Scandal-hit Rifkind to quit as MP
Former Foreign Secretary tells camera crew they were ‘childish’
TORY MP Sir Malcolm Rifkind admitted he “may have made errors of judgment” as he resigned from his influential role as chair of the House of Commons intelligence committee and announced he would not seek re-election in May.
The former Secretary of State for Scotland is embroiled in a “cash for access” scandal along with former Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw following an undercover sting by journalists filming a Dispatches documentary for Channel 4.
The Edinburgh-born politician said he did not want the work of the Intelligence and Security Committee to be “distracted” by the controversy, but denied wrongdoing.
He said: “I don’t think I did anything wrong. I may have made errors of judgment, but that’s a different matter.”
SIR Malcolm Rifkind’s decadeslong political career has ended amid almost farcical scenes as he bowed to increasing pressure over “cash for access” allegations.
The former Foreign Secretary dramatically announced his resignation yesterday as the chair of the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), just hours after insisting he would stay in the job. He also said he would stand down as an MP.
His decision came after he was recorded telling undercover journalists, posing as representatives of a Chinese company, that he had “useful access” to British ambassadors.
He later triggered further outrage by claiming that MPs could not be expected to live on £67,000 a year.
Before Sir Malcolm announced his resignation, however, he was recorded again, this time telling a camera crew they were “very childish” and “must learn better how to walk backwards” as they filmed him entering a meeting of the ISC.
“It requires a skill,” he told the cameraman, “You should have learnt it by now.”
His decision to stand down as the MP for Kensington potentially allows him more time to concentrate on jobs outside politics.
Yesterday Labour questioned Conservative ministers over Sir Malcolm’s position as a non-executive director of the Alliance Medical Group, which last year was granted a contract for cancer scanning services in part of England.
MPs who stand down from London constituencies can also claim up to £57,150 in “winding up” costs for their office.
However, he will not receive a “resettlement payment” of up to £33,500, payable only to Westminster politicians voted out by the electorate, although he will have his MP’s pension.
Today Labour will force a vote on their motion calling for MPs to be barred from holding paid directorships or consultancies.
David Cameron has rejected that idea, but a Labour spokesman said: “We need to act to improve the reputation of our political system in the eyes of the British people.”
Pressure had been building on Sir Malcolm since his part in a sting operation by undercover reporters emerged .
He was also recorded saying that he was “self-employed”.
He then appeared to throw fuel on the fire by claiming that MPs could not be expected to live on their salaries of £67,000 a year.
Yesterday he admitted he he “may have made errors of judgment” but denied all allegations of “cash for access”.
However, he said it was “quite obvious” that the allegations had “become an issue”.
‘‘ We need to act to improve the reputation of our political system in eyes of British people
But he rejected suggestions that he had been pushed by No 10.
“Downing Street don’t have that power,” he said.
He added that he was standing down as MP for Kensington because “there is very major uncertainty” around his position.
He has referred himself to Kathryn Hudson, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, who warned that any investigation would not conclude until after the General Election.
Former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell had been tipped as a potential interim chair of the ISC, following lobbying from some members of the committee.
However, it was announced that the group, which scrutinises the work of the intelligence services. would continue without a chair until May’s General Election.
Sir Menzies said Sir Malcolm had done the right thing by standing down from the ISC.
“As someone who has served alongside Malcolm Rifkind, I have no hesitation in saying that he has been an outstanding chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee.
“He has done the right thing in resigning, but the House of Commons will be the worse for the absence of his perceptive and always well-informed contributions to discussions on foreign affairs.”
Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said he was “sad” to see his party colleague go.
Edinburgh-born Sir Malcolm first entered Parliament in 1974 and served as defence secretary as well as foreign and Scottish secretary in a cabinet career that lasted more than a decade, under both Margaret Thatcher and John Major.
The Conservative Party paid tribute to what it described as his “long career of distinguished service”.
Labour former foreign secretary Jack Straw, who was also caught out by undercover journalists, also denied wrongdoing after it was reported he is to take a job with a firm that won a £75 million government contract after he privately lobbied a minister on its behalf.
For the Conservatives and Labour, things have gone as well as could be expected. Malcolm Rifkind and Jack Straw are swinging in the breeze, hung out to dry, their reputations worth as much as cash-inhand from a fictitious Chinese company. Swift action has been rewarded.
Sir Malcolm has even spared Downing Street the problem of the Intelligence and Security Committee. David Cameron can now deny any pressure was placed on the chairman of an independent statutory body to step aside. Unprompted (supposedly), Sir Malcolm has realised that someone who can’t spot a media sting is probably not the man to oversee the security services.
It counts as the most remarkable aspect of the affair. An individual with all the security clearances you could need, someone granted frequent access to the most secret documents, effectively said: “Oh, you’re Chinese. Do come in. No, never too busy. Here’s my rate card.”
Inevitably, Mr Straw’s faux pas seems modest by comparison. An automatic entree to every embassy in London – his special selling point – might be indistinguishable from influencepeddling. His boast that elevation to the Lords would make “under-the-radar” work even easier might have given his protestations of innocence a hollow ring. But both men are old hands. Exposure is excruciating; the consequences might be less painful.
