Golden Goodbyes

After months of gruelling email exchanges with the Commons Authorities, and having to get the information commissioner involved, the data I requested on MPs' resettlement grants was finally released to me last Friday.

I’d originally put in a request to find out which MPs had taken grants because I wanted to know whether Patricia Hewitt had.

Hewitt had held several high paid jobs in the private sector even while she was an MP, and she had no need of a £50,000 grant to help her "readjust" when she left Parliament.

The Commons typically refused for weeks but eventually backed down when I referred the case to the commissioner – hence the Leicester Mercury, Hewitt’s local paper, got the exclusive story.

As well as Hewitt, this was the first time we could confirm that the likes of Geoff Hoon and even the disgraced MP Derek Conway had taken their grants.

The Independent’s High Street Ken reported the story today and gave the Mercury a mention, and then the BBC’s Emma Griffiths put this piece on their website.

The Telegraph's story.

The Mirror's follow up.

The information is now fully available at the House of Commons website here.

Patronising Pat strikes again...

I rather enjoyed this little passage from A Journey about Blair letting Pat Hewitt talk at cabinet just to annoy John Prescott.

He wrote of Prescott: “He was definitely old fashioned and not great at working with a certain type of middle class woman, and though sound on the policy of gay rights was led more by his head than his heart.”

Mr Blair continues, telling how at cabinet Mr Prescott would sit “like a grumbling volcano ready to erupt” often because of one of the women that had spoken up.

He writes: “Patricia Hewitt was sure to get him going. She was in fact a really good minister and was excellent at the Department of Health, taking truly difficult decisions with immense determination, but at cabinet she would usually raise the women’s angle.

“John would make some slightly off colour remark if he was in a sour mood. I would then bring her in again just for the sheer entertainment of watching him explode.

“She would patronise him in the most wonderfully insensitive fashion: ‘Now John, that’s a very, very good point you’ve just made, and it’s always so worth listening to you.’”

You can actually hear Hewitt’s voice in your head when you read that last bit. Freakish.

Resettlement grants battle

It looks like Lobbydog will be forced to go to the Information Commissioner to get a few facts that should be in the public domain.

Before I nipped off on summer hols I put a Freedom of Information request in with the Commons Authorities to find out which MPs had drawn their resettlement grants and which had not.

At first request I was refused outright, with the authorities ludicrously claiming that to reveal the information would breach data protection law.

This blog demanded a review of the decision and has managed to glean a little more information – 200 MPs have drawn their grants, that’s of 230 odd MPs who left Parliament.

While there are those of you out there who might think the grant – paid to help MPs “adjust to non parliamentary life” – is shameful full stop, I’d suggest there are some instances in which it is more shameful than others.

Some MPs, like Patricia Hewitt for example, walked straight into a very well paid job (or jobs in Hewitt’s case) and have absolutely no need for a payment which stretches in to the tens of thousands of pounds to ‘tide them over’.

However the authorities have still refused to give me a list of those who have drawn the grant and those who have not.

Given that it concerns public money, there is no reason why the authorities should refuse to release information about who has drawn grants, particularly as they have already put out a lot of information on other allowances claimed.

Information Commissioner here I come.

A Ruddy good coup

I just need to mention in passing the stunning downfall of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

Not so long ago Rudd was the most popular Aussie Prime Minister ever, then he was the least popular, then his party dumped him.

But the pragmatic efficient way in which they levered him out for the good of the party stands in astonishing contrast to the ludicrous Hoon and Hewitt plot over here.

As one UK Labour man Peter Kenyon tweeted this morning: “British Labour Party needs to learn from how Australian sister party changed leader while in government.”

Too busy to think, too busy to talk...

Lobbydog called an old friend yesterday to see how life is since she left the Westminster bubble.

When Ms Hewitt picked up she was in a mini-cab on the way to a meeting. It was a cordial conversation for ten seconds or so.

It was around then that I asked whether she would be taking her “resettlement grant”. The last time I asked her about it was before the election when she said she’d been “too busy” to think about it.

The grant, a cool £54,000 in Hewitt’s case, is meant to tide MPs over while they relocate from Westminster and find another job – indeed, while they “resettle”.

But I couldn’t help but feel that Patricia seems awfully resettled already – she holds jobs with Boots, BT, Cinven, Barclays Capital and Eurostar.

She held all but the Eurostar position while she was still an MP in fact, so no wonder she’s been so busy; but back to the mini-cab.

Having been asked whether she would take the grant the former member for Leicester West suddenly said she’d arrived at her destination and had to rush into a meeting and that she would call me back.

She hasn’t yet, but she is very busy after all.

Straw operates...

Lobbydog quizzed Labour stalwart Jack Straw last night on how close he was to Geoff Hoon’s plotting against Gordon Brown.

I wanted to know how he looked and sounded when the allegations made in Andrew Rawnsley’s book – that in 2008 he and Hoon had sought to topple Brown, but later changed their minds – were put to him in front of a room of people.

As you may remember the book, The End of the Party said Straw had met with Stephen Byers and Charles Clarke to discuss the issue.

