FROM: THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY CENTRAL OFFICE

The Prime Minister
10, Downing Street
London, SW1A 2AA

3 February 2010

Dear Mr Brown

At Prime Minister’s Questions today, you told the House of Commons that you knew nothing
about the secret fund, worth a reported £50,000, which was held by the Labour Party for your benefit. When asked why you did not declare this on the Register of Members’ Financial Interests (RMFI), you said specifically: ‘I know nothing about what he [the questioner] is talking about.’

This simply cannot be true.

It is clear from Peter Watt, the Labour Party’s former General Secretary, that you were the beneficiary of a secret fund held by the Labour Party. He has said explicitly:

‘Before becoming Prime Minister, Gordon went to some lengths to insulate himself and the Treasury from our financial troubles, setting up his own personal pot of cash at party HQ. This was money we could not dip into, since it was set aside for the Chancellor’s own pet projects. Murray Elder helped secure donations from the Chancellor’s supporters’ (Inside Out, January 2010, page 105).

He went on to claim that it may have been used to finance your ‘long-term campaign to become party leader’ (Inside Out, Peter Watt, 2010, page 105).

Mr Watt’s assertions were widely reported. Indeed, across several pages in the Mail on Sunday, Mr Watt claimed that you used ‘up to £50,000-a-year of Labour money to pay for private polling’ (Mail on Sunday, 17 January 2010).

The allegations were explicitly confirmed as truthful by a Labour official who said in the same article: ‘It [the fund] was funded through donations to the Party.’

In the light of these allegations, my colleague, Greg Hands MP, wrote to you more than two weeks ago, on 17 January, to query why you had failed to declare the fund properly the

Register of Members’ Financial Interests. This letter was publicised in several newspapers on 18 January.

As you did not respond, Greg Hands submitted a complaint to John Lyon, the Parliamentary Commissioner this week. I attach a copy of this complaint for your reference. Again, this complaint was reported.

Yesterday in a speech titled ‘Transforming Politics’, you said that you would ‘do all that is necessary to restore trust’ in politics and the conduct of MPs. If you wish to restore trust in politics, you should stop treating people like fools by claiming that you were unaware of this fund when all the evidence points to the contrary..

I therefore urge you to admit to this fund’s existence, apologise for misleading the House and co-operate with any inquiries that John Lyon may wish to make.

Yours sincerely,

Eric Pickles
Chairman, The Conservative Party
Member of Parliament for Brentwood and Ongar

About Julian:  Julian Bray is a broadcaster, moderator, speaker, journalist and lectures on leadership, company turnarounds, corporate and recession busting strategies, politics, aviation, travel and The City.

A few days ago Ian Craig, the chief schools adjudicator, recommended a range of new penalties to be introduced to punish parents who break school admissions rules by giving false addresses, fibbing about their ‘real’ address and moving house just to personally gain from the postcode.

Fair enough, I can understand that. But who is it that’s behind this mandate?

None other than the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families Ed Balls MP who along with his wife Yvette Cooper MP according to the Telegraph’s MP’s expenses research ‘flipped’ their homes a number of times

After being elected to Parliament for the first time in 1997, Miss Cooper, now the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, designated a modest property in her constituency of Castleford, west Yorkshire, as her second home, and began claiming mortgage interest payments on her parliamentary allowances.

In May 2005, after Mr Balls was elected MP for Normanton, Miss Cooper “flipped” her second home to the family house she shared with her husband and their three children in south London. The couple both began claiming a half share of the £1,466 mortgage interest, a sum of £733 each compared with the £530 she had been paying in Yorkshire.

Two years later, in May 2007, the couple moved again, to a larger, £655,000 property in north London which they designated their second home. Their mortgage interest payments increased to just over £1,031 each.

They also put the bill for the £2,000 cost of removal vans and men on their parliamentary expenses.

…and just in case you thought they were hard up

Yvette Cooper

Job: Chief secretary to the Treasury

Salary: £141,866

Total second home claims

2004-05: £19,428

2005-06: £14,234

2006-07: £15,995

2007-08: £12,219

Ed Balls

Job: Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families

Salary: £141,866

Total second home claims

2004-05: Not elected

2005-06: £13,618

2006-07: £15,979

2007-08: £12,219

I put it to you Mr and Mrs Balls, you potentially gave false addresses, fibbed about your ‘real’ address and moved house just to personally gain from the postcode.

You are no better than those you seek to suppress.

Previously published over at Parlez~me~’n~Tory

Alas, if the Prime Minister gets his way this is not likely to be the case.

Desperate to suppress a back bench rebellion that is mounting in the run up to next month’s report by Sir Christopher Kelly, Gordon Brown is frantically working with his aides to hatch his latest plan.

The Kelly report is expected to make a dramatic overhaul of the expenses system and so the PM is working tirelessly to gain support for a self regulated system to be put in place that would include the following:

Increasing the basic salary of all MP’s by circa £3,000 from £64,766 to £67,766 whilst forcing a reduction (average £20,000) from Government salaries which are earned on top of the basic salary and range between £96,000 / £197,000. Downing St believes that the general public will accept this ‘reform’ in principle as the aim is that the overall cost to the taxpayer will not rise from £12.3m for ministerial wages.

The Kelly report will, among other things prevent MP’s from employing family members in any capacity. It will also make the recommendation that MP’s rent their second home as oppossed to purchasing at taxpayers expense thereby removing the temptation for an MP to ‘flip’ between their homes for financial gain.

It is unlikely that many backbenchers will accept the recommendations whilst Gordon Brown is likely to struggle to suppress his many rebels who are quietly massing on the fringe as though in a scene direct from the Roman Senate after the constitutional reforms of the Emperor Diocletian. Clearly they will not go quietly with his ‘new package’.

The Prime Minister is simply playing catch-up to David Cameron who has pledged a smaller Cabinet within a smaller Government. David Cameron has the makings of a full package of proposals whilst Gordon Brown has a solution more akin to a patchwork quilt.

Imagine if you will both Gordon and David both sifting through the fancy dress box and Cameron emerging with a full Zorro suit whilst Gordon has the remnants of outfits of the Joker, the Riddler and Bozo The Clown.

It is not though the PLP or the House of Commons that Gordon Brown needs to convince it is the most powerful person in the country and that is the voter in the street a large proportion of whom come from the Public Sector who’ve just been forced to take a pay freeze.

Whilst it is true that an election can be called at any time the Government is likely to wait until the last possible moment and hence in all reality we probably have another 6 months+ of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

That is not to say we necessarily have another 6 months of Gordon Brown as the Prime Minister. During the last weekend of the summer recess the media has been awash with stories of how the PM recently had a regular health check and eye test with Downing St disclosing the there were two small retinal tears in the good eye of Gordon Brown.

There are some in the blogosphere who believe this is a softening up tactic to allow Gordon Brown to stand down as leader at the last minute and permit a caretaker manager to takeover for a couple of months, the belief amongst those that harbour this thought is that the new ‘caretaker’ would enjoy a period of grace and poll bounce before announcing the date for the election. This is just speculation at the moment but needs to be discussed as it is currently being touted heavily.

In what is likely to be a day of Admin amongst MP’s the spotlight will be shining heavily on the outcome of the review by Sir Thomas Legg into the continuing expenses scandal.

An area of interest of particular note will be the publishing today of the results of a six-month investigation into the expense claims of the former home secretary Jacqui Smith by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, John Lyon.

We shall be monitoring events.