BRITISH PRIME minister Gordon Brown is faced with a new MPs’ scandal just weeks before a general election is called after a number of ex-ministers were secretly filmed offering access to senior ministers for up to £5,000 (€5,500) a day.
Conservative leader David Cameron, who warned some weeks ago that lobbying by MPs was the next controversy to hit a scandal-damaged parliament, seized on the Channel 4 Dispatchesprogramme and demanded urgent new rules.
Former transport secretary Stephen Byers described himself “as sort of like a cab for hire”, while ex-health secretary Patricia Hewitt claimed to have got a seat on a government body for a client who had paid her £3,000 a day.
Ex-defence secretary Geoff Hoon said he wanted to turn his knowledge and contacts “into something that frankly makes money” and offered to lead delegations to ministers for £3,000 a day.
Last night, all three denied they had broken any rules and claimed they were merely making preparations for their life after politics once they stand down when the election is called.
Under Commons rules, all ex-ministers are barred from lobbying for a year after leaving office, which would leave Mr Hoon as the only one to be facing questions of breaching rules now.
However, the Tories have said ex-ministers should be curbed for two years, while a House of Commons committee called more than a year ago for a lobbyists’ register.
Twenty politicians were invited by Dispatches, which posed as a US lobbying firm: 15 agreed to meet and 10 were invited in for interviews. Nine of those were secretly filmed and six will be the subject of a broadcast tonight.
The others to be broadcast will be Luton Labour MP Margaret Moran – who has already announced she is quitting parliament over the expenses scandal – Baroness Morgan and Tory MP Sir John Butterfill.
Mr Butterfill, outgoing MP for Bournemouth, had to repay £17,000 in the expenses review after it emerged he claimed for building an extension to his home for his gardener and his wife.
Foreign secretary David Miliband last night said the Labour election manifesto will promise tougher rules: “There is absolutely no room for anyone to trade on their ministerial office.”
Chancellor of the exchequer Alistair Darling could not believe MPs caught in the programme’s “sting” had been so stupid: “The best answer when you get a call like that is to put the receiver back down again. It’s obvious.”