List of political scandals in the United Kingdom

1890s

• Liberator Building Society scandal, in which the Liberal Party MP Jabez Balfour was exposed as running several fraudulent companies to conceal financial losses. Balfour fled to Argentina, but was eventually arrested and imprisoned.

  1910s

• Marconi scandal of insider trading by Liberal Party Ministers including:
• * Rufus Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading, the Attorney General
• * The Master of Elibank, Lord Murray, the Treasurer of the Liberal Party,
• * David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, the Chancellor of the Exchequer
• *Herbert Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel, Postmaster General; was falsely implicated.
• Shell Crisis of 1915, which led to the fall of H. H. Asquith's Liberal Party government during World War I.

  1920s

• Lloyd George and the honours scandal. Honours sold for large campaign contributions
• Zinoviev Letter

  1930s

• Jimmy Thomas budget leak

  1940s

• Hugh Dalton budget leak
• John Belcher corruptly influenced – led to Lynskey Tribunal

  1950s

• British Malayan headhunting scandal. Involved generals, politicians, and activists, sparked by the Daily Worker's leaked photos of war crimes committed by British troops during the Malayan Emergency.
• Crichel Down and the resignation of Thomas Dugdale
• Suez Crisis

  1960s

• Vassall affair : civil servant John Vassall, working for Minister Tam Galbraith, was revealed to be a spy for the Soviet Union and was arrested. The affair was investigated in the Vassall tribunal.
• Profumo affair : Secretary of State for War John Profumo had an affair with Christine Keeler who was having an affair with a Soviet spy at the same time.
• The Robert Boothby, Tom Driberg, Kray brothers affair and consequent cover-up involving senior politicians of both parties. The Daily Mirror published some details of the matter and was falsely sued for libel.
• Britain's Nuclear Bomb Tests Scandal : the catastrophic effects of nuclear testing in Australia and the South Pacific. Very serious environmental damage and health conditions emerged. Many communities and nationalities such as the Aborigine, South Pacific islanders, Australian and British were affected. Health conditions such as cancers, deformities, birth defects, premature deaths, nervous conditions and mental illnesses were reported. Genetic damage from ionising radiation, affecting many generations has also been reported. Campaigns to release MOD documents on blood tests and receive compensation have been continuing.

  1970s

• Corrupt architect John Poulson and links to Conservative Home Secretary Reginald Maudling, Labour council leader T. Dan Smith and others : Maudling resigned, Smith sentenced to imprisonment.
• Earl Jellicoe and Lord Lambton sex scandal : Conservatives, junior defence minister Lambton is arrested for using prostitutes and Cabinet minister Jellicoe also confesses.
• Labour MP John Stonehouse's faked suicide
• Harold Wilson's Prime Minister's Resignation Honours gives honours to a number of wealthy businessmen.
• Peter Jay's appointment as British Ambassador to the US by his father in law, the then Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan. At the time Jay was a journalist with little diplomatic experience.
• "Rinkagate": the Thorpe affair. Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe was arrested and tried for allegedly paying a hitman to murder his lover, model Norman Scott, while walking his dog on Exmoor; the hitman only shot the dog, Rinka. Thorpe was forced to resign due to his clandestine gay affairs, but was acquitted of conspiracy to murder.

  1980s

• Joseph Kagan, Baron Kagan, earlier ennobled by the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson's notorious Lavender List, was convicted of fraud
• Cecil Parkinson affair with secretary Sara Keays resulting in their child, Flora Keays
• Al Yamamah contract alleged to have been obtained by bribery
• Westland affair : The Defence Secretary, Michael Heseltine, resigned from his Cabinet job in a disagreement with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher over the Westland affair. Heseltine walked out of a meeting at Number 10 as his views on the future of the Westland helicopter company were being ignored at the time.
• Jeffrey Archer and the prostitute allegations, and his subsequent conviction for perjury
• Westminster cemeteries scandal
• Edwina Currie resigns as a junior Health minister after claiming that millions of British eggs were infected with salmonella, stating that "most of egg production" was infected
• "Homes for votes" gerrymandering scandal

  1990s

• Arms-to-Iraq and the closely connected Iraqi Supergun affair
• David Mellor resignation after press disclosure of his affair with Antonia de Sancha and gratis holiday from a daughter of a PLO official
• Michael Mates gift of a watch to Asil Nadir
• Monklandsgate dominated the 1994 Monklands East by-election. It mainly consisted of allegations of sectarian spending discrepancies between Protestant Airdrie and Catholic Coatbridge, fuelled by the fact that all 17 of the ruling Labour group were Roman Catholics.
• Back to Basics, a government policy slogan portrayed by opponents and the press as a morality campaign to compare it with a contemporaneous succession of sex scandals in John Major's government which led to the resignation of Tim Yeo and the Earl of Caithness, among others
• Cash-for-questions affair involving Neil Hamilton, Tim Smith and Mohamed Al-Fayed
• Jonathan Aitken and the Paris Ritz Hotel bill allegations, and his subsequent conviction for perjury after his failed libel action against The Guardian, resulting in Aitken being only the third person to have to resign from the Privy Council in the 20th century.
• Conservative MP Jerry Hayes was "outed" as a homosexual by the News of the World with the headline "TORY MP 2-TIMED WIFE WITH UNDER-AGE GAY LOVER". Hayes had met Young Conservative Paul Stone at the 1991 Conservative conference and that same evening, "committed a lewd act which was in breach of the law at the time". Stone had been 18 at the time, whilst the legal age for homosexual sex in 1991 was 21. Hayes had previously supported Section 28.
• Bernie Ecclestone was involved in a political scandal when it transpired he had given the Labour Party a million pound donation – which raised eyebrows when the incoming Labour government changed its policy to allow Formula One to continue being sponsored by tobacco manufacturers. The Labour Party returned the donation when the scandal came to light.
• Peter Mandelson, Trade and Industry Secretary, resigned after failing to disclose £373,000 loan from Paymaster General Geoffrey Robinson.
• Ron Davies resigned from the cabinet after being robbed by a man he met at Clapham Common and then lying about it

