BRITAIN’S governing Labour Party furiously rejected fresh sleaze charges on Sunday after accepting a large donation from a publishing magnate negotiating to buy a leading newspaper group.
Richard Desmond, publisher of a large range of soft-porn magazines, donated more than $145 000 dollars to the party in the run-up to the June 2001 general election campaign.
It came soon after the government paved the way for him to buy The Express group by deciding not to refer it to a competitions commission.
Labour then reinvested the money in advertisements taken out in the Express titles ahead of the vote. Both the government and Desmond’s Northern and Shell group strongly insist the donation was made in a ”fully transparent” fashion and was neither hidden nor received in return for any favours.
But it follows similar allegations, which the opposition Conservatives have enthusiastically seized upon, over a variety of other donations from business leaders with interests at stake.
Cabinet minister John Reid accused the Conservatives of focusing on ”froth and smears and personalities because they have nothing to say on policies”.
Transport Secretary Stephen Byers, who as trade and industry minister gave the go-ahead in February last year for Desmond to buy the Express group, said he had handled the takeover by the book.
He announced in October 2000 that he would accept the recommendation of the head of the office for fair trading on whether or not to refer future mergers to the competition commission.
It was that office which decided that Desmond’s offer for the Express group should not be referred.
”So in line with the policy which I had announced long before Mr Desmond’s approach for Express Newspapers, I fell in line with that advice,” he told BBC television.
Northern and Shell issued a statement saying it offered free advertising to Labour during the run-up to the election campaign, to which the party said it preferred a financial contribution.
”Consequently,” the statement went on, ”an appropriate payment was made by Northern and Shell. This formed a part, though not all, of the Labour Party’s spend in our newspapers” during the campaign.
”What they were clearly trying to do was to take the money now and take the pain way off in the future,” Conservative Party deputy chairman Steven Norris told the BBC.
”You are left with the feeling that this is really quite a distasteful turn of events.”
Mark Oaten, chairman of the smaller opposition Liberal Democrats, said that Labour ”is in danger of drifting into a sea of sleaze”.
Conservative Party chairman David Davis said that Prime Minister Tony Blair had a lot of questions to answer, particularly over the timing.
According to newspapers, the donation was before February 15 2001, meaning it did not have to be declared before the election.
Davis said it was ”extraordinarily hypocritical. This is alarmingly reminiscent of the Bernie Ecclestone ‘cash for favours’ affair, and the same concerns must apply.”
Ecclestone, the Formula One chief, donated one million pounds to Labour in January 1997. Motor racing was later exempted from a government ban on tobacco advertising. Embarrassed, Labour handed back the cash.
Then, in 1998, two Indian tycoons, Srichand and Gopichand Hinduja, donated one million pounds to a flagship government project.
Srichand Hinduja was later given a British passport, and the resulting fuss led to the forced resignation of cabinet minister Peter Mandelson.
Earlier this year a row erupted after steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal donated 125 000 pounds and Blair backed his bid for a Romanian steelworks.
Every time Labour has angrily insisted it did nothing wrong and everything was above board, while the Conservatives have hammered away trying to talk up the perception of sleaze. – Sapa-AFP