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The wee boy from East Kilbride who embraced Thatcherism

Liam Fox is a Tory MP. He was elected to Westminster in 1992 and was Secretary of State for Defence from 2010 to 2011.

In the 2009 expenses scandal, he was found to have the largest over-claim on expenses and was forced to repay £22,476 .

It was also reported in 2009 that Fox had claimed expenses of more than £19,000 over the previous four years for his mobile phone. He claimed the high bill was due to regular trips overseas, in his capacity as Shadow Defence Secretary and said he was looking for a cheaper tariff.

In 2012, the Commons Speaker blocked the release of data showing which MPs were renting their homes to other MPs for financial gain. A study of parliamentary records was published and showed that Liam Fox to be in receipt of rental income from his London home while simultaneously claiming rental income from the taxpayer to live at another residence.

In 2013, Fox hit the news again, after documents showed he claimed 3p for a 100 metre car trip a year earlier. He also made an additional 15 claims under £1 for car travel approved in 2012–13, two of which were for 24p and 44p. He said: “I don’t do my expenses. My office does them. But they are all done according to the rules for travel distances.”

In 2010, he was appointed Defence Secretary, a position from which he was forced to resign over allegations that he had given a close friend, Adam Werrity, inappropriate access to the MoD and allowed him to join official trips overseas.

He has twice stood unsuccessfully for the leadership of the Conservative Party, in 2005 and 2016.

 

 

 

 

October 2011: Civil Service report slams the conduct of Liam Fox

The Minister of Defence, Liam Fox, put the security of himself and his officials at “risk” on overseas visits by releasing details of his diary to Adam Werritty, the cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell concluded in his report

In a damning assessment O’Donnell said that Fox was guilty of multiple breaches of the ministerial code by “blurring” the lines between his private and official responsibilities.

Downing Street said that David Cameron had accepted the report, which recommended a tightening of the rules governing relations between ministers and civil servants.

 

 

 

The report,  findings:

The public disclosure of MoD diary details about future visits overseas posed a degree of security risk not only to Dr Fox, but also to his accompanying official party.

The risks of his association with Werritty were raised with Dr Fox by both his private office and the permanent secretary. In ignoring their concerns Dr Fox made an error of judgment that his contact with Mr Werritty would continue.

Over the course of a year, Fox allowed Werritty to be present at 18 meetings on government business and alone representing Fox, at a meeting with Matthew Gould, (then the British ambassador designate to Israel).   As a private citizen, with no official locus, it was inappropriate for Werritty to have attended any of these meetings.

Fox, accompanied by Werritty, but without MoD officials, met with Harvey Boulter in Dubai, to discuss a defence contract,  which was a breach of protocol.

Fox arranged for Werritty to meet a donor from Pargav, the company that funded his trips exposing the links between Fox, Werritty and Pargav giving rise to the perception of a conflict of interest placing in doubt the probity  of financial donations made by the company.

Fox failed to inform the MoD permanent secretary of his close friendship with Werritty and his links to Pargav, which was financed by a number of private donors, some of whom had also provided funding to Dr Fox when the Tory Party was in opposition.”

Fox fuelled the impression that Werritty spoke for the British government through his “close and visible association” with his friend.

Werrity was allowed to use “misleading business cards” printed with the parliamentary Portcullis describing himself as an adviser to Fox.

 

 

 

The money men supporting Liam Fox

O’Donnell, named prominent pro-Israel business figures who donated over £140k through Pargav to Fox/Werrity, funding Werritty’s jetset lifestyle of first class flights and five star hotels.

Mick Davis

Mick “the miner” Davis, the South African-born mining magnate known for his pro-Israel views,  is boss of the FTSE 100-registered mining company Xstrata, with an annual salary of £21m he is one of the highest paid executives in the world.

Davis donated £150k to the Tory Party in  2010/11 and gave £7,500 towards  Michael Gove’s election campaign.

A leading figure in the UK Jewish community Davis is chairman of the charity, ” The United Jewish Israel Appeal”.

He also serves on the “Jewish Leadership Council”, a powerful body with representatives from community and religious groups. He has been chairman of the council’s executive committee since 2009.

Poju Zabludowicz

The father of Finnish born, Poju Zabludowicz built his fortune from the defence industry and retired to Israel. His son Poju, founded  an investment company: “Tamares Real Estate”. The property developer is now a very rich man.

He is the chairman, of the Israeli pressure group , “British Israel Communications and Research Centre” (BICOM).

He maintains a close working relationship with Tory Party officials and met with the Foreign Secretary, William Hague to discuss the impact of the Arab spring on Israel. Donated £600,000. to the Conservative Party in advance of the 2010 general election.

Lee Petar

Petar, previously communications chief for BICOM, is now with Tetra Strategy, the lobbying firm that introduced a Dubai defence contractor to Werritty.

G3

An international investigation company run by former MI6 employees.

John Moulton

Private equity tycoon Moulton, who owns the “Reader’s Digest” said that Pargav was “a not-for-profit” organization supporting the Middle East.

IRG Ltd.

A mysterious source of funds referred to only as “IRG Ltd”.

