5. Extract from Sunday Times
article, 28 November 2010
LABOUR'S Shadow Housing Minister has been reported
to the parliamentary standards watchdog after urging ministers
to meet a company whose Chairman is her boyfriend.
Alison Seabeck, appointed to Labour's Front Bench
by Ed Miliband seven weeks ago, used a Commons debate on smoke
alarms to suggest the government should meet the Fire Protection
Association (FPA), which promotes the fire safety industry, to
discuss ways of reducing fire deaths.
Seabeck has been accused of a conflict of interest
because her boyfriend, Nick Raynsford, a Labour MP and a former
Housing and local government Minister under Tony Blair, is a non-executive
member of the FPA board. He has been paid a total of £35,000
by the company since 2005.
...
The complaint was triggered by Seabeck's comments
at the opposition dispatch box on November 19. She told MPs that
her party supported a Private Member's Bill requiring landlords
to fit fire alarms in all rental properties, a proposal backed
by the FPA. She then suggested the government should hold meetings
with the FPA.
Guy Opperman, a Conservative MP, has written to John
Lyon, the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, asking him to
investigate Seabeck over a possible breach of the MPs' code of
conduct.
Seabeck said: "I
checked with the parliamentary standards office to ask if I would
need to declare anything... If this MP has a concern then it's
perfectly proper that it's looked at."
28 November 2010
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