Private Eye Profile on East Kilbride MP, Michael McCann

The New Boys and Girls. No.20 – Michael McCann
(Copyright, Private Eye No. 1290)

Michael McCann was a union official during the Thatcher years. He joined the Labour party in 1987 while working as a civil servant in his home town of East Kilbride. He was elected to South Lanarkshire Council in 1999, and became deputy leader in 2007. This solid training should have prepared the East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow MP for the cut-and-thrust of national politics. But alas!

Since replacing his friend and mentor, the former Defence Minister Adam Ingram – for whom he was once election agent – McCann has looked anything but solid, buffeted by questions about his long and sometimes controversial friendship with a wealthy local property developer and Labour donor, James Kean.

McCann now refuses to speak to his local rag, the East Kilbride News, because of its “biased” coverage of his bitterly fought election campaign. The fact that McCann’s Tory opponent, Graham Simpson, is a fellow ward councillor who works as a sub-editor in the Glasgow office of the Sun apparently convinced him that a right wing conspiracy is afoot.

“This has been the dirtiest election campaign ever,” McCann harrumphed shortly after the general election. “The Tory candidate, a Sun journalist, supported by the SNP, has attempted to smear my good name. Sadly, their descent into the political gutter was seized upon by Rupert Murdoch’s attack dogs and the East Kilbride News. Character assassination is now the order of the day!”

What has most infuriated McCann, however, is a series of articles about his position in the local authority’s planning committee and his close association with James Kean, who has been behind a number of controversial projects in the town. Both the MP and the property developer have sought advice from m’learned friends following a BBC Scotland investigation into Kean’s plans to sell land for a new Tesco development. What is not disputed is BBC Scotland’s claim that as a councillor, “McCann supported numerous applications from Mr Kean’s companies as they came through committee, never declaring an interest”.

After McCann’s election to parliament, the BBC obtained a letter he had written to Scottish Enterprise indicating a close interest in its proposal to sell some land in his constituency to Asda. The Scottish Enterprise scheme was up against an application involving Tesco, on land which is mostly owned by McCann’s old pal.

Political opponents believe McCann should have declared an interest when presiding over planning matters involving Kean. He was cleared by the Standards Commission. However, McCann’s election HQ was housed in the St James Retail Centre – owned by and named after James Kean. McCann insisted that his campaign to have a pharmacy and bus station located at the same Kean-owned retail centre had nothing to do with their friendship.

He described another article, published last December, which carried an accurate account of his parliamentary expenses claims - £12,133 from May to the end of August – as “a full-blown attack and me and my family”. He has since submitted two separate complaints to the Press Complaints Commission, which are still pending. Commenting on the figures published by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, McCann said, “I already list my expenses on my website but it’s absolutely appropriate that everything paid to MPs is in the public domain.”

But it seems McCann has been selective about the expenses he has published on his website. There is no mention, for example, of the £499.99 he spent on a TV for his constituency office, or the claim he made for parking charges outside his constituency office.

Before the general election Gordon Brown warned Labour candidates it was not acceptable to “take on two jobs”, but after the election last May it took McCann until mid-September to resign his post at South Lanarkshire Council, during which time he collected £5,500 from the local authority to top up his parliamentary salary of £65,738.

There’s also the small matter of his constituency office secretary. “In the last parliament MPs were rightly criticised for hiring members of their family who didn’t do any work,” he says on his website. “I have hired my wife Tracy because I know she will work hard and do a great job. She has a massive amount of experience in both the public and private sector and is great with the public and she is the only person I know who will type letters at half-past-ten at night.” Nice work if the happy couple can get it!