  2000s

• Officegate. Henry McLeish, Labour First Minister of Scotland, failed to refund the House of Commons for income he had received from the sub-let of his constituency office in Glenrothes while still a Westminster MP.
• Keith Vaz, Peter Mandelson and the Hinduja brothers. Mandelson was forced to resign for a second time due to misleading statements.
• Jo Moore, within an hour of the September 11 attacks, sent an email to the press office of her department suggesting: "It's now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury. Councillors' expenses?" Although prior to the catastrophic collapse of the towers, the phrase "a good day to bury bad news" has since been used to refer to other instances of attempting to hide one item of news behind a more publicised issue.
• Betsygate, which revolved around the level of pay that Iain Duncan Smith's wife Elisabeth received as his diary secretary.
• In 2002, Edwina Currie revealed that she had had an affair, beginning in 1984, with John Major before he became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Major had frequently pushed his Back To Basics agenda, which was taken by the media as a form of moral absolutism.
• Ron Davies stood down from the Welsh assembly following accusations of illicit gay sex. Davies had claimed he had been badger-watching in the area.
• The apparent suicide of Dr. David Kelly and the Hutton Inquiry. On 17 July 2003, Kelly, an employee of the Ministry of Defence, apparently committed suicide after being misquoted by BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan as saying that Tony Blair's Labour government had knowingly "sexed up" the "September Dossier", a report into Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. The government was cleared of wrongdoing, while the BBC was strongly criticised by the subsequent inquiry, leading to the resignation of the BBC's chairman and director-general.
• In April 2004, Beverly Hughes was forced to resign as minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Counter Terrorism when it was shown that she had been informed of procedural improprieties concerning the granting of visas to certain categories of workers from Eastern Europe. She had earlier told the House of Commons that if she had been aware of such facts she would have done something about it.
• In 2005, David McLetchie, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, was forced to resign after claiming the highest taxi expenses of any MSP. These included personal journeys, journeys related solely with his second job as a solicitor, and Conservative Party business, for example travel to Conservative conferences. Conservative backbench MSP Brian Monteith had the whip withdrawn for briefing against his leader to the Scotland on Sunday newspaper.
• Liberal Democrats Home Affairs spokesman Mark Oaten resigned after it was revealed by the News of the World that he paid rentboys to perform sexual acts on him.
• David Mills financial allegations. Tessa Jowell, Labour cabinet minister, was embroiled in a scandal about a property remortgage allegedly arranged to enable her husband, David Mills, to realise £350,000 from an off-shore hedge fund, money he allegedly received as a gift following testimony he had provided for Silvio Berlusconi in the 1990s. Nicknamed by the press as "Jowellgate".
• Cash for Honours. In March 2006 it emerged that the Labour Party had borrowed millions of pounds in 2005 to help fund their general election campaign. While not illegal, on 15 March the Treasurer of the party, Jack Dromey, stated publicly that he had neither knowledge of nor involvement in these loans and had only become aware when he read about it in the newspapers. A story was running at the time that Dr Chai Patel and others had been recommended for life peerages after lending the Labour party money. He called on the Electoral Commission to investigate the issue of political parties taking out loans from non-commercial sources.
• News of the World royal phone hacking scandal. This scandal involved the secret intercepting of voicemails from the royal family by private investigators hired by the tabloid News of the World.
• Angus McNeil. The married SNP MP who made the initial police complaint over the cash for honours scandal was forced to make an apology after it was revealed that in 2005 he had a "heavy petting" session with two teenage girls aged 17 and 18 in a hotel room at the same time his wife was pregnant with their third child.
• In November 2007, it emerged that more than £400,000 had been accepted by the Labour Party from one person through a series of third parties, causing the Electoral Commission to seek an explanation. Peter Watt resigned as the General Secretary of the party the day after the story broke and was quoted as saying that he knew about the arrangement but had not appreciated that he had failed to comply with the reporting requirements.
• On 24 January 2008, Peter Hain resigned his two cabinet posts after the Electoral Commission referred donations to his Deputy Leadership campaign to the police.
• Derek Conway : The Conservative Party MP was found to have reclaimed salaries he had paid to his two sons who had in fact not carried out the work to the extent claimed. He was ordered to repay £16,918, suspended from the House of Commons for 10 days and removed from the party whip.
• Cash for influence : Details of covertly recorded discussions with four Labour Party peers which covered their ability to influence legislation and the consultancy fees that they charged were published by The Sunday Times.
• United Kingdom parliamentary expenses scandal : Widespread actual and alleged misuse of the permitted allowances and expenses claimed by Members of Parliament and attempts by MPs and peers to exempt themselves from Freedom of Information legislation.