Blunkett in the clear

2004-12-21 17:03

London - Former British home secretary David Blunkett was exonerated on Tuesday when an inquiry said it could not ascertain whether he personally gave instructions to speed up a visa application for his ex-lover's Filipina nanny.

"I have not been able to determine whether Mr Blunkett gave any instructions in relation to the case and, if so, what they were," said Sir Alan Budd, a former senior Treasury official who headed the probe.

The outcome seemed to weigh in favour of Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was stung when Blunkett resigned last Wednesday in anticipation of Budd's findings, after denying wrongdoing in the case of the nanny.

Budd found that "an official in Mr Blunkett's private office" had taken up the nanny's bid to remain indefinitely in Britain with immigration officials.

He also found that the nanny's application, filed in March last year, was subsequently processed in 52 days - compared to an average 172 days for similar requests.

Budd, saying he was confident that no-one was covering up the facts in the so-called "Nannygate" affair, added that there had been no evidence Blunkett had personally fast-tracked the application.

The nanny, Leoncia Casalme, had been employed by Kimberly Quinn, the married US-born publisher of the influential Spectator magazine, who carried on a three-year clandestine love affair with Blunkett before their break-up last August.

Blunkett remains locked in an ugly family court battle with Quinn, demanding access to her two-year-old son whom he claims to have fathered.

Quinn - who remains wedded to Stephen Quinn, publisher of the British edition of Vogue magazine - is due to give birth to her second child in February.

Revelations that Blunkett, the cabinet minister in charge of law enforcement and immigration, might have fast-tracked the visa application left him wide open to accusations of abuse of his authority.

Blunkett remains a backbench member of Blair's Labour government, and the fact that he escaped reproach in Budd's report suggests that he could yet play a major role in the upcoming election campaign.

An ICM opinion poll in the Guardian newspaper on Tuesday indicated that 61% of British voters were in favour of Blunkett getting another senior position in due course, against 29% who disapproved.

In a statement on Tuesday, Blunkett said he accepted the inquiry's findings.

He added: "I wish to make it clear that at all times I have told the truth as I knew it. But I also accept that there are lessons to be learned."

- AFP