Did £100K in donations influence Newmarket MP Hancock to let horse racing restart?
Matt Hancock: did donations from equestrian businesses influence him to demand the restoration of horse racing?
Newmarket is a big equestrian centre and its MP is Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who is deeply involved in the Tory government’s strategy to handle the Covid-19 crisis.
Hancock himself is a lover of horse-racing and once considered a career as a jockey, it seems.
He is said to have received £100,000 or more from horse racing businesses in the last year alone. It is easy enough to check this so I am happy to assume that Carole Cadwalladr (among others) has done so:
Thanks to the MP for Newmarket who has taken £100k off the racing industry in last year, horse racing will resume on Monday. Thanks to this tweet, I now want to know EVERYTHING about how decision made to let Cheltenham go ahead https://t.co/kc9ELybNmI
— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) May 30, 2020
And horse racing resumes tomorrow (June 1).
Did those donations encourage Matt Hancock to influence government policy into allowing racing to resume? I don’t know.
It would be a clear case of corruption if they did.
There is a law, introduced by David Cameron’s Conservative-led government, that was said to be intended to ban the influencing of MPs by special interest groups with money to burn, but This Site and others reported at the time that it was mis-named and was in fact meant to reduce the influence of the Left.
Events will not be held in public so the only people at risk will be those who work in that particular industry.
We will need to monitor carefully what happens. If Covid-19 cases spike, then serious questions will have to be asked about the reasons this industry was allowed to resume business.
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I have no interest in groups, special or otherwise, and think that at my age in life I’m able to make decisions for myself. I attended the Cheltenham Festival on all four days, as was my lawful right, and on the final day joined 10 others there including my daughter. I’m sure that you will be pleased to know that none of us have suffered from symptoms of Covid 19 (nor know of anyone who has). I live in council sheltered housing and am further pleased to report that none of the other residents on my estate are suffering symptoms either. The excellent staff at Cheltenham (mostly young folk) who ministered to our needs with professionalism and aplomb,were I’m sure aware of the risk that they may have been taking, even the young Muslim girl who was serving drinks in our bar. Thank goodness the Government have taken cautious, measured steps to re-start the economy. Racing would appear to be a great place to start as they are adopting the methods employed by the Irish racing industry which worked safely in the week prior to lockdown. No one working there in that environment has been reported to have suffered health-wise as a result. Spectators of course will not be allowed anywhere near the racecourses in Britain so any spread of the disease, should it happen, will be entirely down the members of the workforce who recklessly and without regard for others chose to go back to work. I applaud their bravery.
Was this to allow racing to start or was it to allow the racing to continue despite other events being cancelled as the Pandemic started. Not sure anyone who contracted the deadly bug, because the meeting was not called off to protect the NHS, would be pleased to hear the Cons might have benefitted from this meeting being allowed to continue. Follow the money