Straw had allegedly indicated to Byers that he and the chief whip, Geoff Hoon, would "take action before the party conference" in the autumn of 2008.

The plan apparently fell apart when Hoon was bought off with the offer of an EU Commissioner’s job that never came through.

When I first asked Straw about the allegations he replied that Hoon had in no way contacted him about the most recent botched coup with Patricia Hewitt.

I pointed out that this was not what I had asked about and that in the book…

“I like my bedtime reading to be something that is not absolutely to do with work,” he joked.

Eventually getting to the crux he said: “In the period between the Crewe by-election and the Glasgow East by-election there were a lot of conversations amongst people.

“Those were to do with the fact that one was caught in a very difficult situation not to do with plotting a coup. I was never involved in one, and I haven’t been.”

Make of that what you will.

Straw faced a whole bunch of tough questions during the briefing but managed to answer them all without losing his demeanour, without losing his sense of humour and without putting any hacks' backs up.

It’s no wonder he’s been around for such a long time – he’s one of the few Labour politicians to have survived a stint at the Home Office.

Wonder where he’ll be May 7th?

LD readers move against Hewitt...

Last week readers of this blog called for a campaign to convince companies employing Pat Hewitt to dump her.

The calls came after it emerged that Hewitt had won a fifth board-room appointment, this time with Eurotunnel – she already works for Boots, BT, Cinven and Barclays Capital.

That is despite her appearance in the TV programme that blew open the “lobbygate” scandal.

Your comments were picked up by The Independent who yesterday reported how letters had already started to find their way to at least one of Hewitt’s employers.

What a pro-active bunch you are.

Eurotunnel didn’t exactly seem rocked to the core by the threat of the letter writing campaign.

But a spokesman admitted to LD today that it would, in the end, be shareholders who decided Hewitt’s fate at a vote on May 26.

So keep writing I say. The more letters that are written the more likely it is that they will have an impact.

Hoon - tamed and half dead

I have to say, dear readers, that I’m starting to find Geoff Hoon kind of pitiful.

It’s not that I’m now supporting him or anything.

But in the same way one feels at the end of a Godzilla movie, when the rampaging lizard has finally been tamed and is now lying bloody and half-dead with a small monster’s tear gathering in its eye – he’s just so weak.

His fall from grace has been a spectacular political implosion. Nine months ago he was a secretary of state. Since then he’s been sacked, passed over, blamed for a botched coup, suspended and investigated.

When he was caught on camera in the ‘lobbygate’ film it was obvious that the post-MP job offers have not exactly been rolling in, like they have for Pat Hewitt (see post below).

In fact it was pretty clear that Hoon hasn’t got a clue what he’s doing when it comes to this kind of thing.

Now he’s been sacked from his UN job – the only thing he had left practically.

All that can happen now is for the bank to repossess his home/homes and the destruction will be complete.

No shame...

...are the only two words that spring to mind today in connection with Pat Hewitt.

We learnt yesterday that she was taking advice from former Downing Street communication director David Hill on how to handle the fallout from ‘lobbygate’.

I doubt he’ll be telling her simply to apologise and stop doing whatever it is that she’s doing.

Instead we learn that she is going to take yet another directorship with Eurotunnel.

This is on top of the positions that she already has with Boots, BT, Cinven and Barclays.

On top of that she still hasn’t revealed whether she is going to turn down her “golden goodbye” resettlement grant – worth £54,000.

Hoon and Hewitt slammed

Geoff Hoon and Pat Hewitt took a verbal bashing from a member of Labour’s governing body today.

Lobbydog was chatting to the National Executive Committee’s Peter Kenyon who said it would be outrageous if the pair took up their so-called “resettlement grants”.

Hoon stands to walk away with £64,000 and Hewitt, £54,000, under the grant system, which was set up to help MPs “adjust to non-parliamentary life”.

Kenyon said: “I think there is a case for any member of any party that doesn’t have a genuine need, to voluntarily forgo the grant. That seems to be the incontrovertible case.

“For an MP that is stepping down at the next election that already has employment or the means of surviving promptly it would be outrageous for them to claim it, particularly in the light of how the public now sees MPs.

“If it requires intervention to that end from the Parliamentary Standards Authority, then I would whole heartedly support that.”

It’s all the more scandalous of course because neither Hoon, a trained lawyer with a property portfolio, nor Hewitt, who holds board level positions with Boots, BT, Cinven and Barclays Capital, is in a tight spot financially now that they’re leaving the House.

If they had waited till after the election before standing down they would have lost the grant all together as the system under which they are entitled to it will most likely be scrapped.

LD spoke to the pair yesterday, both said they had “not given much thought” as to whether they would take the grant or not.

Changing shape of midlands Labour

After seeing that three more Labour MPs announced they were standing down I thought I’d review the situation in my area.

When I say my area, I mean the areas of the newspapers that I write for – Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and north Staffordshire.

When I started my job two years ago there were 28 Labour MPs out of a total of 40.

