On Monday morning, as the Ashcroft revelations were breaking, I bumped into David Cameron in Portcullis House. He said to me with his beaming smile:

“Well, you’ve got what you wanted now!”

Well… Not quite.

I want the House of Lords Appointments Commission to get involved. They can’t pretend it has nothing to do with them. That it was all something that happened in the watch of the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee. Now abolished.

The Scrutiny Committee is now long gone but the relevant correspondence and notes are all there in the Cabinet Office. Nothing has been weeded out or destroyed.

I remember well the new Chair of the Appointments Commission, Lord Jay, telling me at his confirmation hearing on 22 July 2008 that:

“It would be wrong if somebody is appointed to the House of Lords on the understanding that he or she will do something and then quite clearly does not”.

They cannot walk away from this issue now. Just because it may feel a bit uncomfortable.

It is overwhelmingly in the public interest for the Appointments Commission to look into the correspondence and circumstances surrounding the elevation of Michael Ashcroft and to report back to the House.