The Mail on Sunday has an article on David Blunkett's
Blunkett to quit grace-and-favour home, at last!
11:51am 29th January 2006David Blunkett has revealed he is finally going to move out of his luxury grace-and-favour home -three months after resigning from the Cabinet for the second time.
Mr Blunkett was allowed to hold onto the £3million London house for security reasons after quitting as Home Secretary in December 2004.
He did not move out straight away following his departure as Work and Pensions Secretary last November for the same reason. But he now says he will leave within weeks
"I gave myself three months to find somewhere and the Prime Minister was good enough to say 'take your time, but obviously we all know you have got to get out because you no longer have the position to be able to occupy it'," he said.
"I have found somewhere and I shall be moving within a matter of weeks. But as anyone involved with surveyors and lawyers knows you can't actually predict these things."
He told the BBC's Sunday AM programme the furnished Belgravia residency has been his home for eight years.
Why was David Blunkett given the grace and favour house "normally assigned to the Home Secretary" back in late 1997 when he became Education Secretary, well before he became Home Secretary in mid 2001 ?
Rent freeHe said he had paid the bills but not the rent because that would have made it harder for the Government to turf him out.
If Blunkett was an honourable man, that would have presented no difficulty whatsoever.
The allocation of grace-and-favour residences is in the gift of the Prime Minister. Mr Blunkett's home is traditionally occupied by the Home Secretary.
When exactly was this property purchased by the Government ? How long has it been used by "the Home Secretary" ? Michael Howard in the last Conservative Government lived there, but does that make it a "tradition" ?
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