JOHN HUMPHRYS:                It was a fortnight ago that 
a new political scandal came to light. And, even though the government 
says it's not a scandal at all - just a load of garbage - it refuses to 
go away. The basic facts are not contested. Mr Blair signed a letter that 
helped a foreign businessman win the contract to privatise the steel industry 
in Romania. The businessman, Lakshmi Mittal, had donated a hundred and 
twenty five thousand pounds to the Labour Party. Labour says there's no 
connection between those two facts. Almost every day though since then 
there has been some new twist or turn to the story. The man who revealed 
the link between the party and Mr Mittal two weeks ago is a backbench MP 
for Plaid Cymru, Adam Price. And he's with me. Good morning to you.

ADAM PRICE MP:                Morning.

HUMPHRYS:                    Are you satisfied now 
that the whole thing has been cleared up because the government tells us 
pretty well every day it's all a load of nonsense.

PRICE:                    Well no, I think it's very 
very flippant of the government to dismiss this.  I mean there's a palpable 
sense of anger in South Wales in steel communities in particular of course. 
Here was a British Prime Minister, intervening at the highest level, to 
support a company which is actually based in the Caribbean and is actively 
of course working against British interest in trying to freeze British 
exports out of the American, out of the American market. Mr Mittal's plants 
in Kazakhstan and Romania which have been partly of course funded by the 
British taxpayer are producing the same, the same kind of output of course 
that used to be produced in Llanwern and far from batting for Britain as 
the Foreign Secretary said, I think the Prime Minister has actually been 
betraying the interests of the British steel industry.

HUMPHRYS:                    But what he was doing, 
and Prime Ministers do this all the time, on the advice of the Foreign 
Office obviously, what he was doing was something that the Ambassador in 
that country had wanted him to do. He'd had talks himself with the Prime 
Minister, it was in the interest of Romania, therefore it was in the interest 
of Europe, therefore it was in the interest of Britain, that's the sort 
of logic.

PRICE:                    Well I find it very difficult 
to believe actually that Her Majesty's representative in Bucharest was 
acting on his own initiative, in that the several meetings that he had 
with Mr Mittal ...

HUMPHRYS:                    ...well on whose then?

PRICE:                    Well clearly this was a 
policy decision. I mean Sir Richard Packer has said, former permanent...

HUMPHRYS:                    ..former permanent secretary...

PRICE:                    ...former permanent secretary, 
of course, has said this morning that the initiative must have come from 
Number Ten. That an ambassador would not work on his own initiative in 
this basis. I think there's an unanswered question here isn't there. Why....what 
was the legitimate British interest here in supporting a non-British businessman, 
a non-British company, who actually is a competitor, a competitor to British 
steel industry at a very very difficult time.

HUMPHRYS:                    Well the answer to that 
has been given, it was given on this programme last week by a government 
minister, which is that we want to modernise those countries that are going 
to be become members of the European Union, it's in our interest to do 
so, to help them to privatise and this is what we were doing and it worked 
- apparently.

PRICE:                    Well I mean the government 
has shifted their ground of course. The original defence of course was 
that the letter was merely a congratulatory letter and in fact this was 
a British company. That has been comprehensively demolished. Now the government 
is saying, well this was actually good for Romania. Now if the British 
Prime Minister is saying that it is a policy of the British government 
to sacrifice steel jobs in South Wales and other parts of the UK in order 
to save steel jobs in Romania then he should come out and say it. But what 
I would say is that we should not have a trade- off, where there should 
be no question of a trade off between economic development and jobs in 
one of the poorest parts of Europe and economic development in one of the 
poorest parts of the UK.

HUMPHRYS:                    But to go back to the 
principle point here, there is not a shred of proof is there, not a shred 
of proof that the donation was linked to that decision to sign that letter?

PRICE:                    Well I have no evidence 
of that, none of us have any evidence of that. If there's an innocent explanation, 
if this is just a set of coincidences, then why is the Prime Minister refusing 
to give an interview on this matter? And why doesn't the government reveal 
all the documents surrounding this case? If there is nothing to hide, why 
have they been trying to conceal this case and why are...

HUMPHRYS:                    ...commercial confidentiality?

PRICE:                    Well, I, does that cover 
all good government pronouncements now? I mean I think that the government 
clearly have a case to answer here, and this has come at a time when public 
confidence in politics is at a low ebb. The only thing, the only thing 
that will rebuild confidence in the political process, particularly in 
the steel communities among redundant steel workers is that if we have 
an independent inquiry now into all the circumstances surrounding this 
case.

HUMPHRYS:                    And yet you seem not 
to be persuading the electorate of your concern. You had a by-election 
not very far from your own constituency in South Wales and the government 
won it very comfortably indeed and it was a steel-making area where jobs 
had gone.

PRICE:                    Well I think there's a sense, 
there's a sense at large that politicians are all the same and I think 
that it's incredibly depressing isn't it, to see these results and I think 
that there is a sense in which this whole affair, on the back of all the 
other scandals that have been in recent years, is corroding confidence 
in the political process. And the only thing which will clear that and 
rebuild confidence in politics and the parliamentary process is if we have 
an independent investigation.

HUMPHRYS:                    Yes or No, do you believe 
that Tony Blair knew about the donation when he signed the letter and was 
influenced by it?

PRICE:                    Well without being in full 
possession of all the facts, it would be very unwise of any of us to speculate. 
We need to have those facts and we need to rebuild public confidence in 
politics.

HUMPHRYS:                    Adam Price, thanks very 
much indeed.