Former PM John Major has attacked Labour for “systematic sleasze”, and denied that the Tories were corrupt in the 80s and 90s. Speaking on BBC One's Andrew Marr Show (16/12/07), he accused Labour of carrying out a "McCarthyite" campaign against his Conservative government. "Lots of people misbehaved in the 1980s and 1990s” he said “but they were all individuals. It was never institutional. It was never related specifically to the Conservative Party or to the Conservative government”. The corporate media have repeated these outrageous claims, but refuse to publish or broadcast the evidence which strongly points to the contrary.

If Tory governments were not corrupt, they certainly have a lot of questions to answer.

What was the origin of the tens of millions of pounds which funded the Thatcher and Major election campaigns?

When Labour MP Dale Campbell-Savours, and others, accused Marconi Command and Control Systems of committing fraud on the 1985 BATES contract, why didn't the Tory government order a proper criminal investigation?

Why did Tory Defence Procurement minister Sir Tim Sainsbury lie to Parliament in on 20th November 1987, when questioned about the cost of changes to the BATES project specification? Sainsbury said that these accounted for “less than 1.5%” of the project cost. Yet the 1991 Statement on major Defence Projects revealed that, within months, the government were claiming the changes were so massive that they had “re-defined” the project! It also showed that the price of the Firm Fixed Price contract had almost doubled , from £100 million to £190 million. According to the information issued by the MoD itself, there are only two reasons why this type of contract could increase in price. One is inflation over the three years since the contract was awarded. This could only account for a small part of that £90 million. The other possible reason for the increase is changes to the specification. In March 1979 the MOD issued a document which specifically said that changes to the specification of fixed price and cost incentive contracts “should be kept to a minimum” because they make it difficult to compare costs with what was originally agreed. In January 2004 Sir Raymond Lygo told the BBC that when he was the head of British Aerospace, they regularly charged excessive amounts for changes to the specification of contracts in order to boost profits.

Sainsbury also assured the Commons that MCCS could be forced to pay for some other company to complete the work if they failed to deliver on time and to budget. Why were MCCS not held to that? In March 1988 Campbell-Savours accused MCCS of misleading auditors about progress on the project. MCCS received interim payments worth tens of millions of pounds which were linked to progress on the project. “Claiming interim payments before entitlement” is a recognised form of fraud on MOD contracts. When Campbell-Savours made this accusation it was already becoming clear that it must be true. Why was MCCS secretly given a new contract which allowed the system to be delivered six years late, and the price to increase to over £300 million? By the time the system was delivered, in 1993, it was technologically obsolete, and virtually worthless.

Was it just co-incidence that, at the same time they made this secret agreement, the Tory government were illegally using £234 million of taxpayers' money to bribe the Malaysian government to buy arms from MCCS? Exactly how much did all these dirty deals cost the British taxpayer?

As Chief Secretary to the Treasury between 1987 and 1989, John Major was in charge of tough government spending negotiations. I personally wrote to him in the run up to the 1987 government spending round and told him taxpayers were being ripped-off by MCCS on the BATES project. This fact has been published before in The Guardian, and he has never denied it. Even without that, BATES should have caught his attention. It was one of the 20 most costly projects the MOD were funding at that time; The Independent had run a front page exclusive alleging the cost of the project had doubled; and Dale Campbell-Savours, a member of the Public Accounts Committee, openly accused MCCS of committing fraud on BATES.

The Tories continued to conceal the truth after Major became Prime Minister. The government announced it had accepted delivery of the BATES System in July 1993, and the press were told a price of £300 million had been agreed. However in February 1997 Tory Defence Procurement minister James Arbuthnot refused to answer a Parliamentary question about the price of BATES, claiming that there were continuing negotiations. This was plainly just a device for covering up the truth.

If the Tories were not corrupt, how can they defend all this as being in the interest of British taxpayers, rather than the interests of MCCS? John Major personally needs to explain why he allowed all this to happen, and did nothing to protect taxpayers' money.

Ends

See also “Thatcher gave Pergau Dam arms company 'unjustifiable' £300m contract”, Indymedia.

The following sources published Major's claims:

Ex-PM attacks Labour over sleaze, The Press Association

Major accuses Labour of 'sleaze',  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7146744.stm

John Major accuses Labour of 'systemic sleaze' ,  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/12/16/nmajor116.xml