NEWSNIGHT SPELLS GOODNIGHT FOR SPELMAN

27-06-2008

The future of Conservative Chair Caroline Spelman is hanging in the balance after the BBC’s Newsnight programme made further revelations about payments to her nanny. It’s also emerged that Tory backbenchers are calling for the Meriden MP’s dismissal.

Newsnight discovered that Spelman was “shopped” nine years ago by her secretary Sally Hammond who complained to Tory shadow cabinet member Peter Ainsworth.

Hammond couldn’t understand why the MP was so short of cash for office expenses until she learned that a significant part of her allowance was going to nanny Tina Haynes.

Conservative whip James Arbuthnot was called in, and ordered Spelman to stop the payments – which added up to more than £25,000 in just under two years.

Commons rules expressly forbid the cash to be used for “personal expenditure”.

The plot thickened when it turned out that Haynes was based at the Spelman family home in Kent rather than Westminster or the constituency and that she’d been paid for longer for the 12 months originally admitted.

There were also inconsistencies in Haynes account, after she originally told the programme she "didn't do political stuff".

Spelman, who hasn’t returned The Stirrer’s calls on the subject, has always insisted she’s done nothing wrong, and the case is now being investigated by the parliamentary standards commissioner Sir John Lyon.

The Conservative Whips Office at Westminster has now begun its own inquiry, and Newsnight says that several MP’s have approached the backbench 1922 Committee calling for Spelman’s removal as Party Chair.

(To see the BBC version of this story, click here)

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