to be sure it will, given the lack of information coming from the top, and the apparent lack of purpose in putting these matters right at the top.

Stephen Dorrell and I pointed out that there is a cultural porblem in the department. If the senior Ministers stressed repeatedly that offering a good service to taxpayers was fundamental, and holding data securely was an important part of that, things might be better. As it was a senior manager in the Treasury, told on November 8th of the problem did not tell the Chancellor until November 10th, suggesting the Chancellor had not made his overriding interest in the quality of service clear. He in turn did not tell Parliament until November 20th, meaning 12 days elapsed before proper Parliamentary and public disclosure, leaving more people at risk of data abuse for longer.

We will need a further statement when the government receives an interim report from the reviewers looking at the whole problem of data security in HMRC. As so often this governemnt fails to take command, watches as things go wrong, and then brings in consultants to tell them what to do next. Why isn’t the Treasury and HMRC capable of sorting its own problems out, with all the staff they have? And why can’t this Chancellor offer some strong leadership, stressing the importance of better client relations and ensuring by chairing the relevant meetings that this wish will be reflected in practise.

I remember when Labour started their nasty sleaze camapign in the 1990s against the Tories I thought they were fashioning a boomerang. It was over the top, and unnecessary – the Conservative party was going to lose the election anyway. It was bound to damage politics as a whole and to make the life of a future Labour government more difficult.

I also remember that the BBC was willing to glorify little known Tory backbenchers who had made a mistake or were the subject of allegations as "Top Tories" caught in a "sleaze row" or just in "sleaze". Experts were wheeled out to tell us it was a government in crisis. Tory interviewees were subject to endless interruption and innuendo, as the party was confused with the individuals.

How different it is today from the BBC. Labour’s Chief Whip Mr Hoon is allowed to tour BBC studios to make statements about how it will all be sorted out in an enquiry, and how the government is moving quickly to show it is a model of probity, without interruption or innuendo. The BBC does not line up experts to comment on the seriousness of the possible criminal charges, or the seniority of the Labour figures involved. Nick Robinson is an honourable exception, as he is doggedly trying to get to the truth.

When Labour came to office they changed the climate of journalists towards sleaze overnight. The fiat went out that in future husbands cheating wives – or wives cheating husbands – was not sleaze, but a personal matter that the BBC should ignore. Several of the cases of so-called sleaze for the Tories were stories of broken relationships. Under the new regime a succession of broken marriages and affairs received their lurid coverage in certain newspapers, but were not given the sleaze treatment by the BBC in genuflection to Labour’s new settlement.

The Ecclestone affair alerted Labour to the dangers of funding sources to their own reputations. It and other crises led them into legislation to tighten up the regime for reporting sources of funds. They introduced the double jeopardy system for MPs receiving money to help with their political campaigns – the need to report it to the Register of Members’ Interests in the House and in certain cases to the newly created Electoral Commisssion as well. Labour wanted belt and braces, and submitted MPs to their form filling compliance culture.

It is not without irony that it should be this very form filling culture that they have fallen foul of in these latest revelations. It was a failure to register the true donor of large sums of money that led the Prime Minsiter to admit that the party he leads had broken the rules. The first defence mounted was that the General Secretary – Labour’s own senior Compliance Officer – did not know the rules and was resigning because he and he alone had made the mistake. Many in the press doubt that only the General Secretary knew of the arrangement. The testimony of Hilary Benn, Margaret Jay and Harriet Harman – and their respective assistants – will be important in working out just how many people did know.

Today the position has been made worse for the PM by the revelation that his own fund raiser, Jon Mendelsohn, wrote a letter to the donor Mr Abrahams implying he too knew he was an important donor. This takes the whole issue that much closer to the doors of the PM’s study.

We should not lose sight of the reticence of the Communities Secretary Hazel Blears yesterday to answer questions how the decision was made to grant planning permission to Mr Abrahams. If the PM knew on Saturday of the problems, Hazel Blears and her department had some time to find answers to the obvious questions MPs and journalists were going to ask, but so far has not done so. The sooner she can give us an authoritative statement on how this was handled the better as far as the government is concerned.

