Political Commentary

The suspicion of corruption

Hugh Macpherson

The Government have been exhibiting a low profile — to use the fashionable phrase — in their reaction to the Liberal Party's demand for an immediate inquiry into "allegations of financial corruption" in public life following the recent hearing of bankruptcy proceedings involving Mr John Poulson. Unfortunately, right in the middle of the low profile, is a great round bump containing the substantial person of the Home Secretary, Mr Reginald Maud ling. That is the reason for the delay between Mr Carr announcing that he was calling urgently for a transcript of the evidence, which he said would be "examined with great urgency," and the fact that no announcement about an inquiry had been made a week after it was obvious to the Government that there would be a row in the Commons.

Mr Carr already had a transcript of Mr Poulson's evidence last weekend, since it was available on Friday, and it is simply inconceivable that the Prime Minister of Great Britain cannot immediately muster shorthand typists to give him enough ccpies to paper the walls of No 10 Downing Street if he so chooses. The major embarrassment to the Government is that the only kind of inquiry which would satisfy the demands which will be made in the Commons is an independent one: that is, with the hearings held in public. And Mr Maudling, himself, would have to appear before such an inquiry.

Such has been the anger at the difficulties Mr Maudling has caused by his business misjudgements that there is a small group of Ministers who think that he ought to resign, at least temporarily, until all inquiries are over. The reasoning behind this drastic suggestion is that there is no absolute guarantee that any inquiry which the Government sets up this week would be the last one. What if any other name is mentioned when the bankruptcy proceedings are resumed at the beginning of August? And what if some MP should come forward with additional allegations after an inquiry is established?

Already Mr Willie Hamilton has put a question on the Order Paper for written answer next Wednesday, by the Secretary of State for Scotland, following an anonymous letter he has received making further allegations about a connection between the Civil Service and a building contractor. Of course these kinds of allegation do fly about whenever the Commons becomes involved in this kind of inquiry, but the difficult choice facing Mr Heath this week has been between allowing such wide terms of reference for an inquiry that there is infinite room for manoeuvre by mischief-makers, or risking having to add to the terms of reference or institute more inquiries.

Mr Heath's difficulties do not end there. He is well aware that whilst the public appetite feeds on the juicier personal side of public inquiries — dinners at Prunier's, the villa provided in Italy and so on — the electors are not very good at sorting out the innocent from the guilty: mud sticks. And as a further complication there is the material for three inquiries, not one, in the Poulson bankruptcy proceedings. First there is the immediate question of payments to people in public life; next the involvement of the Civil Service; and finally the vexed question of the business interests of MPs.

The delay in setting up an inquiry was in the hope that the political row would die down, and that the Civil Service side of things could be settled by a discreet inquiry, with the result published after the story had been written to death in the Sundays. The last occasion in which a high ranking civil servant was accused of having an improper association with a business interest was in 1936 when Sir Christopher Bullock, the Permanent Secretary at the Air Ministry, was dismissed.

There was no suggestion that anything illegal took place; indeed the PM of the day, Stanley Baldwin, observed that he was glad that there was no suggestion of corruption. Civil Servants, it would appear, are judged by more refined standards than Members of ' Parliament, since some members make little bones about using their parliamentary position to increase their commercial allure.

It is this third aspect of the Poulson hearings that is disturbing MPs, and Mr Robert Carr is almost enthusiastic about bringing in some form of register of MPs' interests. Already a Select Committee has looked at the question of members' outside interests and has come up with the lame suggestions that MPs should be d,ecent chaps and should reveal any interests that MP is paid by an outside interest.

It seems rather curious, if the case of Sir Christopher Bullock be taken as a standard, that MPs impose less exacting ethics on themselves than they do on civil servants. Mr Albert Roberts has stated quite openly that "I had been chairman of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and, chairman of the Anglo-Spanish Parliamentary Committee and as such had travelled

widely, and for this reason Mr. Poulson thought that I could assist him." But if Mr

Roberts had read the intentions of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, he would have discovered that they include the "ad vancement of work of international peace and co-operation" and the "development of parliamentary institutions with a view to improving their working and increasing their prestige," and the like. There is not a word about business deals — even by the most thrusting of European architects.

The Liberals are rather proud of their little voluntary register of interests — although Mr Andrew Roth, that relentless compiler of statistics, claims that Mr Grimond overlooked an investment of £55,000 in a Lloyd's brokerage. There is nothing remotely sinister in this, for we all know that Mr Grimond is quite capable of overlooking such a trivial sum when he is pondering matters philosophical, which he has now been doing for many a long day.

Of more interest are the innocent activities of such worthies as Mr John Pardoe and Mr Russell Johnston who are retained, respectively, by the National Association of Schoolmasters, and the Education Institute of Scotland.

Why should these bodies have a special spokesman in the House — indeed why has almost every imaginable, and, unimagi nable, public body? The police actually divide their representation, having one MP for superintendents and above (Sir Bernard Braine), another for the ordinary bobbies, sergeants and inspectors of England and Wales (Alf Roberts) and yet another for the Scottish cops (Russell Johnston). Does this not put groups who

cannot afford special representatives at a

disadvantage? At the very least it should be public knowledge who represents whom. When it comes to PR activities on behalf of commercial concerns the connections are even more obscure and sometimes only come to light in bankruptcies and other such public events. Just how nervous members can become at the prospect of public interest in their business activities may be judged by the Labour MP who went to elaborate lengths to change his regular retainer from a large building concern to ad hoc payments of the same value in case there should be a register of regular payments. Mr Heath may have to live with the accident-prone Mr Maudling; the Civil Service is quite savage enough on chaps who break the club rules; but the Prime Minister must do something to allay the suspicion that many MPs do so well out of their parliamentary contacts.