Donations row minister is '100% honest'

Published on Sunday 27 January 2008 21:24

ALAN Johnson insisted he had been "100 per cent honest" after becoming the latest Cabinet minister to be embroiled in a donations scandal.

The Health Secretary mounted a bullish defence after the revelation that his Labour deputy leadership campaign had accepted more than 3,000 from a "proxy" donor.

He said his team had done "what the law asked us to do", and more, to check the source of the cash, which was handed over by Waseem Siddiqui, on behalf of his brother-in-law.

"I'm as surprised as anybody," Mr Johnson said. "But all I can say is that we have followed absolutely the procedures."

Ministers rushed to support their colleague, while the Tories signalled they were largely satisfied with his explanation – although there is still confusion over whether details of four donations, including Mr Siddiqui's, were passed to the Electoral Commission on time.

However, the furore is yet another bitter blow for Gordon Brown as he struggles to shift the agenda away from Labour's funding nightmares and back on to policy.

Peter Hain resigned as Work and Pensions Secretary last week when police launched an investigation into 103,000 in undeclared donations to his deputy leadership campaign. Three other senior Labour figures – Mr Johnson, Harriet Harman, the Commons Leader, and Wendy Alexander, the party's Scottish leader – are being scrutinised by the Electoral Commission over funding irregularities.

Meanwhile, detectives are carrying out a wider investigation into more than 630,000 in donations that were channelled to Labour by the property developer David Abrahams through intermediaries. Anti-sleaze laws say donations must be transparent and their real source identified.

Waseem Siddiqui, 50, gave 3,334 to Mr Johnson's campaign in May last year. However, he said he did not even know who the Health Secretary was. Instead, Mr Siddiqui's brother-in-law, Ahmed Yar Mohammed – the treasurer of Croydon Central Labour Party – asked him to write a cheque, and then gave him the money.

Mr Mohammed confirmed last night that he used his brother-in-law to channel the cash, but insisted there had been no intention to conceal the source.

"As a long-standing Labour Party member, I wanted to show my support for Alan Johnson by making a contribution to his deputy leadership election campaign," he said. "As I was travelling at the time, I asked my brother-in-law Mr Waseem Siddiqui to write a cheque for Mr Alan Johnson's campaign. I did this in good faith and at no point was it my intention to disguise my donation."