Footage that has emerged today shows Rev Flowers in 2011 saying it is hard not be smug about his bank's status. The former Labour councillor has been suspended from the Methodist Church, where he has been a minister for 40 years, while investigations take place. Video footage, obtained by the Mail on Sunday, appears to show Rev Flowers in his car discussing the cocaine and crystal meth he wants to buy from a dealer in Leeds. Rev Flowers, 63, is apparently seen counting out £300 and handing it to a friend to purchase the drugs and asking what else they want, questioning: "Ket? No? When told they cannot get ketamine, a Class C tranquilliser, he replies: "Don't worry, we will cope with what we have got." Rev Flowers, who lost his mother Muriel a year ago, said in a statement released through his church: "This year has been incredibly difficult, with a death in the family and the pressures of my role with the Cooperative Bank. The video was filmed by Stuart Davies, who met Rev Flowers through gay dating site Grindr in October. In a series of text messages Rev Flowers, who resigned from the bank in June after the disastrous state of its finances were revealed, is said to have written: "I was "grilled" by the Treasury Select Committee yesterday and afterwards came to Manchester to get wasted with friends." In another message he apparently boasted that his plans were "turning into a two day, drug fuelled gay orgy!!!" On the day he was due to appear before the Commons committee, an appearance postponed due to time constraints, he is said to have texted that he was "snorting some good stuff." Mr Davies, 26, saidhe heard him "bragging" about his connections in Parliament and his 40 years in the church, adding: "He seemed to be using his status to get young men off their heads for sex." At a party Rev Flowers, who once chaired drugs charity Lifeline, was making "fat lines" of cocaine, taking GHB and ketamine, and smoking cannabis and discussing how he had been in the Commons the day before for the aborted meeting, Mr Davies said. "He took great delight in telling us how he had put one over on them - "Tory c****" he called them - because they'd wanted him back the next day but he had told them where to go," he added. A spokesperson for The Methodist Church said: "Paul is suspended from duties for a period of three weeks, pending investigations, and will not be available to carry out any ministerial work. We will also work with the police if they feel a crime has been committed. West Yorkshire Police said they had not received any reports but have "been made aware of the allegations made in the Mail on Sunday article and are now making further enquiries." Footage that has emerged today from 2011 shows Rev Flowers boasting about the success of the bank whilst he was in charge. Two years after the 2009 takeover of the Britannia Building Society that has largely been blamed for putting a £1.5bn hole in the lender's balance sheet, the then chairman told the Mutuals Forum it would be easy for him to be smug. "We exited the crisis," he said: "It would be really easy now for a representative of the Co-operative bank to be fearsomely smug, that is not my normal nature, no heckling from the back row at this point. That is not my normal nature, however, I would like to say that the Co-operative bank did not need any structural support at all, from anywhere. He goes on to discuss how it is "hardly surprising" that Northern Rock went under when they only had a liquidity rate of 28 per cent at the beginning of the financial crisis, compared to the Co-operative's rate of 110 per cent. He also described the FSA as "oiks."