SPEECH SUMMARY: LIB-DEM CANDIDATE 'SECRETLY SMEARED MP'

House of Commons – 28 April 2009

A Liberal Democrat Prospective Candidate has been accused in Parliament of waging a secret smear campaign against the MP whom he hopes to oppose at the next General Election. Twenty-three MPs stayed in the Commons until 11.35 pm, after the Budget votes on Tuesday night, to hear Julian Lewis, Conservative MP for New Forest East, charge retired military policeman Terry Scriven with responsibility for a succession of smears against him. (Normally, only 2 or 3 Members remain for these short end-of-day Adjournment Debates.)

Dr Lewis told the Commons that on 11 July last year Mr Scriven had assured New Forest District Council Chief Executive Dave Yates that he fully understood why Dr Lewis – a Shadow Defence Minister – wished to register to vote under a cover name for security reasons. Within a week, however, he had leaked details of this arrangement to a journalist hostile to Dr Lewis, and within a fortnight had reported the MP to the police and demanded a criminal investigation. However, this was flatly rejected as

"a total waste of effort and not in the public interest"

by the then Chief Constable of Hampshire, Paul Kernaghan, who stated that Mr Scriven’s

" 'complaint' does not enhance our collective respect for democracy and the electoral process".

Although Terry Scriven had publicly supported Julian Lewis's campaign to prevent MPs’ private home addresses from being revealed, according to Dr Lewis he had tried and failed to use the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act to find out the MP’s home address in London. This request was refused, but Mr Scriven managed to obtain other information – exclusively – which surfaced in a story attacking Dr Lewis in the News of the World on 1 March this year.

The MP told the Commons that the story was based on a false accusation that he "hardly visits" the constituency home in which he lives every week for those days when he is not in Westminster. He added that he had given Mr Scriven ample opportunity to deny that he was the source of the News of the World story, and to explain how – otherwise – the story could have contained information revealed only to him in response to one of his FOI questions. As on previous occasions, his Liberal Democrat opponent had refused to answer any questions about his own behaviour, despite submitting numerous FOI requests to the Commons authorities about the MP and his staff. Instead, he claimed to be 'intimidated' whenever asked by Dr Lewis to explain what he had done.

Dr Lewis revealed that Ministry of Defence officials had also received a ‘barrage’ of enquiries from Mr Scriven about the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme. Its organiser, Sir Neil Thorne, had written to the MP expressing his concern that Mr Scriven

"seems intent on trying to disrupt or in some way undermine it in pursuit of some personal political objective".

By his own admission, Mr Scriven had recently also written to the Director General of MI5, the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), and the new Chief Constable of Hampshire, Alex Marshall, demanding to know if Dr Lewis had ever done work for their organisations. He had revealed this in yet another letter – sent to David Cameron behind the MP’s back and marked "In Confidence", so that Dr Lewis would know nothing about it. Mr Scriven had also reported New Forest and Totton Councillor, Di Brooks, who is Julian Lewis’s Parliamentary Caseworker, to the Parliamentary Committee for Standards, without informing her, lodging a complaint which turned out to be baseless.

Dr Lewis claimed that all this was

"part of a consistent pattern of behaviour which I have pieced together with the help of those who have encountered Terry Scriven in the past".

Mr Scriven had served only 6 months of what should have been a four-year term on Hyde Parish Council in 1999. He had lasted only nine months as a Ringwood Town Councillor in 2006–7, and only two months on the Board of an educational charitable trust in 2005. In every case, he had resigned after serious rows with his colleagues.

Since becoming the Lib-Dem prospective Parliamentary candidate in 2007, Dr Lewis stated:

"Mr Scriven’s impact in my constituency has been vanishingly small; but knowing that he cannot defeat me politically he has gambled everything on trying to smear me personally".

By persuading the News of the World to publish a false story, however, the MP noted, "Terry Scriven has finally had a success". Dr Lewis predicted that the story – currently being considered by the Press Complaints Commission – would be used by Mr Scriven in some way in the General Election campaign.

"That is," he concluded, "assuming that decent Liberal Democrats who – unlike Terry Scriven – actually live in the New Forest East constituency, have not finally realised that they made a disastrous mistake in selecting, as their candidate, someone whose behaviour makes him unfit for any elected position in public life".

* * * *

Responding to Dr Lewis’s speech, the Deputy Leader of the House, Chris Bryant MP, said:

"I think we can all agree that police time should not be wasted on nonsense such as this. We can also agree that a free press is absolutely vital, but with a free press must surely come the duty to be accurate, to tell the whole story and to give the opportunity for a right of reply."

* * * *

Speaking afterwards, Dr Lewis drew attention to the fact that all his previous correspondence with Mr Scriven, as well as the latter’s various letters and complaints about him, were now available on-line in a special section of the MP’s website – www.julianlewis.net. He suggested that people should read this material for themselves, and make up their own minds whether Mr Scriven was a "fit and proper person" to represent the Liberal Democrats in a Parliamentary election:

"Not content with trying and failing to have me criminally investigated by the police, Terry Scriven planted a false story smearing me in the sleaziest Sunday newspaper in the land. I know that decent local Liberal Democrats do not approve of the antics of this man – who seems obsessed with my home inside the constituency, whilst he himself lives miles away on the far side of New Forest West, near Fordingbridge. His behaviour has been an unmitigated disgrace."

[NOTE: FOR THE FULL SCRIVEN ARCHIVE, CLICK HERE, AND FOR THE PRESS COMPLAINTS COMMISSION'S CONDEMNATION OF SCRIVEN'S FALSE STORY IN THE 'NEWS OF THE WORLD', CLICK HERE.]