Possibly,  The “International Resources Group,” a US company owned by L-3 Communications denied any involvement.

Or maybe the, “Iraq Research Group” said to be led by Stephen Crouch, former chairman of the Tory Party’s Camarthen West and South Pembrokeshire constituency.

Simon Hart, MP for Camarthen West, said Crouch used to make frequent trips to Iraq and said it was understood locally that he had a background in the military or intelligence. “We always thought he was working for the programme rebuilding Iraq and that he was working for an American company,” Hart said.

Hart also said Crouch once helped arrange a £5,000 donation to the local party from Tony Buckingham, an oil tycoon with interests in Kurdistan.

More on this later in the post.

 

 

 

Labour opposition demand a proper investigation

Harriet Harman,  deputy leader of the Labour Party, said that the internal inquiry was at odds with parliamentary protocol and demanded that the matter be referred to Sir Philip Mawer, the independent adviser on ministerial standards for an impartial investigation.   Cameron, setting the agenda refused to budge on the issue.

 

 

 

Defense Secretary row is distracting MoD staff

The row over Fox is “making it very difficult for Ministry of Defense staff to get on with their jobs supporting soldiers in Afghanistan”, said former Army officer, and Tory MP, Patrick Mercer.

He went on to say that the defense secretary is running a department “under serious financial strictures”, and fighting military campaigns in Afghanistan and Libya. Adding: “The last thing that busy civil servants and busy uniformed staff need inside the MoD is this sort of distraction with their boss”.

A staff intensive search of MoD records revealed that Werritty, had joined Fox, on 18 out of 48 trips abroad since he took up office in May 2010. Including visits to Singapore, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Hong Kong, Israel, New Zealand, Australia, Qatar and Sri Lanka.

Werritty also visited Tampa in Florida, where he dined with General John Allen, now head of NATO forces in Afghanistan.

 

 

 

Fox says he’s sorry to MP’s

Fox rose to cheers from Tory backbenchers. They who accept a myth that he was one of the finest of all defence secretaries. He certainly gave us an aircraft carrier without aircraft, and arranged for armed forces members to be sacked while at war.

In a carefully constructed personal statement to MPs, in the Commons he apologized for breaching the ministerial code over his friendship with Werritty  but he was careful not to say directly that he had breached it.

In a sentence, he said:

“The ministerial code has been found to be breached. For this I am sorry. I accept it is not only the substance but [also] perception that matters. That is why I chose to resign. I accept the consequences for me without bitterness or rancour.

He then  attacked the media for pursuing him with “vindictiveness, and hatred and hit out at Harvey Boulter, a Dubai-based businessman who confirmed a 45 minute meeting with Werrity and Fox, without an MoD official present, in Dubai’s five-star Shangri-La Hotel.

After which Boulter had emailed a lawyer from 3M, a firm with which he was involved in a business dispute, to warn that new information had come to hand which if made public could result in a “rather embarrassing situation” over the recent knighthood awarded to the 3M head, George Buckley.

Boulter had admitted the Buckley knighthood had not been raised at the Fox/Werrity meeting, but he had discussed it with Werritty beforehand.  Fox said it was wrong of the press to report the allegations when Boulter was the defendant in a blackmail case.

He concluded:

“Last week’s media frenzy was not unprecedented, and it happens where a necessary free press and politics collide. But I believe there is, from some quarters, a personal vindictiveness, even hatred, that should worry all of us.”

 

 

 

Boulter rejected Fox’s criticism, saying:

“It is most certainly not fair or correct for Fox to again brand me as a blackmailer. He knows very well that I was trying to settle a legal dispute between 3M and Porton/Ploughshare (part of his former ministry) … How is that possibly blackmail? – this is a negotiation. The fact Fox is continuing to pursue me makes him look more than a little silly. If he had not issued an incorrect statement in the first place, which the Guardian forced him to correct publicly, then he would not have exposed Werrity, his adviser to public scrutiny.”

A number of Tory MPs, led by Desmond Swayne, the prime minister’s parliamentary private secretary (who hugged him) lined up to congratulate Fox after his statement.

 

 

 

The press reply to the Fox allegations of harassment

Although the former defence secretary’s Commons statement started well, he badly misjudged parts of it and ended up sounding like a man who still doesn’t quite get it

When a politician takes a poke at the modern media, as Liam Fox did in his personal resignation statement to MPs, there is always a danger that journalists immediately focus on the affront to their dignity and motives.

Fox’s attack on the media (“some sections”) hounding of family and friends, together with the hatred he detected in some coverage, is not the most important aspect of the saga.

It’s also likely to be half-true. The pack in full pursuit can be pretty ugly, though on this occasion it was chasing a legitimate target. It’s what the media are for, not rummaging through footballers’ tangled love lives.

Not that you would have learned much from Fox’s statement. He started well, albeit without much concession to the faults found by the cabinet secretary as well as the media – in his conduct towards his department in relation to his chum, Adam Werritty.

