Select Committee on Standards and Privileges First Report


APPENDIX 70

Letter from the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards to Lady Olga Maitland MP

  As you probably know I am, at the request of the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges, conducting an inquiry into allegations, made principally by The Guardian, against a number of Members, including yourself.

  I am now in a position to set out in formal terms the complaint made against you by The Guardian.

ALLEGATION MADE BY THE GUARDIAN AGAINST LADY OLGA MAITLAND MP

  1. In April 1992 you were elected to Parliament.

  2. On 31 January 1992 and 3 February 1992, you had received various payments from Ian Greer Associates.

  3. On 6 October 1992 you provided an invoice for consultancy work to Ian Greer Associates in the sum of £3,000.

  4. Insofar as the payment in the preceding paragraph was related to work done, or services provided after your election to Parliament, you failed to register that payment in the Register of Interests.

  (I attach copies of your Register entries and relevant correspondence from your Registry file. Please note that these documents are supplied for your information and assistance, and they are not to be taken as intended to corroborate or otherwise the above allegation.)   You may be aware that similar allegations were made in the book Sleaze: the Corruption of Parliament, published last week. It may be that these allegations will be further developed and expanded in evidence to the inquiry from The Guardian or other witnesses, and you may wish to bear this in mind when producing your statement. I enclose the relevant extracts from the book.

  I would welcome a detailed, written response to the allegations setting out which are accepted, which are disputed, and in so far as actions or omissions are accepted by you as correctly described, providing any explanations which may assist me in my inquiry.

  I do not seek to place any limit on the length of any written statement which you may wish to submit, but so that the inquiry can proceed I would appreciate your written statement as soon as possible, and in any event, by 6 February 1997. If you propose to submit written statements from others who may assist me in considering your responses to these allegations, I would also hope that they could be provided to me by the same date. If there are potential witnesses from whom you have not been able to obtain written statements, please identify them (with details as to how they can be contacted) and explain why their evidence will assist me in investigation of the allegations set out earlier in this letter.

DOCUMENTS

  I would welcome copies of any documents upon which you may wish to rely.

PROCEDURE

  I enclose a copy of the procedure note which forms the basis for the conduct of my inquiry.

(Sir Gordon Downey)

28 January 1997

Letter from Lady Olga Maitland, MP to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards

  Re: Guardian allegations   I did indeed submit an invoice to Ian Greer after I had been elected to Parliament, this was in relation to a payment made by him to me BEFORE I was elected.

  In 1991 he had sought my help to recover a debt outstanding to him by the Kuwaiti Department of Information. I intervened on his behalf during December 1991 and January 1992.

  Finally on 31 January he sent me a letter to my home address - the only address I had at the time, not having been elected - saying that the outstanding monies had come through. He enclosed a cheque for £2,000. He topped this up with a second cheque of £1,000 feeling that the final sum reflected more adequately compensation for my efforts. The payments were paid by me into my bank account at Childs, I Fleet Street, London on 4 February and 12 February together with unrelated small amounts as I was working freelance at the time.

  I heard no more on the subject until later in the year when Mr Greer asked if I would send him an invoice in relation to the payments to help keep his books in order. His financial year ends in June, and his accountants had noticed that he did not have an invoice for the payment to me. Hence the request to me for an invoice in the sum of £3,000 which I duly sent.

  Bearing in mind that the payments were received by me BEFORE I was elected to Parliament, as correctly reported by the book, and the work involved was before I was elected, I saw no reason to make a declaration to your department.

  You will note that neither the book or The Guardian allege that I received any money which I failed to declare AFTER I was elected in April 1992.

  To assist you, I enclose a copy of the letter I received from Ian Greer on 31 January together with a copy of my bank statement and my freelance cash book[61] recording the payments. You will note they took place just a few days after I received Mr Greer's letter. I also enclose my bank statement for the period up to 31 July 1992.

  Bearing in mind the fact that I received your letter on Thursday evening, I only had five working days in order to get the material together. I am afraid therefore that I would need more time to obtain from the bank the period covering September and October. If you require it, I will ask the bank to send the outstanding statements. You will note that the payments from my freelance earnings etc., are interspersed with my parliamentary earnings together with transfers to my Gold Deposit Account which makes for some confusion. The bank tell me that if you could indicate any payment you have doubts about, they will retrieve the details from their microfilm files. This would take seven working days. I should however point out that no Ian Greer payments for £3,000 feature in period AFTER I was elected because I paid his cheques out to me in early February i.e., before the Election.

  I have no doubt that if approached Ian Greer would confirm the payment arrangements - and the fact that he asked for the invoice months AFTER I had been paid by him.

  I have not carried out any other paid work for Ian Greer. He never discussed with me anything to do with Yugoslavia. As the book correctly says I am highly critical of Milosovic. It would be evident therefore that I would not have wished to be involved in any effort to put the Serb leader in a favourable light.

  Regarding the Royal Marsden, I campaigned on its behalf because half the hospital is in Sutton. This was entirely a constituency matter, although The Royal Marsden engaged Ian Greer to help them. My role was purely on behalf of the hospital itself liaising closely with the hospital director Phyllis Cunningham. I did receive material from IGA when I moved the adjournment debate on the Royal Marsden. IGA being retained by the Royal Marsden was expected to assist in just this manner. I received no payments for this - nor did I seek any payment. The innuendo in the book that I moved the debate because in the past I had receive a payment from IGA as detailed above is wholly untrue.

  You might wish to discuss this matter with Miss Cunningham at the Royal Marsden and Mr Greer.

(Lady Olga Maitland)

7 February 1997

Letter from Mr Ian Greer to Lady Olga Maitland MP

  A few moments ago I heard from the Bank that we had received the Kuwaiti money - I tried to get you on the telephone, sadly without success. You have played an enormous part in retrieving the money due to us, and I would like you to accept the enclosed cheque. I appreciate you may not want to, but I really insist. I know you are heavily engaged in the run-up to the Election, but let's get together and, hopefully, celebrate a victory after it is all over.

  With kind regards and again many thanks for all your efforts - they certainly are not easy people to deal with.

(Ian B Greer)

31 January 1992


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