Another Tory sleaze headache for Rishi
Calls for police to investigate MP after he’s accused of demanding thousands of pounds from party aides in late-night ‘ransom’ call
POLICE were last night urged to investigate a Tory MP accused of misusing thousands of pounds of campaign funds to pay off ‘bad people’ who locked him in a flat.
In another sleaze headache for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Fylde MP Mark Menzies had the whip suspended and was axed as a trade envoy over the extraordinary allegations.
He is said to have ‘angrily’ called an elderly former mayoress at 3.15am one day last December demanding that she release £5,000 from a local campaign account as a ‘matter of life and death’.
Local party stalwart Katie Fieldhouse, 78, refused, but another party worker reportedly cashed in an Isa to cover the payment, later being reimbursed from money raised by local donors
Separately, a further £14,000 given for use on Tory campaign activities was also allegedly transferred to Mr Menzies’ personal bank accounts and used to pay private medical expenses. Sources close to the MP said he offered to repay the ‘ransom’ money but was told he did not need to. Last night, one of those who nominated Mr Menzies at the last election joined
Sir Keir Starmer in calling for a police investigation. Mr Menzies denies any wrongdoing.
Tory activist Caroline Sheppard, who seconded Mr Menzies’ nomination in 2019, said: ‘I think he is disgusting as an individual and for what he put a 78-year-old woman through.
‘There should be a police investigation.
‘It has distressed me deeply'
This was not his money. It belongs to his constituents.’
Sir Keir said: ‘ There are obviously a lot of unanswered questions in relation to these allegations, not least why it seems the Conservative Party took so long to act and whether they’ve reported this to the police, who, it seems to me, should be involved in this.’
Ms Fieldhouse said yesterday that she had given a full account of last December’s alleged incident to Chief Whip Simon Hart the following month.
But she felt let down that the Conservative Party had taken no action against him until the allegations were made public on Wednesday, she told the Daily Mail at her home in the seaside resort of Lytham St Annes.
Asked whether the Tories had treated her allegations sufficiently seriously, she replied: ‘It was three and a half months ago – you can draw your own conclusions.’ Ms Fieldhouse, who was mayoress in 2001, added: ‘I’m a devout Christian and a very devout Conservative and this has distressed me deeply. I live in a beautiful place and it deserves better.’
A senior member of the local Conservative Association said he was ‘furious’ with the way the MP treated Ms Fieldhouse.
‘What happened beggars belief,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t dream of ringing anyone at that time in the morning.’ He said Ms Fieldhouse – a former campaign manager for Mr Menzies – had been left feeling the party was ‘sweeping it under the carpet’.
Another senior Fylde Tory, who did not want to be named, said: ‘I will not stand by and see a lady who’s given 40 years to the party being besmirched by someone trying to save their own skin.’
Last night Lancashire Police said while they had not yet received any requests to become involved, officers would ‘make contact with those impacted in due course to see whether they wish to make a complaint’.
Labour Party chairman Anneliese Dodds has also written to her Tory counterpart, Richard Holden, to say the allegations raise ‘extremely serious questions relating to potential criminality’.
A source close to Mr Menzies told the Times, which first reported the allegations, that the unmarried MP had met a man on an online dating website and gone to a flat, before subsequently going to a second address where he continued drinking.
The source said it was falsely claimed that he had been sick, with money demanded for cleaning up and other purposes.
He decided to pay them because he was scared of what would happen otherwise, but did not
have the funds from his own savings, the source said.
After Ms Fieldhouse said she could not help, his office manager Shirley Green is said to have sent him £6,500 later that day, later being reimbursed from local party funds.
When the allegations were made public on Wednesday, Mr Menzies had the Tory whip removed as well as losing his role as a trade envoy.
The Lancashire seat has been in Conservative hands for decades, with Mr Menzies, who was first elected in 2010, enjoying a majority of more than 16,000.
At his flat in the constituency, a woman said she did not know the politician’s whereabouts yesterday.
But in a statement to the Times, the Ayrshire-born MP said: ‘I strongly dispute the allegations put to me.
‘I have fully complied with all the rules for declarations. As there is an investigation ongoing, I will not be commenting further.’
The Conservative Party confirmed that ‘allegations’ were being investigated but added that the matter was ‘rightfully confidential’. Speaking to Times radio, Defence Secretary Grant Shapps suggested that Mr Menzies is ‘potentially somebody who is quite troubled’.
In 2014 Mr Menzies quit as a ministerial aide after allegations about his behaviour made by a Brazilian male escort.
He responded that some of the allegations were untrue and claimed he would be ‘setting the record straight in due course’.
He was accused of getting a friend’s dog drunk in 2017, but branded the claims ‘false and malicious’, with police ultimately dismissing them. It is yet another headache for Mr Sunak after William Wragg gave up the whip last week after admitting he had given his colleagues’ phone number to someone on a dating app in a suspected honeytrap scandal.
Fylde borders Blackpool South, where former Conservative MP Scott Benton recently resigned after a newspaper exposed him allegedly offering to lobby ministers in exchange for money.
AT A time when China is posing such a huge threat, this country needs the highest calibre people in Parliament.
But while some MPs are conscientious, do important work and lead by example, too many are mired in sleaze and scandal.
The latest making lurid headlines is Tory Mark Menzies who has lost the whip over accusations he misused campaign funds.
After drinking with a man he met online, the backbencher is said to have made a 3am phone call to a party aide demanding thousands of pounds to pay off ‘bad people’.
Yes, Conservative HQ is now investigating this eye-popping saga, but only after sitting on it for months. That is not good enough.
Thanks to the conduct of a depressing number of Tories at Westminster, we are starting to experience the familiar fin de siècle feel of John Major’s last years.
But the Conservatives do not have a monopoly on bad behaviour. Numerous Labour MPs have fallen as vertiginously from grace recently – some more so.
While Sir Keir Starmer has called for a police probe into Mr Menzies, it’s grossly hypocritical when he continues to stonewall over Angela Rayner’s possible law-breaking.
Instead of our MPs being examples of probity and propriety, too many are of disturbingly low quality, involved in financial chicanery or unable to control sexual urges.
This not only harms the country’s ability to meet the vast challenges we face – it gravely damages the public’s faith in politics.