Cash For Peerages
In January 2006 the Sunday Times embarked on a sting operation to investigate allegations that honours were available to be 'bought'. Over a champagne dinner with an undercover reporter Smith is alleged to have said "Because basically . . . the prime minister’s office would recommend someone like Malcolm (a fictional potential donor) for an OBE, a CBE or a knighthood". When the investigation was published Smith quit his post with the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust in January 2006.
On 13 April 2006 the Metropolitan Police arrested Smith under the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925 but, shortly afterwards, Scotland Yard announced that he was freed on bail "to return... pending further inquiries". Smith gave an emotional interview, on 3 December 2006, to the Mail on Sunday, providing the front-page headline, in which he said "I demand that Blair is arrested at 10 Downing Street at 7.20am, that he is taken to a police station — hopefully Stoke Newington, which is a very unpleasant Bastille-type place — and treated the same way that I have been treated.", mirroring his own experience of arrest. The Crown Prosecution Service announced, on 7 February 2007, that Smith would not face any charges because there was "insufficient evidence" to charge him with an offence under the 1925 Act.
Read more about this topic: Des Smith (headteacher)
Famous quotes containing the word cash:
“Lora May: Did you ever stop to think, Porter, that in over three years there’s one word we’ve never said to each other, even in fun.
Porter: To you, I’m a cash register. You can’t love a cash register.
Lora May: And I’m part of your inventory. You can’t love that either.”
—Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–1993)