It is one measure of the gulf between the political class and the rest. In the world of Sir Malcolm and Mr Straw, “obeying the rules” elides instantly into “I’ve done nothing wrong”. They make no distinction. The public fails to agree. But when those rules are applied, whether by the parties or the Parliamentary Standards Committee, the chances are the pair will receive little more than rebukes.
No contracts were signed; no money changed hands; no “advocacy” took place. Mr Straw was stupid to allow a meeting in the Commons, but the real offence was to be caught on camera talking business. Had a Hong Kongbased “communications agency” called PMR existed, and had deals been done and placed on the register of members’ interests, no one would have batted an eye. Hence the initial indignation of the former foreign secretaries.
Those facts won’t change. A pair of 68-year-olds who can’t get by on £67,000 a year, or on pensions accruing at up to one-40th of salary for every year of service – Mr Straw has done 35 years, Sir Malcolm 33 – might be fretting over peerages, but that will pass. It will be a big surprise if either man is denied his ermine after the dust has settled. The tale will recede amid the usual gaffe-aday General Election campaign.
That’s a pity. Until this week, Sir Malcolm had every intention of pressing on as the member for Kensington with a 12,418 majority, and as the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. This was despite having time on his hands, or so he claimed, for walking, light reading, and the extraordinary delusion he is a selfemployed person who cannot be expected to survive on public money. Where that reward is concerned, Mr Straw seems to agree.
Call the pair crass, greedy, arrogant and incapable of sound judgment if it makes you feel better. Remind yourself that a basic salary of £67,000 – with a nine per cent increase recommended for 2015 – puts an individual comfortably within the top 10 per cent of earners. It solves no moral problems. Above all, it fails to get to the heart of the issue of outside interests and lobbying.
Some, generally those who point out that the former ministers have “done nothing wrong”, see no big problem with the system. The argument runs that all those second jobs are good for Westminster. Outside employment exposes parliamentarians to the real world, the world of business above all. Don’t we want MPs to know how things are outside the bubble?
Quite what an invented Chinese firm had to do with reality isn’t clear. Nor is the connection between ordinary life and Sir Malcolm’s quoted fee of £5,000-£8,000 for half a day’s labour obvious. Besides, if the issue is simply one of keeping MPs in touch with the world, what’s wrong with fees donated to charity? A simple answer: there’s no money in it.
If Sir Malcolm thinks £67,000 annually isn’t enough to live on, that might be because he and Mr Straw are accustomed to better. A glance at the register says the Tory last year picked up more than £270,000 in directorships, including just under £86,000 as a Unilever non-executive. In addition to his MP’s wage, he was also entitled to an additional £14,876 as chairman of the Intelligence Committee.
The Labour man didn’t do nearly so well. He supplemented his salary with just £60,000 as an adviser to a commodities firm and around £41,000 in public speaking fees. Mr Straw also earned some bits and pieces from newspaper work, such as a £1,000 payment from the Daily Mail last November for an article denouncing Edward Snowden and – a small irony – those who worry about surveillance.
A second supposed solution to the lobbying problem – pay MPs better and restrict their activities – therefore looks like a forlorn hope. It might comfort parliamentarians with no outside interests who earn less than a GP, but it would not begin to console Sir Malcolm for the loss of £350,000 a year. Besides, this week has demonstrated, yet again, that voters are in no mood to sanction a big rise.
Ed Miliband would ban MPs from accepting directorships or consultancy work. Why not? It would be more effective than Mr Cameron’s Lobbying Act, a measure that contrives to cover barely one per cent of ministerial meetings and mostly affects charities. The Prime Minister is meanwhile opposed to doing much about second jobs, presumably because he can guess the reaction from his backbenches. Too much “talent” might be lost, including those who know that the value of a seat is in the money that can be made.
In Washington DC there are 535 voting members of both Houses of Congress. Each is paid a basic $174,000 annually. As of 2013, there were 12,281 registered lobbyists in the city, officially spending $3.2 billion a year to persuade 535 people to be obliging. But an estimate of unregistered or “underground” lobbyists produced by The Nation magazine puts the total at 100,000. The American Bar Association believes they actually spend $9bn.
But here’s the joke. The Congressional members who are far better paid than MPs are also restricted in their “outside earned income”, as we noted yesterday, to 15 per cent of a $181,500 salary grade. They are forbidden to accept honoraria and banned from any outside work except medicine that involves a “fiduciary relationship”. Still DC swarms with lobbyists and pan-handling politicians.
Sir Malcolm and Mr Straw provide the lesson. The issue is less the money than the intended uses of money. Our problem is the unending attempt to buy favours, influence and laws. That’s the system from which ordinary voters are excluded. Ban that, all of it, and try public petitions instead. Meanwhile, remember our 68-year-olds, if at all, as no great loss.
‘‘ Some, generally those who point out that the former ministers have ‘done nothing wrong’ , see no big problem with the system