Thorpe affair insurance card prevented him from claiming benefits. By this time, Thorpe had succeeded Jo Grimond as leader of the Liberal Party. To resolve Scott's immediate problems, and to prevent a resumption of his tirades against the new party leader, Bessell began paying him a "retainer" of between £5 and £10 a week, ostensibly in lieu of lost national insurance benefits. Bessell also arranged Scott's new passport, but by this time Scott had abandoned his American plans and wished to establish a career as a model. He asked Bessell for £200 to set him up; Bessell refused, but in May 1968
Jeremy Thorpe from the safety of the bench. In a BBC investigative documentary broadcast in December 2014, an antique firearms collector named Dennis Meighan claimed that he had been hired by an unidentified senior Liberal to kill Scott, for a fee of £13,500. Instead, he had passed the job on to his associate, Newton, and provided him with the gun. After confessing to the police, Meighan was asked to sign a prepared statement which, according to him, "left everything out that was incriminating, but at the same time everything I said about the Liberal Party, Jeremy Thorpe, et cetera, was left out