Letter to the Chairman of the Committee on Standards and Privileges

  from Mr Geoffrey Robinson MP

I am enclosing two letters, the first from my accountants which confirms that no payment was made into my accounts by Hollis Industries [Annex A]; and a second from Arthur Andersen confirming that there was no payment made to me by Hollis Industries [Annex B]. I have therefore answered the question put to me: there was no payment made to me by Hollis.

As you can see, Arthur Andersen have found an invoice from Pergamon AGB to Hollis for "management services" [Annex D] and a hand-written note purporting to connect this with me [Annex C]. This inter-company transaction was unknown to me. I propose now to commission a detailed examination of the Pergamon accounts and unequivocally assure the committee that this remuneration was not agreed by me and that no payment to me was ever made.

The position therefore is that no payment was made to me by Hollis and it would therefore have been quite wrong to have declared a payment I never received in the register of members interests.

I am of course willing to help the committee in any other way they suggest.

7 July 1998