Eight of those have announced they are standing down – Alan Simpson, Paddy Tipping, Bob Laxton, Mark Todd, Tom Levitt, Patricia Hewitt, David Taylor (who passed away recently) and Liz Blackman.

I strongly suspect a further two, Geoff Hoon and Alan Meale, may also stand down soon.

That makes ten, about a third of the original figure, which will be replaced.

Another group of six, which includes two ministers, are in seats that are wobbly to varying degrees.

With the weakest majority first, they are: Andy Reed (1,996), David Kidney (2121), Nick Palmer (2,296), Charlotte Atkins (2,438), Vernon Coaker (3,811) and Judy Mallaber (5,275).

If we say it is probable that those with a majority of less than 3,000 could lose their seat it would mean four more MPs being replaced.

From the original 28 Labour MPs half would be replaced, either by a new Labour candidate or an opposition MP.

The leeches

"I see the leeches are here," sneered Sheffield MP Richard Caborn, as he strutted passed your correspondent.

Being a macho man Caborn would have had no problems pushing the door open if the room was packed like before.

In truth, no-one expected this meeting to be as dramatic as last time or for Gordon to have any real problems. Why? "Because of Geoff Hoon's incompetence," one Labour MP suggested to me afterwards.

Oddly enough, the same answer was once offered to me on an entirely different subject. On this occasion however, while it seemed fair, it was not altogether accurate.

Click to read the Evening Post parliamentary correspondent's column.

Labour meeting sets tone of election campaign

It’s no surprise that tonight’s PLP meeting was a rallying call to galvanise the party for the election campaign.

The Hoon and Hewitt debacle was alluded to only in vague terms by the PM, through his salt mine joke, and by Mandy when he told the party “we are not going to let others insert wedges between us.”

There were a few MPs who talked about it but they were, I’m told, unanimously derisory about the pair of rebels – neither of whom had the guts to attend the meeting.

There seems to have been an effort to show the party that this was an election campaign being run by more people than Brown – “I am not a team of one, I am one of team,” he told them.

Mandelson, Harman and Douglas Alexander all gave speeches in which they outlined various parts of election strategy.

One MP told me they wanted to show that the PM would not be involved in the minutiae of day-to-day decision making, but would concentrate on getting out around the country campaigning.

The party will use signs of economic recovery as a platform for their campaign and will then seek to show that Labour can be a party of change – the “right kind of change” that is.

Meanwhile they will try and score points off the Tories by claiming their ‘austerity’ financial plan will endanger the recovery.

See you in the morning for more fun.

The Salt Mine Joke

This was an aide’s account of a joke told by the PM to members of the PLP at tonight’s meeting.

It seems to have been one of the only times the PM acknowledged what happened with Hewitt and Hoon.

The aide recalled: “He said that there was a big issue that confronted him last week – when he spoke to the head of the salt union.

“He asked him what we could be doing more to help. And the man responded ‘Prime Minister we need more people to go down the salt mine’.

“The PM responded that he could immediately think of a number of people that could fit the bill, but added that Tony Lloyd the chairman of the PLP would be opening nominations and that it would be important to have a secret ballot.”

The aide added: “If you’re in the PLP, that’s like Peter Kaye.”

Friday Caption Contest

SHEEE'S B'HIND YOOOOO!

Don't tell him yer name Pike!

LD was chatting with serial Labour rebel Alan Simpson about the “plot” which he was suitably scornful of.

He said: “What astonished me was the incompetence and disorganisation of this latest attempt on the leadership.

“Poor Geoff seems to have emerged as the Captain Mainwaring of failed coups – there is no point in shouting ‘charge’ if you haven’t lined up the troops to go with you.

“I wasn’t involved simply because there was no wider involvement. It’s obvious there is dissatisfaction within the party, but everyone knows that half a coup is worse than no coup at all.

“In fact I’d almost be tempted to say that Downing Street would have paid good money for such a piece of political incompetence.”

Notice the nuance of his last line.

He points out that Downing Street has actually benefited – the door to a future more organised leadership challenge has been shut because this particularly incompetent one has been spiked early on.

It would be high conspiracy theory to suggest that Downing Street might actually have had something to do with the failed coup.

But if Geoff Hoon happens to pick up some sort of cushy post-politics position in the future then remember this blog.

What I am certain about is that Hoon is a man that doesn’t do anything without getting something.

Why and who - the Hoon Hewitt axis

Although he won’t confirm it, a lot of people reckon Geoff Hoon has decided to stand down at the next election.

I’ve had that as a strong tip from someone in Labour before today’s shenanigans. As we know Hewitt is already standing down.

That suggests neither have anything to gain politically from challenging Brown now – which is odd.

Until one realises that they also have nothing to lose – which would make them a good front for a wider plot.

Most MPs have said there is no such plot, but some who could be considered to be “waverers” on Brown’s leadership claim to have had conversations with others in which they say their support was elicited.

Certainly there are those who might even welcome a contest.

Nick Palmer MP told LD today: “If there was a clear and attractive alternative then I would make a decision at that time.

“There are certainly people capable of doing it – whether they want it is another question. If James Purnell says he wants to do it. Then I would look at him.”