Annex 10
E-mail to the Parliamentary Commissioner
for Standards from Mr Paul Gosling
Thank you for this morning's conversation and
your reassurances that any information I provide to you is covered
by parliamentary privilege, providing it is not published by me
elsewhere.
I am now writing to provide you, as best I can,
the further information you requested. I will separately fax you
a briefing that I supplied in 1994 to The Independent regarding
Keith Vaz's financial circumstances. Part of this relates, again,
to Control Securities. You will note that other elements relate
to allegations of donations made to him that were not apparently
recorded in his declarations of interest. I believe The Independent
decided not to proceed with their enquiries on these matters.
Although I do not now know where my notebooks are from that time
I can give you my word that the briefing I prepared was an accurate
summary of my investigations at that time.
Regarding the second matter, I cannot now find
my handwritten notes on the Labour Party's accounts for the year
that I audited them and declined to approve them as a correct
record. I believe that my notes may have been submitted to the
Labour Party's internal inquiry. It is possible that my co-auditor,
Mrs Pat Stuttard (of Humberstone Drive, Leicester), may have a
copy and may be in a position to confirm my recollections.
We declined to approve the accounts as we did
not have full access to the accounts. In particular, we did not
have access to the membership records which would verify the main
sources of income and we were therefore not in a position to confirm
how party income was obtained. I believe—though cannot be
certain—that we also did not see the paying-in books showing
sources of income. I cannot be definite which year this would
have related to but was probably around 1990.
I hope this is of some assistance.
3 July 2000
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