Following today’s story on Sky News alleging that Dr Vincent McKee has committed fraud,
A Liberal Democrat spokesperson said:
With the support of the Federal party, the regional party launched an immediate investigation.
Mr McKee has been suspended from the party, pending the outcome of further investigations. The party will work with all other authorities involved in this matter.
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42 Comments
“Dr Vincent McKee has been implicated in defrauding students out of thousands of pounds in tuition fees.”
Priceless.
Joy.
McKee is a disgrace to the party. Quite apart from the (serious) allegations, he seems to have a fundamental lack of understanding of what liberalism is:
http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/20090510-church-times-libdems-1.jpg
Err… this guy hasn’t been found guilty yet, or even arrested as far as I can work out. Can’t we wait until his trial at least?
Talk about unfortunate – it would have to be defrauding students!! Gives the press an open goal – ‘first Lib Dems screw students on fees, now they even DEFRAUD them!’
I’m not a Lib Dem, and even I feel sorry for you. Almost.
It’s a disgrace that he’s been suspended before even being charged with an offence. He denies the allegation – which incidentally has been made by Sky News, not the police.
“My daughter is in the process of taking Vincent Mckee and his company ICUT to court after he took two unauthorised payments from her bank account.”
Is it possible that his company is really called ICUT? Is he a man or a metaphor?
Oh, get to France… the presumption of innocent until proven guilty does not mean what you think it does.
To all the people saying he shouldn’t be suspended, it is standard practice to suspend MPs and Councillors while they are under investigation for a criminal act. I note that none of you were complaining when the former MP Ilsley was suspended by the Labour party.
“…the presumption of innocent until proven guilty does not mean what you think it does”. Perhaps you could enlighten us on this statement Alec? I think that most of us regard ‘innocent until proven guilty’ as one of the cornerstones of liberty in our society.
To be fair, George, I don’t think he’s been investigated by the Police (although one poster says there are civil proceedings against him).
That’s by-the-by, though. This nonsense about “whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty” is far, far, far more embedded in the body politic than approval for detention without charge/oversight or throwing individuals into the clink for years on end, which *is* what the term refers to.
Saying so reflexively isn’t “liberal”… it’s simply refusing to consider the situation.
Not that *that* really is relevent to this case, though. Organizations or companies are perfectly entitled to suspend members/employees if serious allegations are made, and even aint obliged to go to the Police. It’s perfectly understandable that the Party did so here, even if it does youse open to a lot of punning headlines.
Our posts crossed, but I might as well respond.
Has McKee been expelled with the case then closed? No.
Is he going to have an opportunity to defend himself before the Party? I assume so.
If you think this violates the principle, I’d like to hear how you think Police and Prosecutors should operate.
Err – who is Vincent McKee?
Took the words out of my mouth…
Whoever he is, I think it’s only right that he’s suspended while the allegations are investigated. That’s standard practice isn’t it? It’s what happens to doctors and police officers too AFAIK, so only right politicians are treated likewise by their parties. Obviously if found not guilty he should be reinstated.
It is perfectly normal to suspend someone until a conclusion can be reached about the guilt or otherwise of someone who has been accused of a wrongdoing.
Once we know then it is a matter of reinstating the innocent or expelling the guilty.
Apart from that then it is fair enough to suspend judgement on the guilt of the assailant until a verdict is reached.
As well as being a Lib Dem Councillor I am also a Criminal Defence Lawyer – can I suggest that numerous comments here should be edited unless participants might find themselves on the wrong side of the Law !!
Regards,
Nick Cotter.
Nick, I would have thought it was LDV more likely to face legal prosecutions in your hypothetical situation. I think we all know the guffaws which would result if a Party member tried to sue it.
On the other hand, people could simply grow a thicker skin and accept that one or two throw-away remarks on an ill-read blog don’t amount to a campaign to pervert the course of justice.
“Err – who is Vincent McKee?”
Dr McKee has stood as a Liberal Democrat candidate for parliament in four general elections and is currently head of policy for the party in Coventry.
He might not be an MP, but he is a significant member of the party.
It is normal practice though to suspend someone, pending an investigation.
Hang on, he hasn’t been charged with anything yet. Surely we should not suspend someone just because they are accused on TV of something?
@George potter what is it in the article you link to that you think is illiberal?
Simon, I rather think that the federal and regional parties have based it on a little more than a single Sky report.
