Nice work

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

Claudia Rosett and James Forsyth

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’s return from abroad is given as the explanation for him receiving a grace-and-favour flat. Others hint that he secured it because he has four children under 16. If so, Ruth Kelly — with four pre-teen children — should surely have had first pick.

The Treasury’s National Assets Register values the Admiralty House accommodation at £7.76 million and as worth more than the flats above No. 10 and 11 Downing Street. It is, indeed, fit for a Lord, and one with tastes which are the opposite of frugal. A parliamentary answer earlier this autumn revealed that ‘the floor area of the ministerial residences in Admiralty House is 859 square metres.’ In 2006–07 the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office paid the Cabinet Office no less than £173,000 for John Prescott’s living in one of the flats there.

One of the Brown government’s key selling points — part of its ‘change’ message — was that, in contrast to the Blair era, there would be no more high life, no more ministerial noses in the trough. Malloch Brown’s housing arrangements threaten to sully that message. One Cabinet minister fretted: ‘Housing is always so sensitive. Every voter can relate to it because everyone has a home or, increasingly, is struggling to afford one. New Labour was badly damaged by the first Peter Mandelson resignation over the mortgage and the impression of greed, that a normal house wasn’t good enough somehow.’

The unlucky person to whom care of Malloch Brown has fallen is the highly regarded Baroness Ashton, the Leader of the Lords. Her job is to look after the outsiders that Brown has brought into his government such as Malloch Brown, Digby Jones and Admiral West. Early on, she told colleagues that she had made friendly attempts to persuade Malloch Brown to move out of Admiralty House in due course. Evidently, her polite advice fell on deaf ears.

Previous page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 Next page

More articles from: Claudia Rosett and James Forsyth | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (2)

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Post comment

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.

Post comment