There is also the question surrounding the gift of monies to intermediaries to pass it on to the Labour party. How have these transactions been accounted for? Are they all tax free transactions? Were there agreements in writing given the size of some of the sums involved? Why did the intermediaries agree to do it, as from their point of view it could prove to be all hassle and no reward if they received nothing in return for their deed?

I suggest the following advice to the PM from a Labour source:

To: Prime Minister
From: Senior Politicial Adviser

The drop to 27 % in the polls is serious, and the lack of trust in politics is tangible. Your well judged campaign to restore faith in politics has been badly damaged by Northern Rock, the loss of HMRC data and the Abrahams donations. I know how upset you are by these developments, and feel they are not of your making. Unfortunately they have changed the political weather, and the Tories are now claiming that Northern Rock is related to your changes to the regulatory framnework in 1997, and the data loss to your merger of Revenue and Customs. No-one said politics was fair.

You have rightly decided to try to change the subject of discussion, and have decided to say that you are going to be making the long term decisions the country needs. I think that is the right approach.

However, you have highlighted three decisions which are at best contentious – nuclear power, genetically modified crops and a 3rd runway at Heathrow, and at worst will increase the antagonisms. Whilst nuclear does remove carbon emission when generating power, many greens dislike it and draw attention to the carbon footprint of the new build as well as to disposal issues for the waste. A 3 rd runway at Heathrow is much needed to reduce queues and delays but will be presented as a contradiction to your stance on cutting emissions. GM food remains very unpopular according to all surveys of opinion, even though the government’s scientific adviser sees it as a key technology. You may be right that these things may need doing, but to highlight them in your current positon is, as Sir Humphrey might say, "brave Prime Minister". Critics would say if you think they like data loss and the run on the bank, they will love GM food and nuclear power.

There are long term decisions the country needs that could portray you in the right light that are not as divisive as the ones you have started to highlight. The decision to make training or a job compulsory for those who would otherwise claim benefit is a bold step which could also prove popular with the large majority of people in work who are paying taxes. The decision to cut capital gains tax for all from 40% to 18% could be received favourably if a more generous treatment of those investing in their own businesses or through employer share schemes currently paying 10% was incorporated in the changes. If you reconsidered your position on a referendum on the treaty that could help to reduce the scepticism about politics.

Above all you need Ed Balls to come up with ways of raising the performance of state schools. The growing gap between the grammars/independents on the one hand and the comprehensives on the other is worrying. The large number of school leavers who cannot read and write to a reasonable standard lies behind the disappointing figures for the numbers of young people not in education, training or a job. You have always stressed the need to offer opportunity to all – we do need to raise our game here. If we could break through on jobs and training for all young people, the electorate would start to forget the noises off, and the costs of economic failure (which you waxed lyrical about in Opposition) would start to come down. This is one area where we are lucky that our Opposition is not as good as you used to be at blaming the government!

The prompt resignation of the Labour party General Secretary implies this is a big problem for Labour.

Much of the money passed to the Labour party after Gordon Brown had taken over. There are many questions to answer:

1. Harriet Harman received money for her deputy leadership campaign from similar sources. Was this properly reported? Did she know of the connections?
2. David Abrahams was given a good seat at Tony Blair’s farewell. Who organised this? Did they know he was a big donor?
3. Mr Abrahams passed money onto staff and business associates. How did they account for this money? Was any of it taxable?
4. Hilary Benn did not take money from Mrs Kidd but did accept a donation from Mr Abrahams. Were his team told of the links by Baroness Jay? If so, who else did she tell? If Hilary Benn did not know via her, how did they know?
5. What checks did the Labour party carry out before filling in its return for these donations?

All of this is very depressing for politics. It reminds us of the dangers of big money politics, and shows how Labour thought the rules they had invented did not really apply to them.

I just hope this is not used as another excuse to demand more money from taxpayers for political parties. The best answer is for the main parties to spend less on national campaigns, and to accept less from individual donors. Gordon Brown should do a deal with the other party leaders, accepting a cap of ??50,000 on all donations including donations from Trade Unions. If individual Tade Union members wish to give to the Labour party they are free to do so, so Unions and companies should be treated similarly for these purposes.

