I note your decision, in response to my colleague, the Rt Hon David Heathcoat-Amory MP, to investigate the allegation that the current Paymaster General failed to register a well remunerated directorship with an engineering company, Swiss EDM Ltd (later Agie UK Ltd), for several years during the 1980s.

Further information has now come to my attention which I would also like you to investigate and report on. I enclose the relevant sections of the accounts of Agie UK Ltd lodged at Companies House³[12] which show that Geoffrey Robinson listed several other directorships which he subsequently failed to declare in the Parliamentary Register of Members' Interests. These were as follows:

1988	—	Hollis PLC
			Central & Sheerwood PLC
1989	—	Central & Sheerwood PLC
			Hollis Industries PLC
			Pergamon AGB PLC
1990	—	Central & Sheerwood PLC
			Hollis Industries PLC
			Holcombe Holdings PLC

Several of these companies have direct links with the late Robert Maxwell. The suspicion must be that Mr Robinson deliberately refused to inform the House of Commons of his business connections with a man he did not want to be seen to be associated with.

As my colleague David Heathcoat-Amory said in his original letter, omissions and failures to register business interests by Conservative Members in the last Parliament (in the same mid-to-late 1980s period to which the allegations against Mr Robinson refer) and by the Labour MP Robert Wareing last year were treated as very serious matters, incurring tough disciplinary action including suspension from the House.

I hope you will agree—as a matter of urgency—to investigate these new revelations, which add considerable weight to the charges against the Paymaster General.

27 February 1998