Minister ‘too ready to accept gifts’

A Conservative cabinet minister set tongues wagging with his readiness to accept presents from people with whom he had official dealings, according to newly released government files.

Papers released by the National Archives show that in the early 1960s, gossip about Reginald Maudling, who served under Harold Macmillan and Edward Heath, was rife in Whitehall.

A senior Whitehall official reported that a peer had even overheard two fellow ministers discussing his apparent acquisitiveness in the Carlton Club.

“Lord St Aldwyn said he had been shocked to hear ministers talking about such a matter in a club, but he had thought it his duty to report this to me,” the official noted.

“I have some reason to fear that Mr Maudling may be a little too ready to accept presents.”

Among the gifts he was recorded as receiving were: “A wrist watch (£10), a camera (£42) and a package of gramophone records (value not known but fairly substantial) from the Russians”.

The official was unsure whether he should inform Mr Macmillan, but noted drily: “From this point of view it is perhaps fortunate that Mr Maudling has ceased to be president of the Board of Trade.

“There is less difficulty an embarrassment in his accepting the sort of presents which are likely to be offered to him now by his less sophisticated clients in the Colonial Office.”

In 1972, Mr Maudling resigned as home secretary over his links to the corrupt architect John Poulson.

Acquisitive: former Tory cabinet minister Reginald Maudling.