The "cash-for-questions affair" was a political scandal of the 1990s in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...
.
It began in October 1994 when ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...
'' newspaper alleged that
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
's most successful parliamentary lobbyist,
Ian Greer
Ian Bramwell Greer (5 June 1933 – 4 November 2015) was a British political lobbyist whose career was affected by the cash-for-questions affair.
Early life
Ian Bramwell Greer was born on 5 June 1933, the son of Salvation Army parents. He was ...
of Ian Greer Associates, had bribed two
Conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...
Members of Parliament to ask
parliamentary questions
A question time in a parliament occurs when members of the parliament ask questions of government ministers (including the prime minister), which they are obliged to answer. It usually occurs daily while parliament is sitting, though it can be ca ...
and perform other tasks on behalf of the Egyptian owner of
Harrods
Harrods Limited is a department store located on Brompton Road in Knightsbridge, London, England. It is currently owned by the state of Qatar via its sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority. The Harrods brand also applies to ot ...
department store,
Mohamed Al-Fayed
Mohamed Al-Fayed (; arz, محمد الفايد ; born 27 January 1929) is an Egyptian-born businessman whose residence and chief business interests have been in the United Kingdom since the late 1960s. His business interests include ownership of ...
.
Overview
''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...
s report alleged that Al-Fayed had approached the paper and accused Ian Greer of paying then-MPs
Neil Hamilton and
Tim Smith Tim, Timothy or Timmy Smith may refer to:
Musicians
*T. V. Smith (born 1956), British singer and songwriter
*Tim Smith (Cardiacs) (1961–2020), English singer-songwriter and frontman of Cardiacs
* Timmy Trumpet (born 1982), Australian DJ and prod ...
to table parliamentary questions on his behalf at £2,000 a time.
[ Smith resigned immediately after admitting to accepting payments from Al-Fayed himself, but not from Greer as ''The Guardian'' had alleged.
Hamilton and Greer immediately issued libel writs in the High Court against ''The Guardian'' to clear their names.]
The furore prompted the then-prime minister John Major
Sir John Major (born 29 March 1943) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997, and as Member of Parliament (MP) for Huntingdon, formerly Hunting ...
to instigate the Nolan Committee, to review the issue of standards in public life.
Six weeks later in December 1994, in a private letter to the chairman of the parliamentary watchdog the Members' Interests Committee, Mohamed Al-Fayed alleged that he had paid Hamilton, in addition to the original allegations that Ian Greer was the paymaster. Hamilton denied this new allegation.
The Defamation Act 1996
The Defamation Act 1996 (c 31) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
Section 4 - Limitation of actions: England and Wales
This section substitutes sections 4A, 28(4A), 32A and 36(1)(aa) of the Limitation Act 1980.
Section 5 - Limi ...
was designed to alter the Bill of Rights 1689
The Bill of Rights 1689 is an Act of the Parliament of England, which sets out certain basic civil rights and clarifies who would be next to inherit the Crown, and is seen as a crucial landmark in English constitutional law. It received Royal ...
, and allows an MP to waive parliamentary privilege. This would have permitted Hamilton to give evidence in court concerning statements he made in the House of Commons
The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...
.[
Two years later, at the end of September 1996, three days before Hamilton's and Greer's libel actions were due to start, three of Mohamed Al-Fayed's employees claimed that they had processed cash payments to the two men. Hamilton and Greer denied these new allegations.
Hamilton and Greer withdrew their libel action on 30 September 1996.]
Hamilton's and Greer's withdrawal of their libel actions provoked an avalanche of condemnation of the two men in the British press, led by ''The Guardian''. Parliament
In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries. Th ...
initiated an official inquiry into the affair, to be led by Sir Gordon Downey.[
In December 1996, Ian Greer's lobbying company collapsed.]
Downey began his inquiry in early 1997, but before he published his report Prime Minister John Major
Sir John Major (born 29 March 1943) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997, and as Member of Parliament (MP) for Huntingdon, formerly Hunting ...
prorogued
A legislative session is the period of time in which a legislature, in both parliamentary and presidential systems, is convened for purpose of lawmaking, usually being one of two or more smaller divisions of the entire time between two election ...
Parliament for a general election, to be held on 1 May 1997.
Smith resigned from Parliament on 25 March, and stood down in the general election.
In the election, former BBC reporter Martin Bell
Martin Bell, (born 31 August 1938) is a British UNICEF (UNICEF UK) Ambassador, a former broadcast war reporter and former independent politician who became the Member of Parliament (MP) for Tatton from 1997 to 2001. He is sometimes known as " ...
stood in Hamilton's Cheshire constituency of Tatton as an independent candidate on an "anti-corruption" platform. Bell easily defeated Hamilton with the assistance of the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats, who both withdrew their candidates and supplied party workers to help Bell's campaign.
