"Urgent" action needed after Prescott ranch visit
Prescott set for 'slap on the wrist'
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Friday, 21, Jul 2006 01:51
The parliamentary sleaze watchdog has recommended the government takes "urgent" action in the wake of the controversy over John Prescott's visit to the ranch of an American tycoon.
The deputy prime minister has only been mildly rebuked by the Commons standards committee for his stay with Philip Anschutz but the committee says it highlights serious "shortcomings" in the system.
Mr Prescott declared his stay with Mr Anschutz, who owns a company which is part of a consortium set to develop the Millennium Dome and wants to base Britain's first regional casino there, "some eleven months late and after a complaint had been made", the committee said.
But no further action can be taken against him as only prime minister Tony Blair can order an investigation into breaches of the ministerial code, whereas the committee can only look at his conduct as an MP.
Possible ministerial code breaches should be investigated, the committee said.
The committee also investigated gifts given to the deputy prime minister by Mr Anschutz after it emerged that Mr Prescott had been given an elaborate cowboy outfit – a present that left him open to much derision in the British press and in the Commons, where he was greeted by MPs shouting "howdy" at him.
It decided that as the "gifts were treated by [his] department as received by Mr Prescott in his ministerial capacity", and therefore retained by the department, "no question of their inclusion in the register of members’ interests arises".
But it did recommend that there should be "transparent, standardised, and timely procedures across government for reporting ministerial gifts to the permanent secretary".
"We recommend that the newly appointed independent adviser on ministers' interests, Sir John Bourn, should take steps to ensure that such procedures are introduced as soon as possible," the committee, chaired by Tory MP Sir George Young, said.
Parliamentary standards commissioner Philip Mawer investigated the stay after a complaint by Conservative MP Hugo Swire that it represented a conflict of interest.
Mr Prescott, who has been faced with a number of controversies so far this year, denied that he had discussed casino policy with Mr Anschutz.
Mr Blair has stood by his embattled deputy and insisted that there is no proof he has breached the ministerial code and the prime minister's official spokesman today said the report marks "the end of the matter".