Nice work

The taxpayer is being stung so this Lord can live in Admiralty House

Wednesday, 7th November 2007

Mark Malloch-Brown, the minister for Africa, Asia and the UN, was the most prestigious recruit to Gordon Brown’s ministry of all the talents. But this appointment might be about to come back and embarrass the Prime Minister with controversy brewing over the former UN deputy secretary-general’s taxpayer funded accommodation.

Malloch Brown, the theory ran, would add instant heft to Brown’s reform agenda for international institutions and signal that foreign policy would be very different under Brown. Shriti Vadera, now parliamentary under-secretary of state at DFID and one of Brown’s closest aides, was apparently particularly keen on the appointment. His multilateral UN credentials also meant that the Labour party was likely to tolerate his political promiscuity — Malloch Brown had flirted with the SDP in the 1980s and done a turn at David Cameron’s first Tory conference — and not kick up a fuss over the financial work he had taken on after leaving the UN.

The CV of Brown’s most senior outside appointment reads like that of a hair-shirted technocrat: a vice-president of World Bank, head of UNDP, chief of staff and then deputy secretary-general of the United Nations and now Minister for Africa, Asia and the UN. His entry in the Lords register of interests is spartan; he declares only his government salary, which is £81,504.

But Malloch Brown’s living arrangements in this country are exceedingly grand, and provided by the taxpayer. Only three members of the government have grace-and-favour residences in London. Malloch Brown is one of them, the other two are the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. David Miliband and his growing family have yet to use 1 Carlton Gardens, the Foreign Secretary’s London residence. Yet Malloch Brown, astonishingly, has secured one of the three government flats in Admiralty House, where John Prescott used to live. In so doing, this newcomer has leapfrogged 20 full members of the Cabinet who notionally enjoy seniority over him. The oddness of the situation is compounded by the fact that the other two flats in the building are empty, and another government grace-and-favour residence in South Eaton Place, SW1, is being sold off. In response to The Spectator’s investigation Eric Pickles, a member of the shadow Cabinet, has laid down a series of parliamentary questions in an attempt to find out how much Malloch Brown’s living arrangements are costing the Foreign Office.

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carol scott

November 11th, 2007 12:18am Report this comment

Gordon Brown does not ever admit mistakes.

Maggie Black

November 13th, 2007 6:48pm Report this comment

David Lorraine is right. Malloch Brown is exceptional, and people who have worked with him at the UN have the greatest respect for him, even when they have not been personally well-served by his reforms and cost cutting decisions and have been bruised by some encounters. The idea that he would describe himself as doing God's work is preposterous, but I can well imagine that he would find a journalist only interested in a story about 'scandal and perks for top UN officials', when there are so many major problems in the world to address and so many difficulties in doing so, infuriating and a complete waste of his time. And now he's here, after 25 odd years in the interantional system, almost all of it at very high level. That's very good for us, and for others in the world. So he hasn't worked within the British political system before, and that is bound to mean some toes are trodden on and nuances missed. It is one of the anomalies of our House of Lords system that someone can be appointed to senior office in that way. Because he comes from outside the Westminster village, is it really necessary to write loaded sneers against him? It sounds as though insiders at Westminster, including journalists, are just determined to carp at someone who is not 'one of us', in a familiar phrase.

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