But he misjudged the next bit badly. “Oh no, he’s another victim,” MPs must have muttered. Most of the “media frenzy” turned against him was not true, he insisted:

‘”I have always believed in personal responsibility and I accept the cabinet secretary’s conclusions. I am pleased at the explicit acknowledgement that I neither sought, expected, nor received any financial gain that was being widely and wrongly implied. “I also welcome the clarification of the fact that no national security issues were breached, no classified documents made available, and no classified matters briefed. These accusations were also widely made and deeply hurtful.”

Nope. All he’d done was breach the ministerial code of conduct. Perception, as well as substance, matters, he conceded – a touch ungracious there.

“And how,” someone might have heckled. But the Commons tradition is that personal statements – usually about wrongdoing, sometimes about reasons for a principled resignation, sometimes a mess like this one – are usually heard in silence.

A good rule in life anywhere. It’s understandable that a man who loved his job, and had sat for 17 years on the frontbench waiting to get it, is angry and disappointed, a “deep personal disappointment”, he said, at losing it over what he clearly thinks is a bogus controversy.

He managed to be gracious again towards the end, thanking friends, family, political colleagues – including David Cameron – as well as his Somerset constituents for their support. “You do not turn your back on friends and family in times of trouble”.

“As I said in the house last week, I accept that it was a mistake for distinctions to be blurred between my professional responsibilities and my personal loyalty to a friend. I accepted then it was a mistake to attend a meeting with a potential supplier without an official present and, with hindsight, I should have been more willing to listen to those around me.”

But Fox also sounded like a man who still doesn’t quite get it. So many questions remain to be asked about what Werritty did on those foreign trips and why he did it. Did he think he was a latter-day Lord Palmerston? A James Bond or a George Smiley? A patriotic businessman? Or a smart hustler getting his bills paid by suckers? What about Israel? And Iran? What about lobbyists and financial backers who must have hoped to benefit at some stage? Not everyone is a noble patriot.

And what about the role of senior civil servants? Should they have done more to alert No 10? Or were they too timid, worn down by decades of politicization, which started with Margaret Thatcher’s “is he one of us?” question and was carried forward by Tony Blair.

In a government of pals Werritty sounds like a reprise of the Andy Coulson problem. Did no one warn Cameron properly? If not, why not? We just don’t know. But in time we may. Labour went immediately on the attack – as oppositions are meant to do (after all Labour had its scandals in office, as David Cameron pointed out at PMQs) and the media will not let go a juicy and mysterious story with plenty of mileage left in it. Fox pledged his total loyalty to the cabinet and to Cameron. But he isn’t going anywhere, not after this. (the Guardian)

 

Sir Howard Daryl Leigh

 

 

Exposed: The link between Tory HQ and the Liam Fox donors

Downing Street’s tactic of distancing itself from Fox (saying that he was operating on his own) has been exposed as a lie.

The Tory party admitted that its senior treasurer was the conduit for donors to Liam Fox who passed their details to Werritty.

Sir Howard Darryl Leigh, (granted a political peerage in 2013) is a British businessman and Tory Party politician.

He serves on the “Jewish Leadership Council”, a powerful body with representatives from community and religious groups.

He passed on the details of donors who wished to support Fox’s campaign during the 2005 Tory leadership contest.

They were later persuaded by Fox to give money to organizations that supported Werritty, according to a source, and some of the money was spent visiting Fox on lavish trips abroad.

The disclosure is an embarrassment for the Tories and will pose further difficult questions for Fox, who has been told that he faces another parliamentary inquiry into his behavior and Werritty.

A Tory spokesman confirmed Leigh’s role in helping to introduce Fox to the donors whose recent support was used by Werritty to fly around the world to meet the former defence secretary.

The spokesman told the Guardian: “Howard Leigh introduced donors to Liam Fox’s office during the 2005 leadership campaign.

Some of them subsequently maintained contact with Dr Fox’s office. Leigh had no personal knowledge of Pargav and has not introduced donors to Dr Fox for some time.”

A source close to Leigh said: “Howard Leigh was as shocked as anybody to find that donors’ funds were being used to fund Werritty’s trips. There is no way that he would have countenanced that.”

Leigh is the senior treasurer of the Tory Party and has met Werritty on a number of occasions, but does not regard him as a friend.

A party source says the donors approached Leigh asking to donate money to Fox’s campaign, not that they were solicited by Leigh.

The Tory spokesman declined to say which donors had been introduced to Fox by Leigh, and did not expand on whether they knew of how their money had been spent by Werritty.

Another source said there had been no co-ordination between the Jewish donors to fund Werritty, though some had initially felt well-disposed to help Fox because of his pro-Israel position.

Leigh chairs the elite Leaders’ Group, which has more than 70 members who pay up to £50,000 a year for the privilege of meetings with the Prime minister.

Tory insiders say he has helped to bring in more than £2m a year through fundraising events, according to reports.

He is also the managing director of “Cavendish Corporate Finance”, which helped Cameron’s wife, Samantha, collect a windfall following the £18m sale of “Smythson”, the stationery and leather goods emporium company where she was creative director.

Leigh passed the donors over to Fox in 2005. At that time, Fox was the leading candidate of the party’s right in the leadership campaign against Cameron and David Davis.

Tory sources claim Fox maintained contact with the donors and was responsible for passing them to Werritty, who then funnelled £150,000 to Pargav.