The Conservatives yesterday vigorously defended the decision to give a peerage to its controversial party treasurer, Mr Michael Ashcroft, insisting the "cash for coronets" row was a government inspired "smokescreen" intended to deflect attention away from a House of Lords packed with Mr Tony Blair's supporters.
Amid criticism from some Labour quarters that the honours system should not be linked to service in the House of Lords, the Conservative leader in the Lords, Lord Strathclyde, said the row allowed Labour to attack the Conservatives while the Prime Minister continued "stuffing" the Lords with his supporters. Twenty Labour working peers, four Conservative and nine Liberal Democrat working peers were also announced.
Mounting a staunch defence of the Ashcroft honour, Lord Strathclyde was adamant that there was "every good reason" why Mr Ashcroft should receive a peerage, and it was not just because he had given £1 million a year to the party since 1997.
"He is an international businessman, a substantial employer in this country and he gives to charity," Lord Strathclyde told BBC radio. "He set up one of the most important anti-crime charities in this country, Crimestoppers, and continues to support that. This is a good old attack on the Conservative Party to allow the Prime Minister to put another 20 or 30 peers into the House of Lords."
The former prime minister, Sir Edward Heath, described Mr Ashcroft's elevation as "a disgrace" on BBC Radio Four's Any Questions programme last night. "The whole situation is deplorable. It is a disgrace. It has lowered the whole standing of our political institutions throughout the world.
"I didn't, of course, approve of Mr Ashcroft as the treasurer for my party. He was only spending three months of the year, if that, in this country in order to avoid all the obligations of a British citizen," he said.
The controversy follows the decision by the Public Honours Scrutiny Committee (PHSC) this week to accept the Conservative nomination.
But it imposed the explicit and unprecedented condition that the Belize-based business tycoon must reside in the United Kingdom in order to take his seat in the Lords. Mr Ashcroft, who is a United Nations ambassador for Belize, is to step down from that post and is understood to have given an assurance that he will take up residence in the United Kingdom.
Mr Ashcroft has been the subject of sustained criticism in the British press over his business dealings, including accusations of money-laundering, causing him to mount a libel action against the Times, which was eventually settled out of court.
But the leader of the House of Lords, Baroness Jay, condemned the honour, suggesting the decision by the Conservative leader, Mr William Hague, to nominate Mr Ashcroft was "stinking".
It was put to her on BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the entire appointments system "rather stinks" of an era the Labour government had promised to end. But Lady Jay was not impressed with the suggestion and replied: "Would you identify for me today what are the stinking nominations from the people whom Mr Blair suggested? The stinking nomination is, if you want to put it in those terms, from Mr Hague."