Labour peer resigns over Presidents Club
THE PRESIDENTS Club scandal claimed its most high-profile Jewish casualty as Lord Mendelsohn was forced to step down from the Labour front bench at the request of party leader Jeremy Corbyn.
A spokesman said Mr Corbyn had asked the peer “to step back from the front brench and he has agreed to do so”.
Labour explained that Lord Mendelsohn, shadow spokesman for international trade, had attended part of the President’s Club annual fundraising dinner last week as “president of a charity that received support from the event”.
According to a Financial Times expose, female staff were allegedly sexually harassed at the elite men-only event.
The party said the peer, who is co-president of Jewish families charity Norwood, had “not seen any of the appalling incidents described in the report but he unreservedly condemns such behaviour”.
Another figure who stepped down after attending the dinner was property consultant and developer Harvey Soning, who resigned from his position as the chairman of trustees of JCoSS.
In a statement, the school’s board of trustees confirmed that Mr Soning “has resigned and his resignation has been accepted with regret”.
The statement went on: “We would like to thank Mr Soning for all the hard work he has done over the years; a new chair will be appointed in due course.”
On the Charity Commission website, Mr Soning, chairman of property consultancy James Andrew International, is listed as one of three trustees of the Presidents Club, a charity which has raised millions of pounds over the past three decades James Andrew International would not comment. According to the Presidents Club, JCoSS was one of around 30 Jewish organisations that had received donations from the charity.
A JCoSS spokesperson said: “The Presidents Club is a registered charity and the school is entitled to assume that, as such, its fundraising activities are legal and subject to proper regulatory scrutiny.
“The [JCoSS] trustees understand that the Charity Commission is investigating and so will await the outcome of this before taking any decision or making any further comment on this matter.”
Another high-profile Jewish figure caught up in the affair was David Meller. He resigned as a nonexecutive director for the Department for Education after it emerged he was a guest at the dinner. Mr Meller sat on the board of the Presidents Club. Following the controversy, the charity announced that it was ceasing operations.