Also, the concept that we can be defined on communalist terms (e.g. that there’s a “Christian” “community”) and faith-based schools (where State money is taken, but religious instruction informs the syllabus and institutional appointments) does go a bit against Lockean principles of self-ownership, I would have thought.
@Simon McGrath
Simon – it’s quite likely he might never be charged as the cops tend to avoid this kind of thing and shunt complainers off to the civil courts. They’ve always done this. What makes them act is publicity so who knows?
I’ve read the Sky piece and it looks a solid piece of investigation with a number of complainers and also the fact that he overcharged the undercover Sky reporters who paid for tuition – let’s hope we don’t have another boring debate about unethical journos with Cable apologists trying to find legal loopholes to prosecute the,
If the journos have got it wrong then let Cable or McKee sue them and pick up a big fat pay-out – I wouldn’t advise anyone to hold their breath btw.
Still it really is a new twist to tuition fees scandal 🙂
Please remember that the laws of libel do apply on this site, as elsewhere. People are welcome to discuss the story, but please remember only to make specific factual claims if you have appropriate evidence to justify them.
Head of policy in Coventry????What on earth does that mean Matt ? Do we have Heads of Policy in all our towns? How do you become one?
Voicey, surely Nick wants to repeal the current libel laws?
Furthermore, to anyone alleging libel, go down a couple of threads and you’ll see one about Illsley in which the Labour Party is being accused of being complicit in the culture of corruption. I also am thinking of the endless accusations of “illegal wars” (from MPs, no less).
This bores me, but I don’t think it should be shut-down through threats of libel ‘cos I consider us all to be grown-ups who shouldn’t support a culture of grievance and litigation in which an allegation which in no way affects the appellant’s quality of life can result in a bigger pay-out than is given to someone who almost had her arm hacked-off (cf. Lisa Potts).
@david
“Head of policy in Coventry????What on earth does that mean Matt ? Do we have Heads of Policy in all our towns? How do you become one?”
Someone asked the question who he was, all they had to do was click on the link provided in the article, and read the news story in full from the Sky News Website
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Liberal-Democrat-Parliamentary-Candidate-Suspended-For-Defrauding-Students-Of-Thousands-Of-Pounds/Article/201101215890360?lpos=UK_News_Top_Stories_Header_2&lid=ARTICLE_15890360_Liberal_Democrat_Parliamentary_Candidate_Suspended_For_Defrauding_Students_Of_Thousands_Of_Pounds
“Dr McKee has stood as a Liberal Democrat candidate for parliament in four general elections and is currently head of policy for the party in Coventry.”
I forgot to include the quote marks 😉
@Simon McGrath
Well, I think that describing things like same-sex adoption as “ultra-libertarianism” hardly counts as understanding liberalism. I may be wrong, but I thought that a standard liberal position was to be against discrimination against people based on their sexuality.
Reform, not repeal. We can and should still have strong libel laws in the UK; we just don’t want laws that US corporations can use as a bludgeon to silence random people who aren’t even in the UK. The current set of libel laws are a bit nuts in places.
@ Various – i have to say I disgaree. we should not suspend someone based on an allegation.
@George Potter – his point about the electoral dangers of pissing off committed christians seems rather perceptive given that this was why evan harris lost his seat.
@matt – thanks for the info and sorry for being lazy, I didn’t notice the article link and couldn’t be bothered to Google him!
@david – I agree the title of ‘Head of Policy in Coventry’ sounds a bit silly, but I’ve known several local parties have ‘policy teams’. I guess it’s a product of our ultra-localism…
@George – yes, and not just that, the tone of the whole article was a bit unhelpful. Terms like ‘militant humanists’, ‘ultra-libertarian sexual impositions’, ‘amoral goals’ and ‘ultra-secular political sect’ are hardly constructive, nor likely to entice his fellow party members that he disagrees with into a healthy debate about the issues. Like most parties, we’re a broad church (no irony intended!), but that rather depends on members from different schools of thought trying to respect each others’ points of view. And I never realised that Evan Harris had ‘disciples’ 🙂
Reposting with correct tags.
The concept comes from when there were only a handful of inter-dependent individuals who controlled the media. Now there is a wheen of publications and television stations – including foreign-owned, including foreign Governments – as well as blogs offering more than adequate right of reply.
Anyone mentioned in this thread threatened to sue would be an enemy of anything approaching a free press.
There’s still the issue of similar comments against Labour-targets which are, it would appear, tolerated.
This bogeyman of “US corporations” is a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny part of the giant piss-take which libel law has become.
