[A-List] UK state: constitutional deform

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

Ashcroft wins apology over political vendetta

David Hencke and Rob Evans
Friday June 6, 2003
The Guardian

Ministers have been forced to issue an embarrassing apology in the high
court and pay nearly £500,000 in costs to the former Tory party treasurer
Lord Ashcroft to halt a damaging court case that was beginning to reveal
centuries-old secrets about the running of the honours system.

On the second day of the peer's legal action to force the government to
release 56 files held on him, a deal was approved by the attorney general,
Lord Goldsmith, admitting that "disobliging references" to Lord Ashcroft in
Whitehall documents were "without foundation".

Foreign Office documents described him as "dodgy" and "being constantly in
Private Eye for various political payoffs".

The former Belize ambassador to the UN believed that because he was a big
donor to the Tories, he was the victim of a political vendetta by ministers
deliberately leaking disparaging documents about him to the media.

The lawsuit also challenged the secrecy of the honours system. Lord Ashcroft
was seeking to discover how and why two nominations for him to become a peer
were blocked before a third was finally approved in 2000.

The aim of the action was not to seek damages; Lord Ashcroft simply wanted
to prove that the government was wrong to withhold documents on his
nomination in response to his applications under the Data Protection Act.

Lord Ashcroft's QC, Mark Warby, told the court that the Foreign Office had a
"dirt file" and gave a "damaging reference" about him to the political
honours scrutiny committee after his repeated nomination by the Tory leader
at the time, William Hague.

The settlement also stops another legal action, due to start in October, in
which he had alleged that the Foreign Office and the Department for
International Development, under former ministers Robin Cook and Clare
Short, had breached his privacy and were responsible for leaks undermining
his business reputation.

Yesterday Mr Warby told Mr Justice Gray that the government had agreed to
apologise. Mr Warby read out the government's statement: "During the years
1999 and 2000, documents held by certain government departments, and which
contained references relating to the affairs of Lord Ashcroft, were
disclosed to the media.

"Despite investigation, the government was not able to establish how the
unauthorised disclosures to the media occurred. The government has though
recognised that various disobliging references relating to Lord Ashcroft
which were contained within documents held by government departments were
without foundation."

Lord Ashcroft had been angered by the leaking of two Foreign Office
documents to the Times in 1999.

He was also infuriated when more secret Foreign Office documents, obtained
by the Guardian, disclosed an argument between him and the high commissioner
to Belize at a Christmas party in 2000.

Lord Ashcroft said yesterday: "I am delighted that the government has
finally come clean. Those who know me have never gone along with the
suggestions which appeared in print."