LONDON (AFP) — Former prime minister Tony Blair will not face an investigation into how Formula One racing was exempted from a tobacco advertising ban, the House of Commons Speaker said in a letter released Monday.
Blair had faced a possible probe by Speaker Michael Martin after two lawmakers complained following the release of new papers on the move in 1997 under freedom of information laws.
These showed that Downing Street wrote to the then health minister Tessa Jowell to push for an exemption for Formula One the day after Blair met the sport's supremo Bernie Ecclestone, then a major donor to Blair's Labour Party.
The government had previously said the decision was not made straight after the meeting.
Now Martin has written to one of the two lawmakers who complained, John Maples of the main opposition Conservatives, to say that while Blair's answers on the issue "could have been clearer", he would not take further action.
Any inquiry would have been hampered by the fact that Blair is no longer a lawmaker -- he quit his parliamentary seat when he stepped down as prime minister in June last year.
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