Well, you’re at odds with every employer, public or private alike.
Tough. They, like all other religious confessionals, should have no expectation of preferential treatment or deference simply ‘cos they’re a religious confessional. McKee’s stuff about Liberalism emerging from non-conformist Churches was missing the point spectacularly ‘cos they were doing so in the knowledge of the influence the CofE held; that one about senior members being practicing Christians was an a priori failure, not least ‘cos they as what’s being suggested is no preventing individuals from holding religious beliefs but not allowing them to pursue the inherently passive aggressive pursuit of appealing to immutable religious tenets when directing public policy.
Assuming it was because of this, and not changing boundaries which divested him of LibDem urban wards and brought in Tory rural wards, tough again.
What you’re saying is that aspiring politicians should suppress their ethnical positions, and even go against them just to acquire the trappings of office. Psychologists would say the act of holding two, mutually contradictory positions is cognitive dissonance; anthropolgists would say it’s moral bankrupcy.
Is there a third term?
>This bores me, but I don’t think it should be shut-down through threats of libel ‘cos I consider us all to be grown-ups who shouldn’t support a culture of grievance and litigation
Are you saying people should ignore the laws they don’t like?!
Or that it’s ok to defame people, because you don’t approve of the system of redress?
As general points:
Telling posters to stick within the law as it stands isn’t a threat.
Whether LDV is LIKELY to be sued is neither here nor there: that’s like saying “it’s ok to break the law cos we’ll get away with it.”
If there are posts on other threads that are iffy: two wrongs never did make a right. Tho’ (haven’t seen the posts) you can’t libel a party or group, IIRC, only clearly identifiable individuals.
Current libel laws need reforming because they make it easy for wealthy interests to shut down genuine investigation into dodgy practice, for instance.
Not so that anyone with a keyboard can state defamatory opinion as fact.
And guilt or innocence is for the legal system to determine, after consideration of all the facts, not bloggers based on what they assume or think they know, based on something they saw on the telly 😉
The italicization of comments is down to an unclosed tag in my uncorrected post
You’ve got it back to front. I’m saying that describing the very mild comments in this thread as libel is a peversion of already absurd laws.
But, if anyone thinks they were libellous, so are the endless comments about the wider Labour Party being complicit with Illsley and Chaytor’s fraud, and “illegal wars”. Are you suggesting that people should deny people they don’t like the protection of the law?!
Alec: The distinction between making comments about an individual and a large group (such as a political party) is a pretty basic part of libel law – and in essence you can’t libel a group of people such as a political party. So there’s a very straight forward answer to why comments about individuals and the wider Labour Party are treated differently. No reason of course why you should know lots about libel law, but if you’re not aware of basic concepts like that, you might want to hold back a little on being so sure about judging whether or not other comments are libellous 🙂
Actually I’m fairly sure you can’t libel “Labour” you can only libel specific individuals or small, easily identifiable groups.
Au contraire! The British Chiropratic Association tried that with Simon Singh, and got a ridiculous way through the courts. It eventually accepted that we the public are permitted to call its method wholly bogus, just as we can call Tommy Sheridan a liar who attends swinger clubs or Chaytor/Illsley a pair of crooks. It’s great saying that!
Other organizations have done similar.
Even if it were not possible to libel an organization, consider the number of times specific individuals have been mentioned in connexion to the permitted comment I’ve cited… such as Tony Blair. I hold no brief for the man – and say quite a lot against him myself – and am citing these comments simply to suggest that the hypersentivity towards potential libellous comment on LDV (this isn’t the first time I’ve seen it displayed) were taken to its logical conclusion, a lot of burblings on LDV – and certain Council leaders or MPs who’re still droning on about it – would be in breach.
Of course, I doubt Blair would sue (although other named individuals have sued webpages or minor media outlets on the basis of similarly ignorable comments) ‘cos libel law is not criminal law, and sane people in the public eye allow much to go by as fair comment or part of a functioning free society.
For what it’s worth, I agree that specific claims about McKee’s personal conduct is best left off, just as they should be for any ongoing or upcoming legal investigation. But libel it aint.
@Trurojoe “It’s a disgrace that he’s been suspended before even being charged with an offence. He denies the allegation – which incidentally has been made by Sky News, not the police.”
This is common practice, this happens in the workplace too, it’s not just a politics issue, workers get suspened pending an inquiry etc.
Alec: the legal status of a group of people in the situations we were talking about is different from that of a trade organisation such as the BCA as far as libel (and other) law goes.
