Annex iii8
Letter to the Parliamentary Commissioner
for Standards from Sir Peter Soulsby
Thank you for your letter of 24 October.
I can confirm that Keith Vaz delayed resigning his
post with the Law Centre for several months after he was first
elected to Parliament in 1987.
The requests for him to resign were made formally
by the Town Clerk at the time, Mr Arthur Price-Jones, and informally
by me, as the then Council Leader.
The reasons for our concern was that he was obviously
not actually working for the Centre and this Council-funded project
had already had embarrassing questions asked about how Mr Vaz
got the job: whether he had been practicing without a valid Law
Society Certificate and whether the Law Centre was effectively
being used by him as his Campaign Headquarters.
Unfortunately we have been unable as yet to find
the files from this period and it seems possible that they have
been destroyed in the intervening years, most likely during the
period of dramatic departmental reorganisation that took place
prior to and at the time of local government restructuring in
1997/8.
I have however asked for further searches to be made
and if any of the papers are found will contact you again.
7 November 2001
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