Jarvis boss named as Labour donor

THE boss of the company blamed for the Potters Bar rail disaster is a financial supporter of the Labour Party, it has been revealed. Paris Moayedi, chief executive of Jarvis, donated more than £5,000 at a fund-raising party.

Jarvis is the contracting firm responsible for maintaining the points suspected of causing the derailment of a 100mph express in Hertfordshire in May which led to the deaths of seven people. The chief executive's donation was in the form of holidays at two of his villas.

They were offered as raffle prizes during the fund-raising evening in 2000 attended by several leading politicians, including local government minister Nick Raynsford.

The news will anger leaders of rail unions RMT and Aslef. They were already unhappy that since the crash, Moayedi has received a £150,000 bonus and a £95,000 pay rise, taking his salary to £425,000.

Labour chairman Charles Clarke revealed Moayedi's donation at a news conference in London when he released a list of backers who had given the party more than £5,000.

He also pointed out the names of two other firms - construction companies John Doyle Group and the O'Rourke Group - which had also given more than £5,000. Both firms have received Government contracts.

The list was released several weeks early. Normally the figures are contained in the party's annual report. But party officials decided that it would cause less damage to Labour's image if the donations were revealed now.

Clarke said the Jarvis boss attended the evening in his private capacity. And the holidays were never actually taken. He said it was difficult to put a price on the holidays so officials had opted to be on the safe side and included them in the list which records gifts of more than £5,000, but without specifying the figure.

Clarke said the matter was an 'early illustration' of how the party's new 'ethics committee' intended to deal with donations in future - anything likely to arouse comment would be published promptly.

A Labour spokesman defended the decision to accept the gift from the boss of Jarvis which is a preferred bidder to maintain London's Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly Tube lines. He said: ' Moayedi attended the fund-raising evening in 2000 which featured an auction. He decided to offer prizes in the form of week-long stays in two of his private villas. Although he did not physically hand over money to the party and it is difficult to quantify how much a holiday is worth, we decided to call it more than £5,000.' Asked if Labour would accept any more gifts from Moayedi, he said that would be a matter for the party's ethics committee.