Monday 8 March 2010

Is Ashcroft guilty of 'pecuniary advantage by deception'?

A formal complaint was sent last week to Cressida Dick, the head of the Metropolitan police's specialist crime directorate. It claims the Tory peer has gained "a pecuniary advantage by deception" by failing to keep promises that he would become a permanent resident in Britain. Jim Miller, a writer from Leominster, Herefordshire, said he made the complaint because Ashcroft had deceived the British people and profited from that deceit. "I've read what's happened and I'm not happy about it. I wanted to put it before the police so they could decide whether an offence has been committed," he said.

In a letter to Dick on Wednesday, Miller said that a letter sent by Ashcroft to Hague when Hague was opposition leader gave a "clear and unequivocal assurance" that he would take up residency in Britain. "Lord Ashcroft did not take up permanent residence in the UK in 2000, and 10 years later he has still not taken up permanent residence in this country; he has done this in order to benefit from non-domicile tax status. He deceived the leader of the Opposition, and through him deceived the honours scrutiny committee, the prime minister's office, and the press and general public," Miller wrote.

A spokesman for Scotland Yard said today that it had not yet officially received the complaint. Last week a spokesman for Ashcroft, who is expected to stand down as Tory deputy chairman at the election, said the peer had "never broken a promise and … never gone back on an undertaking". Ashcroft himself said in a statement last week that in "dialogue with the government" it was agreed that his undertaking to become a permanent resident in the UK could be interpreted as meaning that he would become a "long-term" resident.