Salt in the wound

Just two months after publicly calling on Prime Minister Gordon Brown to submit to a vote of confidence, two former Cabinet ministers are now finding themselves on the outside looking in, with thanks to a Channel Four undercover camera.

Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt, who circulated a letter in January encouraging the Labour Party to conduct a secret ballot on Brown's leadership, were dismissed from the Labour benches yesterday after being caught in what appears to be a "pay-to-play" type scheme. Blairites Hoon (who was minister of defence at the onset of the US-led invasion of Iraq) and Hewitt, along with former transport minister Stephen Byers, were cast to the wilderness of the non-aligned benches.

The situation came public by way of an episode of the Channel Four documentary series Dispatches. In this week's episode, a filmmaker teamed up with a reporter from The Sunday Times created a fictitious company based in the US and portrayed himself as a lobbyist looking for favourable treatment. Byers of North Tyneside called himself a cab-for-hire at a rate of £5000 ($7500) a day, while Luton's Margaret Moran, already ousted from the Labour ranks following her excessive expense claims, said in the initial Times expose that she could get a "girls' gang" of high-ranking female Labour MPs to vote however the company wanted with regards to immigration legislation.

And worse for the already defrocked MPs, several of them admitted to the pseudo-firm that they had done so in the past. Byers bragged about how he convinced Lord Mandelson, the business minister, to delay and later amend legislation at the behest of supermarket giant Tesco, and also helped National Express dump their rail franchise in East Anglia. Both Tesco and National Express deny the claim, and Byers has submitted himself for investigation by a parliament inquiry.

The sting programme also made contact with nine other Labour MPs and seven Conservatives. Of those, one unidentified Conservative MP (reported to be Sir John Butterfill) said he could introduce clients to influential ministers for an annual fee of £35,000 ($52,500). It is surmised that he would do this as a member of the House of Lords, as he may be appointed to the upper legislative chamber after the election.

Butterfill, along the four exiled Labour MPs, had all previously announced that they would step down at the next election. In spite of their lame duck status, it appeared on Dispatches as though these MPs were ready to make one last stab in the heart of ethical and transparent government for the sake of personal gain.