On the point about problems with libel law, I suspect there’s much we agree on – such as the way very large costs can be run up very quickly even by legal threats that have very slim chances of success – but I don’t think you do your case any favours by making claims about the state of libel law that don’t reflect how the law actually operates. Bear in mind also that you will not have seen all the comments that have been moderated in such circumstances – even if you were sat on the site every second of every day, you won’t have seen comments that were auto-moderated – nor will you have seen any legal correspondence in previous cases either. That’s quite a lot of relevant information not to know before making such firm and certain conclusions about what triggered the sort of approach you’ve objected to, isn’t it?
I remember when I worked for Robert Maxwell or at least one of his papers.
He had a penchant for issuing libel actions against investigative journos trying to get to the bottom of his wheelings and dealings and anyone else who got up his nose. This effectively kicked things into the long grass and eventually he would drop the action when it suited him. He had hundreds and hundreds on the go at any one time.
He then went for an investigative journo friend of mine who had written a few home truths about him – the usual writ followed for £500,000 in damages to his character/reputation . Eventually Maxwell did his usual and tried to drop the action only to find that in Scotland you can’t unilaterally drop an action it needs agreement from both sides. So my mate refused to drop it and carried on and won a rather famous victory which we still have a celebration drink or two or three to this day.
When I was sued for £10million by an American multinational company my mate was a real rock and helped put things in perspective when he said: ‘If Maxwell had sued me for £5K I would have been worried but £500K was just a joke.
So people need protection from malicious defamation or libel but fair comment, especially with someone in the public arena must be protected and of course veritas is an absolute defence to libel or defamation.
It is worth pointing out that legal action can be taken against not just the original libel or defamatiion but anyone assisting in its further publication and it is this area that could leave LDV open to legal threat although the online issues are more complex than in say print or broadcast media.
Oh I should have said that those complaining about someone being suspended before they are charged and found guilty should remember that in most organisations there is either a written or implied stipulation that members shouldn’t bring the organisation into disrepute and that steps can taken to investigate tallegations and take appropriate action if necessary.
Not being a LibDem member I don’t know the party mechanics but from reports it appears that an exisiting procedure has commenced and it seems self-evident to me that this procedure must allow for suspension if deemed necessary to get to the bottom of matters and for the dual purpose of protecting the party and the individual.
This seems a straightforward case and there will be a wealth of documentary bank evidence to prove whether people were overcharged or not. All that is left is to determine is whether any overcharge was with criminal intent or sloppy admin or whatever. The sloppy admin defence might fail if there is a significant number of cases and according to reports a wide variety of different explanations have been tendered for the errors.
But key to the defence is what an accused does when an error is pointed out to them and whether they rectify the mistake.
Of course, we don’t know at this stage whether anything in the initial investigation by the Regional Party persuaded them that immediate suspension was necessary or, indeed, whether it even had the luxury of choice within its rule-book.
At the end of the day, and it is something that a lot of LibDems on this site seem to lose track of is that dishonesty is not the province of one political party. It is one of the things that flawed people do – sometimes they might be under great financial pressure and do something out-of-character but it always amazes me how quickly it becomes a way of life for the vast majority of them once they start and how quickly they feel ‘entitled’ to the stolen money, goods or whatever.
Have a look at the Sky News video.
The reporter was understandably smiling when Mckee was coughing and spluttering and saying he had flu when the reporter phoned him to ask why two unauthorised sums of money, and attempt at a third, had been debited from his debit/credit card.
According to other people who have had money taken from their accounts, when they phoned he he always the excuse that he has the flu. Unhealthiest man in Britain or someone not being completely truthful ?
Is it libellous to comment on what is in the public domain ?
All those Lib Dems using excuses of ‘libel’ to try and close the thread……just watch the Sky News film on which I’ve commented. McKee hardly appears to be very co-operative does he ?
I feel really sorry for the student who said she had unauthorised and unearned money taken from her account and rang him to ask for it to be refunded because she could not afford to buy her family Christmas presents.
ecojon @ “At the end of the day, and it is something that a lot of LibDems on this site seem to lose track of is that dishonesty is not the province of one political party.”
Well said Ecojon.
One of the reasons that people are getting so fed up with the Lib Dems is the constant ‘we’re better than you, fairer, more progressive, more moral,’ etc.
The lie is being exposed, and surprise surprise if we scrape the surface the Lib Dems will contain as many bad uns
as other parties.