Sir Gordon Downey published his 900-page report in early July 1997, clearing Ian Greer, Neil Hamilton, and Tim Smith Tim, Timothy or Timmy Smith may refer to:
Musicians
*T. V. Smith (born 1956), British singer and songwriter
*Tim Smith (Cardiacs) (1961–2020), English singer-songwriter and frontman of Cardiacs
* Timmy Trumpet (born 1982), Australian DJ and prod ...
of ''The Guardians original allegations that Ian Greer had paid the two MPs to table questions. However, Downey decreed that the three Fayed employees' testimony that they had processed cash payments to Hamilton amounted to "compelling evidence", though he did not accept their claims to have processed cash payments to the lobbyist Greer.
At the same time, the Standards and Privileges Committee
The Standards and Privileges Committee is a former committee of the United Kingdom House of Commons that existed from 1995 to 2013. The committee was established in 1995 to replace the earlier Committee of Privileges. It consisted of 10 Members ...
published its conclusions in relation to complaints made by ''The Guardian'' and Mohamed Al Fayed, which concluded:
Standard and Privileges Committee Report
Michael Brown
Sir
Peter Hordern
Sir Peter Maudslay Hordern, DL, PC (born 18 April 1929) is a British Conservative Party politician.
Early life
Hordern was born on 18 April 1929 and was the son of Captain Charles Hubert Hordern MBE and grandson of Rt. Rev. Hugh Maudslay Hor ...
Sir
Andrew Bowden
Sir Andrew Bowden (born 8 April 1930) is a British Conservative Party politician. From 2004 to 2010, he was an international consultant at Global Equities Corporation.
Early life
Bowden was born the son of William Victor Bowden, a solicitor, an ...
Sir
Michael Grylls
Sir William Michael John Grylls (21 February 1934 – 7 February 2001) was a British Conservative politician. He was implicated in the cash-for-questions affair, a political scandal of the 1990s. He was the father of adventurer and the Scout Ass ...
Mr
Tim Smith Tim, Timothy or Timmy Smith may refer to:
Musicians
*T. V. Smith (born 1956), British singer and songwriter
*Tim Smith (Cardiacs) (1961–2020), English singer-songwriter and frontman of Cardiacs
* Timmy Trumpet (born 1982), Australian DJ and prod ...
''Hamilton v Al-Fayed''
In 1998 Neil Hamilton issued a writ for libel against Mohamed al-Fayed, over allegations that Al-Fayed had made on a Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...
documentary programme broadcast in January 1997. In late 1999 the trial began at the High Court. Hamilton lost and was ordered to pay costs.
In late 2000, Hamilton's appeal was heard at the Court of Appeal
A court of appeals, also called a court of appeal, appellate court, appeal court, court of second instance or second instance court, is any court of law that is empowered to hear an appeal of a trial court or other lower tribunal. In much ...
. The three judges dismissed Hamilton's appeal on the grounds that Fayed's acquisition of the stolen papers would not have materially affected the outcome of the trial.
In 2001 Neil Hamilton declared bankruptcy.
Riddick and Treddinick
Though the term "cash for questions affair" is used to refer to the events that followed the publication of ''The Guardians story, it was not the first time that a British newspaper had accused MPs of taking bribes to table questions. Three months earlier, in July 1994, a 'sting' operation by ''The Sunday Times'' reported that two Conservative MPs Graham Riddick
Graham Edward Galloway Riddick (born 26 August 1955, Long Preston, West Riding of Yorkshire) was the Conservative Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Colne Valley in West Yorkshire, England from 1987 to 1997.
Family and early life
His father ...
and David Treddinick had accepted cheques for £1,000 for agreeing to table a parliamentary question.
The two were suspended from parliament for 10 and 20 days respectively, Mr Riddick receiving a shorter 'sentence' due to his apparent decision to apologise quickly and return his cheque bribe.
Riddick lodged a formal complaint with the Press Complaints Commission
The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) was a voluntary regulatory body for British printed newspapers and magazines, consisting of representatives of the major publishers. The PCC closed on Monday 8 September 2014, and was replaced by the Inde ...
(PCC). Basing its decisions on the information compiled by the Commons' Privileges Committee the PCC found in Riddick's favour. The commission judged that ''The Sunday Times'' failed to make clear to its readers that its approach to Riddick had been on the basis of a legitimate consultancy, not on the basis of a one-off payment in return for asking a question and that there was no justification for the newspaper's resort to subterfuge. This overturned a ruling two years earlier by the PCC in favour of ''The Sunday Times'' when Riddick had been unaware that the PCC was investigating the matter. The PCC apologised to Riddick for 'this serious breach of our procedures.'
See also
*Cash for Honours
The Cash-for-Honours scandal (also known as Cash for Peerages, Loans for Lordships, Loans for Honours or Loans for Peerages) was a political scandal in the United Kingdom in 2006 and 2007 concerning the connection between political donations an ...
* Cash for Influence
*Patrick Mercer
Patrick John Mercer (born 26 June 1956) is a British author and former politician. He was elected as a Conservative in the 2001 general election, until resigning the party's parliamentary whip in May 2013 following questions surrounding paid ad ...
* Owen Paterson
References
External links
Defamation Act 1996
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cash-For-Questions Affair
Conservative Party (UK) scandals
1994 in the United Kingdom
Lobbying in the United Kingdom
John Major
Political funding in the United Kingdom