Bercow in row over cash from Lord Levy
HOUSE of Commons Speaker John Bercow has been criticised for accepting a £2,500 donation from Tony Blair’s disgraced former fundraiser, Lord Levy.
News of the Labour peer’s gift, which will go towards funding his 2015 general election campaign, was met with disbelief last night – with one Tory MP calling it ‘misguided and inadvisable’.
Mr Bercow accepted the four-figure sum last month. His decision to accept the donation is regarded as unorthodox, principally because he sat as a Tory MP between 1997 and 2009 when he was elected Speaker.
As Speaker, he is not supposed to be affiliated to any political party. But one Tory MP, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: ‘For John Bercow to be taking money from a Labour peer so closely associated
‘Misguided and inadvisable’
with Tony Blair yet again raises the spectre of an anti-Tory bias in him. This is misguided and inadvisable.’
The donation has also raised eyebrows at Westminster because of Lord Levy’s chequered financial career.
The multi-millionaire met Tony Blair, the then shadow home secretary, at a dinner at the Israeli Embassy in 1994.
The two soon became close friends and tennis partners, and Mr Blair decided to make him a life peer after Labour’s election victory in 1997.
In 2000 Levy hit the headlines after it was revealed he had only paid £5,000 in tax during the financial year 1998-99, although he strenuously denied engaging in t ax avoidance.
And in his 13 years as chief Labour Party fundraiser, during which he was nicknamed ‘Lord Cashpoint’, Levy was at the centre of the ‘cash for honours scandal’ and he ended up being arrested on two occasions. It was alleged that he helped to secure a series of six-figure loans from businessmen in exchange for offering them a seat in the House of Lords.
The Crown Prosecution Service dropped the case in 2007 after a 16month criminal investigation, claiming that it could find no direct evidence of any such agreements being made in advance of the loans.
However, Lord Levy emerged from the affair with his personal reputation badly bruised. At one stage the scandal even appeared to risk unseating Mr Blair.
The 69-year-old peer, who raised an estimated £100million for Labour, was one of Blair’s closest confidants during his decade i n Downing Street.
He stepped down from the fundraising post in 2007, when Mr Blair quit British politics, and relinquished his role as Blair’s Middle East envoy at the same time.
His donation was disclosed in the latest register of MPs’ financial interests, where it is classed as a ‘sponsorship’. Mr Bercow, the MP for Buckingham, has stipulated that he accepted the money as a ‘donation to my campaign for re- election to the House of Commons’.
A spokesman for Mr Bercow said: ‘The Speaker has been friends with Lord Levy for three years. They have undertaken various charity projects together.’