Ed Miliband calls David Cameron ‘a dodgy PM’

DAVID Cameron was branded “the dodgy Prime Minister” by Labour leader Ed Miliband as the row over what he new about an alleged HSBC tax dodging scheme erupted.
Labour Party leader Ed Miliband speaks during Prime Minister's Questions. Picture: PALabour Party leader Ed Miliband speaks during Prime Minister's Questions. Picture: PA
Labour Party leader Ed Miliband speaks during Prime Minister's Questions. Picture: PA

In an angry session of Prime Minister’s Questions, the Labour leader compared Mr Cameron’s appointment of former HSBC chairman and chief executive Lord Green as a trade minister to the PM “turning a blind eye” to former spokesman Andy Coulson’s involvement in phone hacking.

He claimed the Prime Minister was “bang to rights”.

But Mr Cameron hit back, pointing out that Lord Green was the head of former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown’s business advisory council and was invited on a trade mission by the party in 2013 – three years after the HSBC revelations first surfaced.

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The pair also clashed over party donors, with Mr Miliband claiming that seven Tory donors who had given £5 million to the Conservatives were linked to the scandal, which involved the banking giant’s Swiss arm.

But Mr Cameron pointed out that Labour donor Lord Paul was also caught up in the revelations.

During PMQ’s in the Commons, Mr Miliband said: “You can’t get away from it, you are a dodgy Prime Minister surrounded by dodgy donors. You didn’t just take the money you appointed the man who was head of HSBC as a minister.”

Mr Cameron replied: “We know what happens – every week you get more desperate because you can’t talk about the economy, you can’t talk about unemployment, so you come here with fiction after fiction.”