SHERIDAN SLAMS GREEDY McLEISH
Scottish Socialist Party MSP and Convenor Tommy Sheridan today attacked Henry McLeish on the publication of the Standards Committee report of the Scottish Parliament.

This report details the original complaint by Tommy Sheridan that Henry McLeish lied to Parliament in contravention of Article 2.8 of the Code of Conduct which says “Members have a duty to act honestly”. Today’s report details McLeish’s excuse that he changed his mind after he was forced to resign as First Minister for fiddling his office rent and expenses.

Tommy Sheridan said,

“This report confirms what we all knew, Henry McLeish lied to the Parliament. He said he wouldn’t take the money, then he did. We now know that he claimed it within a month of resigning as First Minister and then refused to admit it until I reported him! Now he claims he only took it because he was no longer First Minister. Yet when he resigned as First Minister he got a pension of £34,000 a year, plus a lump sum payout of £18,000 in addition to his MSP salary of £48,000, making a total of £82,000 a year. He then claims £30,000 from the House of Commons as a resettlement grant and next May will get a further £24,000 when he ceases to be an MSP plus a further pension of an estimated £30,000 as a former MP and MSP.

I calculate that Henry McLeish will have got over £1 million from the taxpayer by the time he is 70. Meanwhile, 1/3 of Scottish pensioners live in poverty. There is only one word for this, and it is greed. I have written again today to David Steel as I did last year urging a speed-up of the review he promised me last year on Ministerial payouts. This kind of snout in the trough behaviour brings the Scottish Parliament into disrepute. For the Standards Committee to find Mr McLeish innocent of breaching their Code of Conduct makes a mockery of the Code itself and further diminishes the credibility of politicians in the eyes of the public.”

For more information, contact Tommy Sheridan on 07887 795075 or Hugh Kerr on 0131 348 5631/07713 063647