The Association of Professional Political Consultants emergency meeting of its management committee scheduled for today will consider a complaint about Steve Morgan of Morgan Allen Moore, (“MAM”) the public aff­airs firm linked to the Peter Hain’s donations.

Morgan the Organ not only made a £5,000 donation to the fake think-tank and allowed the Hain4Labour campaign to use MAM off­ices. Cheques to Hain4Labour were sent via the Cardiff offices of MAM before ending up in the campaign coffers. The fake Progressive Polices Forum think tank shares a London address with MAM as well. 

These actions breach the APPC code of conduct, which states that members

must keep strictly separate from their duties and activities as political consultants any personal activity or inv­olvement on behalf of a pol­itical party. 

Steve Morgan is presumably going to try and claim that this was all done in a personal capacity. Herein lies a problem, the Hain4Labour campaign had use of MAM staff. For example Kate Lewis, head of MAM’s Cardiff office was working on the campaign – which also begs the question why no donation in kind was registered? Her services do not come cheap and would not fall below the non-declarable £1000 threshold.

From: “Steve Morgan”
To: “Geraint Davies”, “Kate Lewis”, “Hugh Roberts”, “Andrew Stallard”, “Wayne David”, “CARBERRY, Joe”, “Albert Owen”, “Chris Ruane”, “Huw ID”, “Eluned Morgan”

Subject: Meeting
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2007 16:20

Thanks for coming to the meeting with Peter on Saturday we’re really glad to have you on board and grateful for your support for Peter’s campaign.

There are two items we need to deal with immediately.

1. First meeting date.

If everyone’s ( MPs are welcome but there’s no whip!!) happy to meet in Cardiff for an hour over lunch we can use my offices down on the Bay. Can you make either the 8th, 13th or 14th of March?

2. Wales-wide network.

We talked about getting a key supporter in every constituency. If you know of anyone who can fill these roles for us can you let me know (with contact details please) before we meet. Can you also let me know which constituencies you’re in.

Thanks

Steve

The significance of this email is twofold; it was sent from Morgan the Organ’s MAM office and demonstrates that MAM was effectively Hain’s campaign base and that MAM staff such as Kate Lewis were running the campaign. This clearly breaks the APPC’s Code of Conduct. 

It also means that there is yet another undeclared to the Electoral Commission benefit-in-kind donation probably worth tens of thousands of pounds…