A former Conservative Minister who wrote to Gaddafi’s son seeking help in obtaining almost £1 million in fees for providing advice in relation to Abdelbaset al-Megrahi has apologised for his “error”.
Lord Trefgarne has apologised to peers for “errors” he made and for what he termed “inappropriate” use of House of Lords notepaper.
The apology follows reports this weekend of the discovery in Libya of a letter written in 2007 in which the Tory peer asked Muammar Gaddafi’s fugitive son Saif al-Islam to help him recover the money, he had provided political advice to the regime ahead of Mr Megrahi’s appeal.
Lord Trefgarne also admitted that the ‘business interest’ mentioned in the letter had been incorrectly removed from the Lords registry of interests in 2005.
In a statement, Lord Trefgarne said: “As your lordships may be aware, there has been some recent press comment relating to a letter, now made public, which I wrote in 2007 on a private matter of a business nature.
“I accept that although the business interest, to which the letter referred, was correctly entered in the register of interests’ in 2003, it was removed in 2005, which was clearly premature.
“I also accept that the use of House of Lords writing paper was inappropriate. I apologise for these errors for which I take full personal responsibility.”
This weekend the SNP called on David Cameron to apologise for what they termed his party’s hypocrisy on the matter of Megrahi. The UK PM and other senior Tories have consistently described the compassionate release of Mr Megrahi as “wrong”.