What the media says about me...

"Pendle MP, Gordon Prentice, is not one of the Government’s favourite backbenchers. That’s because he does not bite his lip or sit on his hands when Ministers propose to do something, or refuse to do something, and he disagrees with them."

Lancashire Telegraph editorial. May 2008

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

Tags: Labour Party | Press Release

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.