New Speaker Announced: Sir Philip Mawer
Posted by Sam Dub on January 21st, 2008
CC licensed photograph courtesy of Flickr user night86mare
Tuesday 12th February – 8.45pm
Sir Philip Mawer is currently the Prime Minister’s Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests and was from 2002 - 2007 the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. Dubbed by the press the ‘Commons sleaze buster’ Sir Philip was entrusted with arguably one of the toughest jobs in public life: rooting out corruption and misconduct within Westminster.
Sir Philip oversaw investigations into the ill-fated ‘Oil for Food Programme’ that involved Respect MP George Galloway allegedly receiving funds from the pre-war Iraqi government. Within the last month Sir Philip has been called in to investigate senior figures within the Conservative Party, including party leader David Cameron, regarding the so-called ‘dinners for cash’ scandal.
Sir Philip has a long and distinguished record of arbitrating on controversial matters of moral integrity, having previously served as Secretary General of the General Synod of the Church of England. During which time he was involved in the handling of particularly delicate and contentious issues such as the ordination of women and what he described as the ‘unthinking racial discrimination’ within the church. It was for these services to the Church of England that he was knighted in 2002.
Sir Philip will address Clare Politics discussing the question:
‘Can politicians ever be trusted?’
Thursday 12th February - 8.45pm - Latimer Room, Old Court, Clare College
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Filed under: clarepoliticsnews, corruption, sirphilipmawer, sleaze, ukpolitics on January 21st, 2008
That “dinners for cash” link doesn’t work. I was intrigued, as I would’ve thought “dinners for cash” would be called a “restaurant” rather than a scandal.
Hmm something funny’s up with the urls of guardian blogs, this should work:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/conservatives/story/0,,1986727,00.html
As names for scandals go ‘dinners for cash’ isn’t really going to shock anyone, ‘dinner-gate’ and ‘cash for dinners’ must also have been weighed up and dismissed by an unimaginative subeditor somewhere.