UK Conservative minister drawn into Hinduja debate

UK Conservative minister drawn into Hinduja debate
REUTERS

FEB 1: Britain's Opposition Conservatives were drawn into the Hinduja passport scandal on Thursday with revelations a former Tory Immigration Minister was hired to advise the Indian tycoons, the Times newspaper reported.

The paper said that former Immigration Minister Timothy Kirkhope, now the Conservatives' chief whip in the European Parliament, was given a job as an adviser to the Hinduja family after losing his seat in the 1997 general election.

Kirkhope was working for the family when Srichand Hinduja made the passport application at the centre of the scandal which led to the resignation of Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson last week.

Mandelson, a key ally of Prime Minister Tony Blair and architect of Labour's 1997 landslide election victory, resigned after it emerged he had misled colleagues about a phone call he made to another minister about Srichand Hinduja's case.

Hinduja received his passport in 1999, five months after the family made a one million pound donation to the Millennium Dome project, for which Mandelson had responsibility.

Kirkhope told the Times he was unaware of Srichand Hinduja's ambitions for a British passport while he was working for them.

"I had nothing whatsoever to do with any application by (Srichand). I did not know he had made an application," Kirkhope was quoted as saying.

The Hinduja family told the paper that Kirkhope was hired purely to advise on water and power projects in India.

But Millennium Dome officials said Kirkhope was introduced to them as the family's adviser on government affairs, the paper said.

The passport scandal, which plunged Blair into the greatest crisis of his four years in power, was seized upon like a gift from the gods by the Conservatives in the run-up to the expected Spring general election.

The Hinduja brothers, whose global business empire includes oil, banking and media interests, are now in New Delhi for questioning over the 1986 Bofors arms scandal involving alleged kickbacks.