Sir Keir Starmer has called for a police probe into allegations aTory MP misused campaign funds in the latest sleaze scandal to rock Rishi Sunak’s party.
Mark Menzies lost the Conservative whip after reportedly using thousands of pounds given by donors to fund medical expenses and making a late-night call to a 78-year-old aide asking for help because he had been locked up by “bad people” demanding money for his release.
The Fylde MP disputes the allegations reported by The Times, but the Conservative Party has launched an investigation into the claims.
But Labour leader Sir Keir said there were “a lot of unanswered questions… not least why it seems the Conservative Party took so long to act and whether they’ve reported this to the police, who, it seems to me, should be involved in this.”
The defence secretary Grant Shapps has confirmed the Conservatives have known about the allegations for months.
Party chairman Anneliese Dodds slammed the “stagnation, scandal and sleaze” engulfing Mr Sunak’s party and asked her Conservative counterpart Richard Holden whether the police had been informed.
In a letter to Mr Holden, she said: “When presented with evidence of an MP involving junior staff in paying thousands of pounds to ‘bad people’, did you immediately report this matter to the police? And if you have not yet, why not and will you do so today?”
“Will you give the police full access to all evidence you have in this case?” she added.
As the scandal unfolded, Mr Menzies was suspended from his role as one of Mr Sunak’s international envoys, an unpaid, voluntary role designed to help boost trade links.
According to The Times, £14,000 given by donors for use on Tory campaign activities was transferred to Mr Menzies’ personal bank accounts and used for private medical expenses.
The MP is also said to have called his elderly former campaign manager at 3.15am one morning in December, claiming he was locked in a flat and needed £5,000 as a matter of “life and death”.
The sum, which rose to £6,500, was eventually paid from the office manager’s personal bank account and subsequently reimbursed from funds raised from donors in an account named Fylde Westminster Group, it is alleged.
According to a source close to Mr Menzies, the MP had met a man on an online dating website and gone to his flat, before subsequently going with another man to a second address where he continued drinking. He was sick at one point and several people at the address demanded £5,000, claiming it was for clean up and other expenses.
The source said Mr Menzies decided to pay them because he was scared of what would happen otherwise, but did not have the funds to transfer the money from his own savings.
There are other occasions where Mr Menzies is said to have used money from the campaign fund to cover his personal expenses.
In 2020 he allegedly sought £3,000 to cover medical bills, but he did not repay the money and instead asked for and received a further £4,000, The Times reported.
The newspaper said a source close to the MP disputed this account and that the former campaign manager had been the one who suggested Mr Menzies use funds from the business account to pay his personal medical expenses, but she is understood to deny this.
A further £7,000 was received by Mr Menzies from the account in November, it is alleged.
In a statement to The Times, Mr Menzies said: “I strongly dispute the allegations put to me. I have fully complied with all the rules for declarations. As there is an investigation ongoing I will not be commenting further.”
Ms Dodds said: “Rishi Sunak promised professionalism, integrity and accountability at all levels. He has delivered stagnation, scandal and sleaze which is engulfing his party. Britain deserves better than this Conservative chaos.”
With an ongoing police probe into Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner over the sale of her former council house in 2015, a Labour source added: “It is absolutely incredible that Richard Holden and [Tory deputy chairman] James Daly have been pressuring the police over Angela while sitting on this Mark Menzies case in CCHQ.”
The suspension also raises the prospect of another tricky by-election for the Conservatives in Mr Menzies’s Fylde seat, where his majority is 16,000, smaller than majorities overturned so far by Labour this parliament.
