Blair plays down police interview

12 April 2012

Tony Blair has sought to play down the significance of his encounter with "cash-for-honours" detectives, insisting it was "perfectly natural" that he had been questioned.

Mr Blair became the first serving prime minister to be interviewed as part of a criminal investigation on Thursday when officers spent nearly two hours with him at 10 Downing Street.

Speaking for the first time in public about the interview, Mr Blair told reporters in Brussels, where he is attending an EU summit: "This is a complaint that was made by the Scottish National Party against me personally, in effect, and so it is not in the slightest bit surprising or wrong that the police should want to talk to me. I think it is perfectly natural that the police should come and talk to me."

Mr Blair stressed that the nominations for peerages which triggered the inquiry were made by him as party leader and not as a reward for public service. "The particular issues concerned were not for honours given by me as a prime minister for public service," he said.

"On the contrary, they were nominated by me as a party leader for party service. That's the basic distinction that lies at the heart of this."

Reports suggest that the inquiry team would now turn its attention back to Lord Levy, Mr Blair's personal fundraiser, who has already been interviewed once, under caution, after being arrested.

Mr Blair made his comments 40 minutes later than had been expected, just as police in Suffolk were preparing to hold a press conference on the Ipswich prostitute murders.

The timing is likely to spark a fresh row after Labour was on Thursday accused of trying to "bury" the news of Mr Blair's police interview, as the Stevens report into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales was being published. Earlier a senior Labour backbencher said that it would not now serve any useful purpose to take the investigation further.

Tony Wright, the chairman of the Commons Public Administration Committee which had been looking into the cash-for-honours affair before the police inquiry intervened, said that he doubted charges could be brought successfully. "I have taken the view that this police investigation has been a kind of shock to the system and, on the whole, a good one," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.