Donations scandal: SECOND police inquiry will focus on planning permission for business park

Daily Mail ^

[UKrepublican]

Donations scandal: SECOND police inquiry will focus on planning permission for Abrahams' business park

A second police inquiry is to be launched into allegations over secret Labour donor David Abrahams and his business dealings.

The Metropolitan force has already decided to investigate Mr Abrahams's secret gifts to Labour through intermediaries, following a complaint by Liberal Democrat leadership contender Chris Huhne.

Yesterday Durham police said they also intended to speak to Mr Huhne after he raised questions in the same letter about how Mr Abrahams received the green light to build a business park.

A company apparently controlled by him was originally refused permission to build a network of offices on farmland next to the A1(M) in October 2005.

The Highways Agency imposed a ban on the grounds that it risked causing congestion to the motorway.

Protected badger setts were also reported to have been found on the site, and Mr Abrahams withdrew the application.

But a year later, his application was approved after the ban was lifted. In the meantime three of his go-betweens, Ray Ruddick, Janet Kidd and John McCarthy, had donated £199,000 to Labour.

A Durham police spokesman said: "A senior officer is to speak to Mr Chris Huhne MP in the near future in regard to the contents of a letter he sent to the Metropolitan Police Service this week."

The company behind the development, Durham Green Developments, has only two directors - jobbing builder Mr Ruddick and secretary Mrs Kidd - two employees of Mr Abrahams through whom he made donations of nearly £400,000 to Labour.

Mr Abrahams is not a director of the company, but it is registered at his home address in Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne.

The Conservatives have also written to Communities Secretary Hazel Blears calling for a crossdepartment inquiry into the circumstances behind the granting of planning permission for the Durham Green Business Park development.

Tory spokesman Eric Pickles wrote to her: "I am sure you will agree that suggestions that donors to the Labour Party may have influenced any Government decision are extremely damaging to public life, and it is essential that you take steps to prove conclusively that this was not the case."

The Daily Mail has learned that separately, Mr Abrahams donated £50,000 to Labour in the same month he fought a successful battle for planning permission to build a controversial housing development.

He was seeking to build 14 terrace houses and nine flats in Haswell - a village just outside Tony Blair's constituency of Sedgefield.

When he applied for permission - using his alias David Martin - planners at first regarded the 3,000-square-metre proposal as an "overdevelopment" of the area.

Planning officer Phil Johnson, in a letter dated April 27, 2006, from Labour-controlled Easington District Council, declared the plans "completely unacceptable".

Haswell Parish Council also complained on the grounds that the application was "a gross overdevelopment of the site" - but withdrew its objection after Mr Abrahams agreed to pay £10,500 to finance a playground.

Mr Abrahams re-applied for planning permission on May 2 and had fresh plans drafted.

On May 24, he donated £50,000 to the Labour Party via Mr Ruddick.

Planners suggested Mr Abrahams scale down his proposal to 12 houses and nine flats - still way over Government guidelines on the number of dwellings squeezed into a certain space - and on July 21, he was granted planning permission.

Mr Abrahams has strenuously denied receiving any "favours" for his donations and says he will launch legal proceedings against anyone who defames his reputation.

[UKrepublican]

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