PM insists Johnson ‘not corrupt’
Gordon Brown has defended his health secretary as the Labour party is beset by another accusation of funding impropriety.
The prime minister said Alan Johnson was not corrupt for accepting a third-party donation to his deputy leadership campaign.
Yesterday it emerged Mr Johnson, who lost out in the Labour deputy race to Harriet Harman, accepted more than £3,000 from a man who admitted he had never heard of the Hull MP.
Waseem Siddiqui said he had been asked to sign a blank cheque to Mr Johnson’s campaign on behalf of his brother Ahmed Yar Mohammed, an official with Croydon Central Labour Party.
Mr Johnson said he was as “surprised as anybody else” that Mr Mohammed had channelled the donation through an intermediary.
But he said his campaign team had “followed absolutely the procedures”.
He confirmed his team had checked Mr Siddiqui was on the electoral roll, as required by law, and gone further in checking he was also a member of the Labour party.
Mr Johnson told Sky News: “I’m very keen and very interested – more than most people – to find out the truth about where he got the money, but there can be no accusation [that] either me or my team indulged in any kind of impropriety whatsoever.”
Mr Siddiqui joined the Labour party last March, claiming he did so on the advice of his brother-in-law.
Mr Mohammed confirmed he asked Mr Siddiquito to sign the cheque but said he did so because he was travelling.
In a statement he said: “I did this in good faith and at no point was it my intention to disguise my donation.
“However, I understand that there has been some misunderstanding about this matter so I am writing to the Electoral Commission to clarify the circumstances behind the donation so that this matter could quickly be resolved.”
Mr Johnson’s deputy leadership campaign was managed by sports minister Gerry Sutcliffe, who insisted all donations were recorded transparently with the Electoral Commission, Labour party and Parliament’s Register of Members’ Interests.
Mr Sutcliffe told the BBC: “The rules are that he has to be on the Electoral Register, he was. He was also a member of the Labour Party. There was no reason for us to question that donation.
“We were very clear, very open, very transparent in how we recorded these donations, and we felt we met our commitment.”
Mr Brown played down claims of a scandal, which come days after Peter Hain resigned over his failure to declare £103,000 in donations.
The prime minister told GMTV: “He has reported everything to the Electoral Commission. It is for them to make up their mind.
“But I think he has answered all the questions that have been put to him and we have got to get on with the business of government now.
“He has answered all the questions that have been put to him and he has done nothing that is corrupt and nothing that is about foreign donations, or anything like that.”
Shadow business secretary Alan Duncan told BBC News 24 that the matter did not seem serious.
But he added “the problem about this is that it creates a picture of overall decay and decline in government”.
