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WENDY ALEXANDER, the Scottish Labour leader, faces a new crisis after it emerged that she and senior colleagues have given thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money to a company that helps with campaigns for the party.
Alexander is already under pressure to resign after she admitted receiving an illegal donation for her leadership campaign from Paul Green, a businessman based in Jersey who is not a UK voter.
Now it has emerged that she, along with eight senior colleagues, used parliamentary allowances to pay £5,000 to Computing for Labour (CfL), a company owned by the party and based at its London headquarters. It provides IT services that are offered free by the Scottish parliament.
CfL provides software which helps politicians to organise files on individual constituents.
It is used not only by 13 Labour members of the Scottish parliament (MSPs) but also by 260 Labour MPs and 16 Welsh assembly members. Between them, they pay the organisation an estimated £68,000 a year from their parliamentary allowances.
The money is paid even though similar software has been available free to MSPs of all parties through the Scottish parliament’s IT department since 2003. Westminster politicians said the only other systems available to them had to be paid for.
CfL helps Labour to campaign during elections, designing candidates’ websites and software that allows them to send text messages directly to voters. Its website states that it is “a membership organisation set up to encourage and support the use of computers so that they contribute to achieving the party’s aims”.
Parliamentary authorities prohibit the use of office equipment paid out of allowances to be used for party purposes but have permitted payments to CfL on the grounds that MSPs require support to help to deal with constituents’ problems.
However, a former CfL employee said that income from elected representatives made the company’s election campaigning work possible. “Basically it pays for the salaries of the same employees who help out with political support at the time of election campaigns so in that sense it is all the same. It cross-subsidises it.”
Murdo Fraser, deputy leader of the Scottish Conservatives, said it was “astonishing” that taxpayers’ money appeared to be used to subsidise Labour campaigns.
He is demanding an investigation by the parliamentary authorities and calling for the practice to be banned, adding that Alexander has made “another serious misjudgment”.

Sam Coates's blog about Westminster, politics and spin
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As an add on, why cant the three countries be run as fully independant countries who have an agreement to support each other when it is needed.
The Scottish People have absolutely no problems with the English People themselves. We just favour running our own country ourselves because like England we believe that our own people understand the needs of the Scots.
We need seperate governments who dont try to play the role of World Power. We all know that is not a fact and hasnt been since the second world war. We need Scottish/English/Welsh taxes spent on their own internal problems. We need to dismantle the system that welcomes so called refugees to our lands. We need to re enforce the fact that our three countries are christian countries and welcome those who are able to accept that above all else. We need our countries to stop those who do not want to integrate fully into our communitees. We certainly dont need these ghetto's that perpetuate anti Scottish/English/Welsh propaganda
Mike, Edinburgh, Scotland
Labours=people with no dignity
riccardo, brussels,
1# Mike England has been neurtered by the Scottish Mafia in Westminster , we are no longer allowed to demonstrate, and if we do there is a d notice put on it so that no report of it goes on air or in the press,on the 23rd of April this year the Campaign for an English Parliament and English Democrats had a march at the last moment The Speaker [gorbals polished up Mick] ordered that we were not allowed to march through Westminster under the terrorism laws. England has been balkanised and the break up of the Union is engineered [in my opinion] on the Alter of europe, it removes the thorn in their side, its whats known as Divide and Rule
Silemairin
silemairin, potters bar, England
Why dont you English People who are fed up with a Brown Government that finds that there was no guilt by anyone in New Labour to the cash for peerages. Abraham has already stated he was promised some type of honour for his 600,000 quid plus.
Come to think about it why dont you have your own Parliament with English People Elected to run England. Its got to be better than putting up with the sheite you are putting up with now.
Perhaps you can demand that the Illegal Migrants are sent back to their own Country. Or that instead of wasting many billions on PPP/PFI contracts that the Brown Folk must be getting a good kickback on. Like us you will be paying these debts for the next thirty years for crappy built public buildings that wont last 10 years.
Five thousand English People are moving North every month. We welcome them but the Question has to be asked on WHY the English should be moving out of their homeland.
Mike, Edinburgh, Scotland.
And she recently called for the allowance to be increased. How odd!
Gregor Addison, Glasgow, Scotland
The fact that the Scottish print media haven't published this is no surprise - they are institutionally biased. What is of more concern is that the BBC haven't covered it. This hardly bodes well for fair tv news coverage.
George, Falkirk,
I find it astonishing that this article doesn't appear in any Scottish newspaper. I wonder why not........
It's possible that the newspapers in Scotland are more concerned with "trying" to find dirt on A Salmond. Shock horror...he met Trump in a ministerial car. Sleazy or what?
Methalions, Axarquia, Spain
as usual not a peep about this in any of the scottish papers.............mow theres a surprise...NOT
alan, ek,
New Labour is anti -democratic and corrupt. Old labour was also anti -democratic and corrupt. I know because I was, to my shame part of it.. They will never change and they will never admit it
J Leigh, London, UK
English readers.sit up and take notice. This will be going on under your noses as well. A scandal...but of limited effect in Scotland, since we Scots will be off to a brighter future very soon in any event.
Sorry to leave you with our dross, but Messrs Brown, Darling, Alexander, Browne, etc etc.....WON'T be joining us uo here in our new and exciting history making !!
Hamish Morrison, Inverness, Scotland
Wendy Alexander is out of her depth, she is floundering like a beached whale
I think it was nepotism that got her that job.
John, North Yorks,
How much longer will we be run by a bunch of criminals? Once was, when ministers were nicked, they resigned. No more. S
Jeremy Poynton, Fromeville, 51st State
Just another exposure of New Labour's unintentional good faith. So will they accept responsibility for this good faith?
...or will it be slipped under the carpet to join the opened and discarded brown envelopes already in residence under there?
But nobody did anything wrong and it will be proved nobody did any thing wrong because Labour said so.
... and Labour's friends will say so, as well.
Tom McAlister, Coventry,
That's unionism at it's best...
we're all better off without it.
Independence for Scotland!
F T U
Bzzzz, Edinburgh, Scotland
what else would you expect from nulab?
roger jones, kettering,