What do you do when you’re being investigated for breaking parliamentary rules? Find an excuse to get out of the country for a few days.
The Conservative MP Tim Yeo was seen leaving from Heathrow yesterday after hurriedly stepping down as chairman of the Energy and Climate Change select committee.
Yeo is being investigated for conflicts of interest, which he denies, after two Sunday Times reporters, claiming to represent a fictitious South Korean solar energy company, secretly filmed Yeo offering them advice in exchange for cash. Only last summer Yeo called for an expansion of Heathrow airport, arguing that the best way to “kick-start Britain’s sluggish economy” was to create more direct routes to China — a country that one of Yeo’s companies had coincidentally just signed a new deal with.
But where was Yeo flying to? Seoul, for the UK-Korea Forum for the Future. Peace talks in the South Korean capital between North and South are foundering — and who better to save the day than Tim Yeo?
