Can anyone confirm whether or not the Chairman of the Commons Select Committee on Home Affairs Keith Vaz is the same Keith Vaz as The Disgraced Former Europe Minister Keith Vaz?  How on earth can someone like this secure  political rehabilitation?  Has everyone forgotten 2001-2?

For the record, in March 2001 the then Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, Elizabeth Filkin, cleared Vaz of nine of 28 allegations of financial improprieties, but also accused him of blocking her investigation into 18 of the allegations and censured him for his behaviour on the remaining charge – failing to register payments totalling £4,500 from a solicitor he went on to recommend for a peerage.

Ms. Filkin also announced a further investigation regarding donations made to a company connected to Vaz by a charitable foundation run by notorious Labour donors, the Hunduja brothers.  That investigation reported a year later in the following terms:

  • Mr Vaz provided misleading information to the former Committee and the Commissioner [Ms. Filkin] about the financial relationship between his family and the Hindujas.
  • Mr Vaz failed to register remunerated employment in the Leicester Law Centre when he first entered Parliament in 1987. In the circumstances we do not regard Mr Vaz’s failure to register this interest as serious. A newly-elected MP could easily make this mistake.
  • Mr Vaz failed to register a donation from the Caparo Group in March 1993 within the time allowed by the rules. We reject his claim his registration [in October 1994] of the second such donation, which he received in August 1994, somehow covered the first donation as well.  We do not regard Mr Vaz’s initial failure to register as particularly serious, but he should have admitted his shortcoming frankly.
  • Mr Vaz failed in his duty of accountability under the Code of Conduct by refusing to submit himself to the scrutiny appropriate to his office as a Member.
  • Mr Vaz recklessly made a damaging allegation against Miss Eggington to the Commissioner, which was not true, and which could have intimidated Miss Eggington or undermined her credibility.
  • Miss Eggington and Mrs Gresty were interviewed by the police as a direct result of his intervention.
  • Having set the Commissioner on a false line of inquiry Mr Vaz then accused her of interfering in a criminal investigation and threatened to report her to the Speaker.
  • Mr Vaz failed in his public duty under the Code of Conduct “to act on all occasions in accordance with the public trust placed in (him)”. By wrongfully interfering with the House’s investigative process he also committed a contempt of the House.

The report concluded:

Of the original eleven allegations made against Mr Vaz we have not upheld eight.  We have upheld three, two of which we do not regard as serious.  If that had been all, we would have recommended an apology to the House. Regrettably two further matters have arisen from the way Mr Vaz responded to the allegations against him investigated by the Commissioner.  We have found he committed serious breaches of the Code of Conduct and a contempt of the House.  We recommend that Mr Vaz be suspended from the service of the House for one month.

The Commons decided without a vote to ban The Disgraced Former Europe Minister Keith Vaz for four weeks.

Somehow, The Disgraced Former Europe Minister Keith Vaz now gets to lord it up on the telly as some kind of fucking elder statesman: ID cards, police pay – you name it, he’s got an opinion about it and Radio 4 and a grateful nation has to listen.

I’m ten minutes away from voting Tory because I can’t take much more of this.