Teacher held in connection with donations-for-lordships scandal

Teacher held in connection with donations-for-lordships scandal

	Published : Fri, 14 Apr 2006 15:00 By : Phil Bateman Print this Story

LONDON: Scotland Yard, which is investigating the cash-for-peerages affair, arrested a former government schools adviser who is learnt to have helped in getting wealthy sponsors for Tony Blair's flagship city academies. Des Smith, a former head teacher at the All Saints Catholic School in Dagenham, east London, was detained by the Specialist Crime Directorate Thursday under the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925.

Smith, 60, had quit the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, which raises money for the new chain of independent state schools, after he suggested to an undercover reporter that donors could be recommended for honours, including peerages.

He is believed to have told a Sunday Times reporter that "the Prime Minister's office would recommend someone like (the donor) for an OBE, a CBE or a knighthood". The reporter posed as an assistant to a businessman interested in sponsoring an academy and told Smith that the businessman's wife had read that people had received honours for donations to academies.

Smith is said to have responded saying if the donor paid for one or more academies "we would certainly start nominating (the donor). But also what would be great is you could go to the House of Lords and get a lord. . . become a lord."

Lord Levy, the prime minister's chief fund raiser, is the trust's president. He is to be queried by an all-party Commons committee in connection with the "donations for lordships" scandal.

Under the academy programme, Blair intends to set up 200 academies by 2010 and is considered as one of his most ambitious reform plans for the public sector.

Scotland Yard had launched the inquiry into the donations scandal after a complaint by Scottish and Welsh nationalist MPs that the Labour party had offered peerages to four businessmen who had made loans totalling 4.5 million pounds to the party for funding the elections. Under the rules, claimed the party, loans are not required to be declared to the Electoral Commission. The four nominations had been blocked by an independent Lords appointments commission.

A 1925 legislation makes it illegal to reward with "a title of honour" anyone who has given "any gift, money or valuable consideration" to a political party. It carries a two-year jail term if found guilty.

Smith was picked up from his home in Wanstead, east London, and was later released on bail.

The prime minister's office declined to comment on the arrest.

The academies are directly funded from Whitehall, and donors have a say in their running in return for the donations, which amounts to around 2 million pounds. Some eight sponsors of the academies are learnt to have already been nominated for honours.

There are two other investigations, apart from Scotland Yard's, into the donations scam. One is being carried out by the Commons Public Administration Committee chaired by the Labour M.P. Tony Wright, while the other is being handled by the Constitutional Affairs Committee, chaired by the Liberal Democrat M.P. Alan Beith, which looks into the wider aspect of how political parties are funded.