2009 Cash For Influence Scandal
Cash for Influence (also Cash for Amendments or Cash for Laws) is the name given by some in the media to a political scandal in the United Kingdom in 2009 concerning four Labour Party Life Peers offering to help make amendments to legislation for up to £120,000. The Lords Privileges Committee recommended the two men be suspended from the House for up to six months after an investigation into allegations made against four Labour peers. Lord Taylor of Blackburn was suspended as a Labour Party member pending the investigation while Lord Truscott quit the party. On May 20, the House of Lords considered the report of the Privileges Committee and voted to suspend Lord Taylor and Lord Truscott for six months.
The suspensions are the first since Oliver Cromwell’s era in the 1640s. The last individual to be suspended from the House of Lords is believed to have been Thomas Savile, who was barred in 1642 for siding with King Charles I.
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Famous quotes containing the words cash, influence and/or scandal:
“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)
“What arouses the indignation of the honest satirist is not, unless the man is a prig, the fact that people in positions of power or influence behave idiotically, or even that they behave wickedly. It is that they conspire successfully to impose upon the public a picture of themselves as so very sagacious, honest and well-intentioned.”
—Claud Cockburn (1904–1981)
“There is no scandal like rags, nor any crime so shameful as poverty.”
—George Farquhar (1678–1707)