Cash for Peerages - Conviction impossible!

In his most recent blog post Paul Flynn MP makes not one, but two, comments about the House of Commons' Public Affairs Committee's inquiry into Cash for Peerages. Mr Flynn seems to be peeved by the fact that the inquiry actually happened. Indeed he is so irritated by the inquiry that he looks forward to grilling Inspector Yates and giving him a blocking for daring to investigate his honourable friends.

The cash for peerages, Yates of the Yard, will before our committee on the 23rd. The investigation may be over but the niggles linger on.

Some of us are still irritated about the police investigation, dawn raids on witnesses houses, suspiciously timed leaks to the press from mysterious sources, all those arrests with nothing at the end. We look forward to Policemen Yates helping us with our inquiries.

Shame that Mr Flynn failed to mention the exchange between his Labour colleague Gordon Prentice MP and former Tory minister Lord Hurd in the Public Affairs Committee

Mr Prentice suggested to Lord Hurd that it would be virtually impossible to convict under the 1925 Act that outlawed selling peerages, because the police would have to have proof of an explicit agreement between the seller and buyer of peerages, whereas these deals are usually made on a nod and a wink basis - in the same way as a Mafia Godfather might say I will do something for you now, you may be able to do something for me in the future.

Lord Hurd (a published novelist) suggested that he could think of ways that a conviction might be weaved into a novel, but was unable to suggest a real life situation where a conviction could happen!

Rather than being irritated by the fact that Inspector Yates carried out his investigation, perhaps Mr Flynn should be more irritated by the fact that a law is so poorly drafted, that it is impossible to use it to convict anybody for, what is clearly, a corrupt practice hampered Policeman Yates' investigation and allowed the corrupt to get off scott free!