A Labour MP was left red-faced after BBC Question Time host Fiona Bruce asked him why he’d accepted free tickets to a Premier League football match around 175 miles from his constituency, while the Prime Minister and other senior politicians tried to justify the lavish gifts they’d received over recent years.
Ian Murray, the MP for Edinburgh South and Scottish Secretary, attended the Liverpool v Bournemouth game at Anfield on September 21.
The host said: “A couple of weekends ago you accepted hospitality to go and see Liverpool v Bournemouth, paid for by Salmon Scotland. Do you think you should be handing the money back for those tickets?”
Speaking at the show in Dundee, Murray replied: “It’s what I said before we go to a lot of events under a judgment call to engage.”
Veteran broadcaster Bruce asked: “But why do you need to go to a football match to engage with Salmon Scotland. I mean, couldn’t you just have a meeting?”
“Well you engage in a lot of different ways. It was in Liverpool because party conference was there, so we were all in Liverpool”, Murray came back.
The Labour MP was left scrambling as Bruce pointed out: “But Salmon Scotland is based in Edinburgh and you’re an MP in that area.”
The freebies row that has gripped the governing party continues to rumble on, with the PM yesterday announcing that £6000 worth of gifts to him would be repaid. That includes Taylor Swift tickets and rented clothes for his wife.
Since Decemeber 2019, the Labour leader has accepted more than £100,000 in hospitality and gifts – more than any other politician in the UK.
A Downing Street spokesperson said: “The prime minister has commissioned a new set of principles on gifts and hospitality to be published as part of the updated ministerial code.
“Ahead of the publication of the new code, the prime minister has paid for several entries on his own register. This will appear in the next register of members’ interests.”
Meanwhile, the Tory MP on the panel Andrew Bowie arrives in Dundee fresh off the Conservative Party conference. The conference in Birmingham was an opportunity for all four leadership hopefuls to – Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, Tom Tugendhat, and James Cleverly – to strut their stuff in front of the party faithful.
However, now that conference season is over and done with, each of the candidates will once more turn their attention to wooing Conservative MPs.
Tory MPs will vote on October 8 and 9 to whittle the field down to two, after which the process will be thrown open to the rank and file to decide who will succeed Rishi Sunak as Leader of the Opposition.
According to the Oddschecker, Robert Jenrick remains the frontrunner at 10/11, while James Cleverly has usurped Kemi Badenoch to become second-favourite at 9/4, while Ms Badenoch has moved out to 6/1 and punters can get odds of 40/1 on Tom Tugendhat.
