The man at the centre of the “cash-for-passports” scandal two decades ago asked the government if he should delay returning to the UK until after the 2001 general election, newly released official files show.
Srichand P Hinduja was embroiled in a row that ultimately led to the second resignation of Peter Mandelson from the cabinet over his actions when the businessman, who made a £1m donation to the Millennium Dome, was applying for a British passport.
The scandal threatened to engulf Tony Blair’s Labour party as it sought a second term. Though the subsequent Hammond inquiry found no wrongdoing, it caused serious damage to the reputation of the Labour party in the run-up to that year’s general election.
Simon Collis, – then the UK’s consul-general in Dubai, and later an ambassador to several nations – wrote on 23 May 2001, about two weeks after the election date was announced, that “SP Hinduja asked to meet me”.
“After describing his business interests in Dubai and commenting on press coverage of the Hinduja family’s contacts with British ministers, SP Hinduja came to the point. He was planning to leave for Geneva on 23 May and considering returning to the UK thereafter. He asked whether I thought he should postpone this until after the general election. I said that I had absolutely no advice to give him on the matter.”
If the meeting hints at the political sensitivity Hinduja felt there would be in his potential arrival in the UK at a crucial time in the electoral cycle, another letter to the prime minister also released to the National Archives on Friday provides a sign of the political capital the opposition Conservative party stood to make.
Philip Hammond, the former Tory MP who would go on to serve as chancellor under Theresa May, wrote to Blair to follow up on a question in the Commons about why, he claimed, he “had not disclosed to Sir Anthony Hammond’s inquiry the fact that you were a guest of the Hinduja brothers at a private dinner at their London home just six months before your government awarded a passport to [SP Hinduja’s brother] GP Hinduja”.
A spokesperson for Blair declined to comment on Friday.
