THE Prime Minister was savaged at his monthly press conference yesterday after the emergence of the ‘donations for peerages’ scandal and the fact that Tory votes saw his Education and Inspections Bill get a successful second reading.
Nick Robinson, BBC News asked: ‘Did you know that the men you were nominating to be peers were in fact large scale donors to the Labour Party and had made loans to the Labour Party?
He added: ‘Do you still feel Chai Patel is a fit and proper person to act as a Labour lord?’
Blair admitted that he did know, adding that all the wealthy businessmen nominated ‘are people who would make a good contribution to the debates on behalf of the Labour Party in the House of Lords’.
He said fund-raising involved ‘difficult decisions, for example, when I became leader of the Labour Party, 90 per cent of our funding was from the trade unions, that wasn’t very healthy either’.
Andy Bell, Five News, asked was ‘Downing Street running a secret operation to raise money, that the treasurer didn’t know, and why it was being run in this way was to get round the rules that you set up in the first place?’
Blair said: ‘No.’
Another reporter put to Blair: ‘You’ve told us that you knew about the loan. Within weeks of the loan, Chai Patel is offered a peerage.
‘Can you see why that looks bad and smells bad and what would you have said about it, if it had happened before 1997?’
Blair replied: ‘It’s precisely for that reason that you may as well change the system altogether.’
In reference to the Education Bill, he was asked: ‘Do you think you may eventually leave office having never gone as far as you wanted?’
Blair said ‘on the schools bill, we did not compromise on the freedoms for self-governing trusts at all’.
Jon Snow, Channel 4 News, suggested people will be spending 40 years in the House of Lords ‘courtesy of your decision, possibly founded on a corrupt, if not illegal, decision to allow them into the house of Lords on the basis of payments’.
Snow asked: ‘What would you say to the Iraqis if they were setting up a democratic system which enabled the leader to nominate somebody on the basis of a one and a half million pound loan?’
Blair replied: ‘I am the first prime minister to give away patronage, rather than keep the system simply for myself. It is true, however, that as a result of what has happened that there is public concern.
That’s why it’s sensible in my view to complete the reforms.’
Pressed by other reporters to say why he didn’t tell his party treasurer and his fund raising committee, Blair said ‘there will be a discussion next week on the party National Executive’.
One reporter asked ‘where all the money went’. Blair said: ‘It went on the general election and its aftermath.’
Amy Kellog, Fox News asked about Iran: ‘The dossier is now officially at the (UN) Security Council, how do you see things progressing from here?’
Blair: ‘I think it will be possible to get an agreement on a presidential statement.
‘Obviously there will be a lot of hard work to be done over the next few weeks.
‘Then it really does matter for Iran over whether they’re prepared to come back into compliance or not.’
He added: ‘This is an issue that the international community cannot walk away from.’
He added ominously, Iraq style, ‘And so there will be some very, very tough decisions to take over these coming weeks.’
He did not expand on what the tough decisions were.
