Shahid Malik
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This article is part of the Revolving Door project of Spinwatch. |
Shahid Malik was the Labour member of parliament for Dewsbury from 2005 to 2010.
Career
Malik was the Labour representative for Dewsbury in the 2005 general election, defeating Sayeeda Warsi, with 41.0 percent of the vote. He then lost to the Conservative's Simon Reevell in 2010, by under 3 percent after gaining 32.2 percent of the vote.[1] In parliament he held the posts of parliamentary private secretary to Jim Knight and parliamentary under-secretary to the Department for International Development, Ministry of Justice and the Department for Communities and Local Government.[2]
Malik was forced to apologise to the House of Commons for a breach of expenses rules after he claimed the insurance on his wife's engagement ring. He has since said he paid back the £235 the increase amounted to.[3]
In 2013 he denied he would be Labour's candidate for Batley and Spen in the 2015 general election.[4]
Malik's Tell MAMA profile boasts that he has “worked at the highest levels of government” with autocratic regimes including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Oman. A 2008 Independent interview called Malik a “Blairite” who “was seen as the perfect New Labour apparatchik”.
They Work For You record that Malik was a consistent New Labour loyalist who almost always voted against investigations into the Iraq war and always voted for Labour’s repressive “anti-terror” laws, for stricter asylum policy, for ID cards and to renew Britain’s nuclear weapons.
Views and positions
While a minister, Malik claimed “this government has done more on the domestic agenda for Muslims than any other government in British history.”
After the July 2005 bombings, Malik argued that Muslims’ condemnation was “not enough”. In January 2009, he said British Muslims’ acute “sense of grievance and injustice” over the Gaza war was “obviously profoundly unhealthy.” The Guardian reports he also “dismissed suggestions of an arms embargo” against Israel. Malik wrote that “foreign policy causes anger among many British Muslims but this does not in itself cause terrorism. Unquestionably, the lethal ingredient is a twisted, perverted interpretation of Islam”.
In July 2005, Malik told the Financial Times “many of us are currently seriously re-considering” the decision not to deport salafist cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed despite the risk of his execution, and defended the government’s Incitement to Racial and Religious Hatred Bill.
Malik opposed invading Iraq in 2003 without UN authorisation. As a Parliamentary Private Secretary, he broke protocol by co-signing a 2006 letter cautiously criticising Blair’s response to Israel’s war against Lebanon, saying it was causing civilian deaths.
Revolving door
- Independent consultant advising third sector, private and public sector clients on society, equality, cohesion, development and governance, November 2010. Approved by ACOBA who saw "no reason why he should not set up the consultancy as described forthwith, on the basis that he would not draw on privileged information that was available to him as a Minister, subject to the condition that, for 12 months from his last day in office, he should not become personally involved in lobbying UK Ministers or Crown servants, including Special Advisers, on behalf of any new employer or client".[5]
Donations
In January 2008 Malik received £10,000.00 from Bestways PLC, owned by Tory donor Anwar Pervez.[6]
Resources
Notes
- ↑ Dewsbury The Guardian, accessed 4 December 2014
- ↑ Shahid Malik They Work For Us, accessed 4 December 2014
- ↑ Gerri Peev Guilty: The former Labour minister who charged YOU to insure his wife's ring The Daily Mail, accessed 4 December 2014
- ↑ Former Dewsbury and Mirfield MP Shahid Malik denies comeback Dewsbury Reporter, 1 September 2013, 4 December 2014
- ↑ Twelfth Report 2010-2011 Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, accessed 4 December 2014
- ↑ Electoral Commission, Donation search, accessed 20 February 2015
