 | 'He claimed there was no reason why he should not go back to the Lords, claiming he still has a lot to contribute. I have a right to go there and don't think there is anything wrong in that, but I won't be going every day," he said. Watson, 57, will be entitled to an attendance allowance of £192 a day.' Iain Swanson, Scottish Political Editor in the Evening News, 24 th May 2006 |  |
SHAMED peer Mike Watson says he plans to return to the House of Lords following his release from Edinburgh's Saughton jail.
The former Labour MSP apologised for starting the hotel fire which saw him jailed and admitted he could have killed someone.
But he claimed there was no reason why he should not go back to the Lords, claiming he still has a lot to contribute.
"I have a right to go there and don't think there is anything wrong in that, but I won't be going every day," he said.
Watson, 57, will be entitled to an attendance allowance of £192 a day.
He said: "People who say I should be stripped of my peerage should ask themselves just how many punishments have to be meted out to a person who has committed a crime.
"I committed a crime and I pled guilty to it. I was jailed and gave up my job."
The one-time Culture Minister is expected to move to London, where his wife has been working for several months.
Released yesterday after serving half of his 16-month sentence, he said: "I feel tremendous remorse for the potential loss of life that could have been caused."
Watson initially denied starting the fire at Prestonfield House hotel after the Scottish Politician of the Year awards in 2004, but later changed his plea, resigned his seat in the Scottish Parliament and quit as a director of Dundee United before being jailed last September.
But he said he could still not say what had happened or why it happened.
He said: "I apologise to the hotel and everyone who was in that building that I put them in danger because of what I did. To this day I will never know why I did it and I will live with it for the rest of my days."
He said his mistake had been in accepting the invitation from the awards organisers to stay on for a private late-night party in the hotel. "If I had just decided to go home I would never have been in this position."
He claimed he woke up the next morning with a terrible hangover, but no recollection of what had happened. And he said even when shown CCTV footage of him crouching at the curtains shortly before flames could be seen, he could not believe it was him.
"I know it looked like me, but I could remember nothing."
It was only after being shown an enhanced version of the video that he was forced to accept it was him.
"I had been in denial, but I realised that it could have been a charge of culpable homicide I was facing. That moment cast me into darkness. My life was in ruins at that point."
A couple of months before the incident, Watson's wife Clare had lost a baby after four years of fertility treatment.
He said that had put "a cloud over us".
He said: "I was over 50 and I thought that because of my age our last chance had gone. Maybe, more than I realised, I was taking comfort in alcohol."
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