Jonathan Ashworth MP: Tories have questions to answer on donors and Co-op Bank

Labour MP Jonathan Ashworth tells Central Lobby that the Co-op Bank scandal is closer to the Conservatives than they would like. The Tories' attack on Labour over the Co-op bank - when the Party acted with complete integrity in all of its dealings with the bank and with its ex-chairman Paul Flowers - is a smear. If they want to talk about who party leaders associate with, and ask who has serious questions to answer, they should look a bit closer to home. On the eve of this year's Conservative Party Conference, the City brokerage ICAP was fined £54 million by regulators after its brokers were found to have helped fix the Libor rate - the average interest rate reported by banks for the money they lend each other - for at least four years. Manipulating Libor didn't just help the culprits to make money for themselves: Libor affects the interest rate for loans worth trillions of pounds for millions of consumers. ICAP's chairman, Michael Spencer, has given almost £5 million to the Conservative Party. Spencer isn't just someone who happens to have met David Cameron a couple of times. He's described by Francis Maude as "a personal friend of the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister’s wife", he boasts of having organised lunches for David Cameron, and he has attended private dinners in Downing Street with Cameron, George Osborne and other senior Conservative ministers. Spencer reportedly visited Number 10 in the week before his company was fined £54 million. Osborne was happy to write about having lunch at Spencer's office in a 2006 article in which he complained about "burdensome, complex" financial regulation. People will ask why the Government was so quick to reject calls for a public inquiry into the Libor scandal - in stark contrast to their attitude to the Co-op Bank. Will the Tories pay back the £4.8 million Michael Spencer and his companies gave them? Don't hold your breath. They still haven't paid back the money they were given by Asil Nadir - even though former Prime Minister John Major said "If it proves to have been dishonestly obtained and dishonestly remitted to us then of course we will return it", and even though former Conservative Party Treasurer Lord McAlpine says "It is tainted money and it shames the Conservatives if they hang on to it. They have a moral duty to give it back". The Tories are happy to attack offshore tax avoidance schemes as "quite frankly morally wrong", and then merrily take the money from people who use offshore tax avoidance schemes. They're happy to let major donors write them reports which end up recommending making it easier for firms to sack their workers. Maybe we shouldn't expect the highest standards of propriety from a Party whose own chairman, Grant Shapps, ran a business under a false name and whose company, according to legal advice given to the Metropolitan Police, "may have committed an offence of fraud". Far from being ashamed of their connections, the Conservatives do their best to reward the people who give them money. They've done that not just by cutting the 50p top rate of tax for people earning over £150,000, while millions of families are worse off. The Tories have received £36 million in donations from hedge funds - and in the last Budget, George Osborne gave hedge funds a tax cut worth £145 million. Labour has made clear that we'll reverse that tax cut so that we can scrap the Conservatives' cruel and unjust Bedroom Tax. It's a clear sign of whose side the two parties are on. The truth is that the Tories have clear questions to answer not just about their donors, but about their own role in the near-collapse of the Co-op Bank. Why did the Chancellor and his ministers actively encourage the bank's failed bid for 632 Lloyds branches, with 30 Ministerial meetings to try to smooth the way for the deal? What due diligence did they do into the state of the bank and its leadership? Why did George Osborne go to Brussels to argue for the Co-op Bank to be spared from tougher rules? We know David Cameron and George Osborne don't like answering difficult questions - but the Co-op Bank scandal is closer to them than they would like.