I do not take pleasure from this latest funding scandal, even though it is a Labour one. All the time we have big money politics, all parties are vulnerable to temptation or to misunderstanding about donors and donations. We need to get to the bottom of this latest funding crisis as quickly as possible, so we know who if anyone apart from the General Secretary made a misjudgement. We also need to know if Labour’s own law on financing political parties has been broken. To restore faith in politics we need the three main parties to agree to spend less and raise less from individual donors and Unions.

Yesterday the Home Secretary stumbled when David Davis asked her what we should do if our biometric identities are stolen or mislaid when in government possession. She also revealed complete ignorance of the work in her own department to have a common system of identity control throughout the EU.

I asked a Home Office Minister who was telling us about introducing ID cards for foreign nationals in the UK why we didn’t police our borders properly when people first arrived. I pointed out that everyone coming to the Uk should have a valid passport and visa where needed. Surely it is easier and cheaper to make the checks on first arrival and only allow in legal entrants?

The Minister responded that that was a "very twentieth century view"! Well I never. That was the boomerang quote of the session, which is so revealing about attitudes in the current Home Office.

They spend lots of our money on border controls, and claim they are beefing them up. When I ask that they are made to work properly so we do not need to introduce ID cards as well, I am told that it is out of date. Labour want to carry on spending money on ineffective border controls, and then spend more money on issuing cards and presumably checking up on people on the streets as a back up system, based on their assumption that they will be incompetent at running the borders. If people can forge passports and trade in illegal ones, why do they think it will be any different with ID cards? Why do we need both?

No wonder we pay so much tax, and no wonder nothing works. Wanting things to work is so "twentieth century".

I was looking up something about schools and stumbled onto the Ed Balls website.

If you dare do so, they warn you you become a "User". You automatically agree to "not publish,reproduce,store or retransmit any information contained in this website" as it remains "the property of Ed Balls…"

Ed, please keep it. I see from your website you have not run a new campaign since 2005. I see you have only carried out two events in your constituency that appear in website news in the month of November, and that a normal constituency event is the lead news item. I don’t think it’s going to be difficult to keep all that private.

Why does Mr Cable want to wreck any proposal to solve the Northern Rock crisis? Today he sought to belittle the Branson bid, telling people it was unlikely to go ahead. I won’t repeat what he said about the risks to the taxpayer as the statement was unacceptable. He also accused sharebuyers of being “spivs and sharks” and said he wanted to stop any shareholder, big or small being able to sell shares any more by suspending them in the market!

Mr Cable’s shrill interventions are not going to win the Lib Dems any friends amongst the business community, and will put off anyone who cares about the small shareholders, depositors and taxpayers caught up in the Northern Rock crisis. If Leader Clegg (or Huhne if there is a late swing) has any sense he will terminate Cable’s role as Treasury spokesman before he is allowed to do much more damage.

What have we learned during this race?

"Calamity" Clegg and "Euro" Huhne have slugged it out, only to hear from the former Leader, Charles Kennedy, unflattering judgements. He does not think either of them have made their positions clear, in a way which will rally the Lib Dem cause. He does not feel motivated enough by either to declare for one of them.

I think Charles is being a bit harsh. Several things remain crystal clear:

1. Both promised a referendum on the EU Constitution before the last election. Both have ratted on their promise.
2. Both are former MEPs who want more European integration.
3. Both want more regional government in England on the European model.
4. Both want to impose a local Income Tax, so Councils can tax us more.
5. Both favour more green taxes.

The biggest difference between them is Huhne draws attention to the manifest contradictions of his rival, Mr Clegg, who likes facing both ways on big issues, whilst Mr Clegg just watches innocently as others brief about Mr Huhne’s past in the newspapers.

This site has forecast Mr Clegg’s victory. I go further today, and say how much I would welcome a Lib dem flip flopper with so little experience as their Leader. It would be as good having Ming Campbell from my political point of view. His rambling interviews reveal an inner inability to make up his mind and to lead, which capture the spirit of his party.

Were the Liberal membership to be awkward now and vote for Huhne, the Lib Dem MPs would look even sillier than usual, as they have voted by a majority for Clegg. Most of them would have acquired a touch of the Lembit’s.