Senior Tories earn thousands from banks they criticise

THE TORY shadow cabinet has been raking in thousands of pounds in cash and perks from failing banks.

The latest register of MPs' interests reveals that four of the party's big beasts were paid large sums in the past year by institutions that have lost taxpayers billions of pounds.

William Hague, Ken Clarke, Oliver Letwin and Francis Maude are all prominent members of the shadow cabinet, which has approved criticism of "irresponsible" bankers. Shadow chancellor George Osborne has led the attack.

David Cameron's effective deputy leader, shadow foreign secretary William Hague, received up to £15,000 for an after-dinner speech to executives from Barclays Capital Markets in May.

Mr Maude is paid an untold sum to sit on Barclays' Asia-Pacific Advisory Committee. The bank's shares have plummeted recently, with investors fearing the extent of its bad debt will force it to ask for government money. So far it has resisted a state bailout.

Mr Clarke, the newly appointed shadow business secretary, pocketed as much as £25,000 in the past three months for talking to beleaguered financial groups, including UBS, BGC International, Cofunds and Goldman Sachs. UBS, which went cap in hand to the Swiss government recently and plans to cut 5,500 staff, gave Mr Clarke up to £10,000 for a speech in October.

The credit crunch saw Goldman Sachs give up its investment banking status after 75 years, but it still paid the former Chancellor up to £5,000 for putting in an appearance at its offices.

Mr Letwin, the Tories' strategy supremo, receives unspecified payments for his role as a non-executive director of N.M. Rothschild Corporate Finance, which is making money advising Prime Minister Gordon Brown on the latest bank bailout.

A group of 11 MPs, nine of them Tories, also took part in an all-expenses-paid trip to China in September, which was part-funded by Barclays Capital. The week-long trip to Beijing for the UK-China Leadership of the Future Forum was also sponsored by Rolls-Royce and the Chinese Communist Party.

Former foreign minister and now Conservative backbencher Sir Malcolm Rifkind was paid up to £5,000 for a speech to debt-ridden ABN-Amro in May.

Royal Bank of Scotland took over the Dutch bank and its dire loan book in 2007, a move blamed for RBS's recent part-nationalisation.

Labour MP Ian Gibson said: "It does not look good for Tory MPs to be attacking banks while quietly raking it in from those institutions. The [Tory] frontbench should reveal their interests in Britain's banks."