MP Calls for Prescott to Hand Over the Profits of His Memoirs - Gordon Prentice

Gordon Prentice - Pendle's Campaigning Labour MP

MP Calls for Prescott to Hand Over the Profits of His Memoirs

Written by Gordon Prentice

Tuesday, 13 May 2008 00:00

Pendle MP, Gordon Prentice, has called on senior and influential figures in the Labour Party to donate the money they make from their memoirs either to the Party or to charity.

Speaking from Westminster earlier today, the MP said: "These memoirs are all self serving, tawdry and gossip-ridden. And they do the Labour Government great damage."

"We have been lectured for a over a decade about newspapers publishing 'tittle tattle' hostile to Labour and now the lecturer has supplied the material himself."

The MP's Commons motion, which appears on the Order Paper today, reads

CONDUCT OF THE RIGHT HON. MEMBER FOR KINGSTON UPON HULL EAST AND OTHERS

12.05.2008

That this House regrets the actions of the right hon. Member for Kingston Upon Hull East and other senior and influential figures within the Labour Government or close to it, now retired from the front line, who have recently published memoirs which will bring them rich rewards in cash and anticipates that others are writing their version of events to put the record straight, as they see it; recalls the evidence of Professor Peter Hennessy who appeared before the Public Administration Select Committee on 17th November 2005 during its inquiry into Political Memoirs who forecast, with great prescience, that the publication of the Alistair Campbell diaries would be the `opening salvo of the most ghastly mobilisation of the most wonderful exchanges of competitive memoiring'; and believes that all profits from such publications should be donated to the Labour Party or to a charity.

Last Updated ( Wednesday, 08 October 2008 10:23 )