[A-List] UK state: constitutional deform

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Hague's plea to Blair to get Ashcroft into the Lords

Tory leader tried twice to reverse ruling against businessman

David Hencke and Rob Evans
Thursday June 5, 2003
The Guardian

The former Tory leader William Hague went to enormous lengths to persuade
Tony Blair and Lord Thomson, chairman of the political honours scrutiny
committee, to reverse a decision to twice refuse a peerage to Lord Ashcroft,
it was revealed yesterday,

Confidential letters between Mr Hague and the PM on his nomination for a
peerage became public as Lord Ashcroft's lawyers opened their case in the
high court to force the government to release "a file of dirt" held on the
controversial businessman.

The letters provide a rare glimpse into the secret world of the honours
system - disclosing that the former Tory foreign secretary Lord Hurd (a
member of the scrutiny committee) released details of its deliberations so
that Mr Hague could protest to Mr Blair.

Lord Hurd told Mr Hague that the committee was minded to recommend that Lord
Ashcroft was not a "a fit and proper person" in 1999. The committee ruled he
was a tax exile, had an incompatible job as Belizean ambassador to the UN
and had underwitten the finances of the Tory party.

They were also exercised by a forthcoming report which they thought,
erroneously, would link Lord Ashcroft to the sinking of a Belize registered
trawler in the North Sea with the loss of four lives.

In a robust letter to Mr Blair, Mr Hague pledged that Lord Ashcroft would
cease to be tax exile costing him "tens of millions a year" and abandon the
ambassadorship.

He takes a side swipe at his financial support for the Tories saying he is
in a similar position to the Labour peers Lords Sainsbury, Hamlyn, Levy,
Puttnam and Bragg.

"Mr Ashcroft runs the risk of being denied a peerage for reasons which are
either wrong, insubstantial or a matter of choice and swift alteration."

The second time, in 2000, Mr Hague wrote personally to Lord Thomson to
insist that Michael Ashcroft had met all their concerns - leading the peer
to write to Tony Blair asking him to ensure that the Tory treasurer is
resident in Britain before he takes up his seat.

Mark Warby QC, for Lord Ashcroft, told the high court that because the
Foreign Office had collected a "file of dirt" on Michael Ashcroft this had
been used to block his nomination to become a working peer.

In 1999, Charles Drace-Francis, a career diplomat, wrote an appraisal of the
peer, noting that he "constantly" featured in the satirical magazine Private
Eye. "I attach a file which has some but not all of the dirt".

Mr Warby said: "The Foreign Office gave a damaging reference on him to the
political honours scrutiny committee which was based in part on rumours,
media talk and other gossip."

He added: "We still don't know what the dirt is".

Lord Ashcroft, who became a peer in 2000, is seeking a legal order to force
the government to disclose official documents which he believes would show
why his nomination to become a peer was blocked. He is claiming that the
government has failed to release the documents as they should have done
under the Data Protection Act.

In a case due to start in October, he is suing government ministers,
alleging that a series of embarrassing leaks breached his privacy.

Mr Warby said the stream of leaks against Lord Ashcroft from within the
government was "an attack on democracy".

"It is a serious matter for the government to use official records to damage
the opposition."