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DAVID Cameron was under pressure last night to investigate whether Tory Cabinet member Grant Shapps broke the ministerial code when he falsely claimed not to have a second job.
In a letter to the Prime Minister, Labour MP Lucy Powell said there is now “irrefutable evidence” that Mr Shapps was double-jobbing under the pseudonym “Michael Green.”
She said that the PM must establish whether he breached rules that state ministers must be “as open as possible to Parliament and the public.”
Her letter comes after a recording revealed by the Guardian proves he was still running his HowToCorp get-rich-quick scheme in 2006.
Mr Shapps insisted he had stopped working as a salesman shortly after being elected in 2005.
Only last month he told LBC radio that: “To be absolutely clear. I don’t have a second job. And I have never had a second job whilst being an MP. End of story.”
He even took legal action against a constituent who wrote about his second life on Facebook, forcing them to make clear his business interests ended “prior to entering Parliament.”
But Mr Shapps’s story unravelled as a recording emerged of him trying to sell his Stinking Rich 3 how-to guide in 2006.
In the recording he clearly states it is summer 2006 before saying his book could make listeners a “ton of cash by Christmas.”
The Tory desperately tried to dismiss it yesterday as an “old story,” adding that “Labour just hate business.”
Ms Powell said though that the “repeated falsehoods” spun by Mr Shapps “demonstrate contempt for his constituents.”
And she told the PM: “Such serious allegations cannot be allowed to hang over a man who has serious and wide-ranging ministerial responsibilities and who will be running your election campaign.”
A spokesman for the Prime Minister said yesterday that he has “full confidence” in Mr Shapps.
“The Prime Minister thinks that Grant has done the right thing in acknowledging the mistake he has made,” he said.
Mr Cameron also came under pressure to sack Mr Shapps from his Lib Dem coalition partners.
A Lib Dem spokesman said: “Perhaps it’s time for David Cameron to finally ‘get rid of the Green crap’?”
by Luke James Parliamentary Reporter
