Laura Moffatt MP for Crawley
Net worth (£) – probably a little less
Net worth to the people of Crawley : Priceless

“Election money”, Letter from Cllr Chris Chesire (Lab, Bewbush), Crawley Observer, March 10 2010

“A very rich Tory bloke (Michael Ashcroft) promised 10 years ago to be a full UK resident, and to pay all UK taxes.
In return, he became Baron Ashcroft of Chichester.
10 years on, he’s still reneging on his promise, and has saved about £100 million in unpaid taxes.

“The Tory leader, Cameron. is too weak to do anything about it – or is it thar he desperately wants the bloke’s money for the election ?
After all, he is funding the Tory Party’s campaign in all marginal seats like Crawley.

“Remember that when you get your glossy leaflets…”

RWS ‘£’ Note

Who’s paying for this ‘not cheap’ Tory election campaign ?
A powerful case could be made that it is us, the taxpayer, who is paying – through the estimated £100 million ‘Baron Banker’ of unpaid British taxes.

A rather crass way of avoiding the question danivon.

The fact is that Ashcroft is abiding by the rules as they are – the same rules that are followed by Labour’s non-doms and the same rules that Labour refused to change when they had the chance.

If Labour do not want to change the rules as regards non-doms (which given their funding problems is understandable) then it is extremely hypocritical to complain when other parties follow exactly the same rules.

LORD ASHCROFT – BEARWOOD CORPORATE SERVICES – CRAWLEY
http://m.guardian.co.uk/?id=102202&stor … croft-cash
http://www.sovereignty.org.uk/features/ … fund1.html

The Tory Party’s Deputy Chairman, Lord Ashcroft (Bearwood Corporate Services), is “running the Conservative marginal seats campaign” (‘Labour tries to block Ashcroft’s Tory cash’,

Ian Irvine – “Why is Lord Ashcroft spending all this money in marginal seats? Obviously, to try to get a Tory government elected, but apart from that, what’s in it for him ?”

But we’ve already covered how your answer to bad things that Tories do is either that Labour do or did the same, or that it’s basically Labour’s fault for making them do it and running away like the proverbial big boys.

But the ‘Government’ didn’t do the deal as such – not at a political level – Hague brokered it with the committee that vets new peerages. Ashcroft appears to have reneged on it. He said he’d be a ‘permanent’ resident. A non-dom status is not meant to be permanent. Even now he’s not talking about remaining as a permanent resident, only being here for a long while.

What has he really done that’s so bad? Basically, he’s misled the peerages committee. More worryingly for the Conservatives, he appears to have misled the leader at the time, and the current leader. At the very least he should have let them know what was going on so that they could deal with the facts in good time. It was only a matter of time before it came out, and now was not a good time for the Tories.

And you should read what the likes of Michael Gove were warning about Ashcroft back in 2000, if you want to know why it might be that he did hide his status.

Well it’s worked for Labour for years.

Anyway what is this ‘dodgy’ thing that you think has been done? – the Government approved the deal that Ashcroft made as regards his residence.

If you are so against non-dom donors where is your outrage at Labour blocking a change in the law to prevent them – the silence is deafening.

Why? I don’t like big donors, I am suspicious of non-dom donors – especially if it could be that the source of the funds is from the non-UK-taxed part of their assets/income. I think that it may not be for general public knowledge, but the tax arrangements of peers, major donors and of people with large amounts of influence within parties should be being regulated.

And so I don’t like to see such stuff being defended.

And this “look over there” stuff is weak, Ash. It’s pretty simple – why did Dave change his view? And what will it be next week? He wants to be the next PM, and he claims to be the herald of a ‘new politics’ and ‘change’. In that context, when accused of something dodgy it’s simply not enough to say “them lot there do it too” and expect to get away with it.

(and yes, I know that’s what you can accuse Blair of – which perhaps is why seeing another politician doing the exact same thing seems to be leading to a slip in Cameron’s and the Tories’ popularity of late)

Perhaps he had been talking to Hattie?

“She refuted suggestions that the tax status of Labour peers should be disclosed, saying of Lord Paul: “his tax status is an issue for him.”

When questioned about Cohen, she added: “The tax status of donors is not an issue for electoral law … people’s tax affairs are a private matter.”

No doubt danivon will be along soon to explain that hattie is not a stinkin hypocrit