House of Commons Hansard Debates for 30 Jun 1995

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what he was saying was nonsense if he had simply asked one of his colleagues who has actually had dealings with Labour local authorities--one of them is sitting next to him. In addition, the right hon. Gentleman could have asked any one of the Prime Minister's rivals and rumoured potential rivals for the Conservative party leadership. All of them have been Ministers in the Department of the Environment, have worked co-operatively with Labour local authorities and know perfectly well that the picture painted by the right hon. Gentleman is simply untrue.

Those Ministers have worked with initiatives such as city challenge and have seen the effectiveness and, frankly, in a number of cases, the brilliance of some of the regeneration partnerships that local authorities around the country have assembled. The right hon. Gentleman should have asked them--his own colleagues--before he assembled the embarrassing tirade that he threw at us this morning. People outside the House know that such comments are untrue too. Worse than that, such a speech is an insult to the communities to which he has referred. He may believe that it is simply harmless muck-raking, but it is insulting to whole communities, and that is how it will be perceived.

I am pleased to say that, in my relatively short time in the House, I have heard few speeches as bad as that one, but I am intrigued to know how such a dreadful speech comes to be written. Yesterday's edition of the Newham Recorder --incidentally, the Newspaper Society's campaigning newspaper of the year--provides some insight on that matter. The dirt digging lying behind the right hon. Gentleman's speech also provided the material for an absurd article in the Daily Express a week ago about recent changes in Newham council's leadership.

I wish that I could show hon. Members the cartoon in the Newham Recorder responding to the claims in the Daily Express about Newham council-- remember the Newham Recorder and its editor once sympathised with the Conservative party. The cartoon shows a thug with a glove puppet. The puppet is the crusader figure from the masthead of the Daily Express and the thug is labelled "Tory Smear Campaign".

The article begins:

"A newspaper smear on Newham council by the Tory Daily Express last week may be directly linked to Downing Street.

Just days before the two-page article appeared I"

the reporter--

"was enthusiastically told by a former Conservative councillor that `Number 10's Policy Unit' had phoned asking if he could confirm the Unit's thinking of a left-wing shift in the control of East Ham Town Hall.

The councillor could not do so of course. He knew--since he had served with many of those in power, albeit on a different side--that the claim was laughable.

A few days later I received a call from the Express's Political Correspondent John Ingham who wrote the piece which suggested that East London politics shatters Labour's new moderate image.

He did not deny he had been talking to the Cabinet's spin doctors. In fact he was taken aback with our knowledge"

of what had happened. The editor of the paper goes on to comment: "When opinion masquerades as fact people can get hurt.

If the purpose of the Express article was to discredit the Labour Party (which, of course, it was) they have also done a grave disservice to people living here."

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There we have it. The Government have the cheek to lecture us about propriety and yet the No. 10 policy unit, paid for by taxpayers' money, is used by the Conservative party to put together cheap party propaganda. That is an outrageous misuse of public money. The problem that we have in Britain today, and the right hon. Gentleman's speech spelt it out clearly, is that the Tory party does not understand the distinction between its interests and the national interest. The whole country is paying the price for that.

I wonder how the chairman of the Conservative party justifies his use of the No. 10 policy unit to put together party propaganda. I also wonder whether that was how the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) spent his time when he was running the unit in the mid-1980s, or whether it is only under the present incumbent that standards have fallen so low.

One of the Government's policies that has angered the Newham Recorder is the way in which the local government funding formula treats Newham. According to Government figures, Newham has the highest level of urban deprivation in the country, yet the standard spending assessment per head of population--that is, the amount of money that the Government say needs to be spent--is less than the SSA for Westminster. That cannot be right. One reason for that discrepancy is that Westminster receives more than £550 per head under the "other services" heading, while Newham receives less than half of that.

One major reason for that extra money was revealed by The Daily Telegraph last Saturday. Westminster receives that massive subsidy for all the tourists who visit the borough. However, as The Daily Telegraph said in its article, a Westminster council internal document shows that the council accepts that it is now

"vulnerable to the criticism that we receive double compensation."

The reality is that the tourists who visit Westminster bring in large sums of money, which are spent in the local economy--not least on parking charges that go straight into the coffers of the city council.

Westminster is being compensated for its tourists, while in reality it is simply getting extra money. Other local authorities throughout the country- -Conservative as well as Labour--have to suffer because of the way that the system has been raked. That is wrong. Westminster has been given large, additional amounts of money for the special tourist factor. It was introduced in the 1980s specifically to help Westminster, while other councils with far harder jobs to do are left having to make do with less. That is the way that the Government have treated local government and it is a disgrace.

Local government is at the sharp end of the toughest problems that our nation faces as we approach the new millennium. Councillors of all parties are working to resolve them. The Conservative party should be supporting their efforts, not hurling abuse. Urban deprivation and the need for regeneration, keeping life in our town centres, raising the standards in our schools, providing care in our communities, building partnerships to tackle drug abuse--those are vital tasks and they require partnership between central and local government, of whatever party. There needs to be co-operation instead of the cheap insults that have been tossed around this morning. These matters are too important to be reduced to party footballs. Partnership and co-operation--that is the way forward. If the right hon. Gentleman had listened to some

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of his right hon. and hon. Friends, he would have known that. We do not want the sort of cheap jibes that we have heard this morning. They demean the right hon. Gentleman and they insult the rest of us. They damage the vital and essential work being undertaken by local authorities throughout the country--work about which the right hon. Gentleman should have found out before he spoke. Local authorities deserve our support, not our insults.

The British people are fed up with petty politics, from whatever side. They have concluded that this country needs national renewal. What we have heard this morning undermines the partnership and co-operation, the determination for change and the optimism that the country so desperately needs. The one thing that we have established this morning is that there will be no national renewal in Britain while the Conservative party remains in Government.

12.13 pm

Mr. Robert G. Hughes (Harrow, West): The hon. Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Timms), in his short time in the House, has earned himself a reputation as a serious man who understands local government. When he started his speech this morning, I thought that he would further enhance that reputation. However, the problem with his relatively short speech was that, although he made some serious points and rightly said that we had to discuss local government on a serious level and although he told off my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Barnes (Mr. Hanley) for making jibes about Labour local government, if he reads the Hansard report of his speech, he will see that he was not above making the odd jibe himself. It is reasonable that, on a political level, we should point out the inadequacies of councils that are run by our opponents. It came across to me this morning that the Labour party is very sensitive about local government. Indeed, the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) perhaps would not have spent his time away from Scotland on a Friday to attend the House had he not been worried about the enormous damage that is rightly being done to the Labour party's reputation inside and outside Scotland by the systematic abuse that has been going on in Monklands.

Many hon. Members come from a local government background and we certainly take the matter with a great deal of seriousness. The point has been made that thousands of councillors, of all parties and, indeed, some independent ones, do a splendid job. They give up huge amounts of their time--time that they could spend with their family or doing other things--because they care about the community that they serve. Nothing in today's debate should detract from that. Conservative Members are entitled to say that there is a culture of local government that comes from the Labour party that is not enviable and does no good for local communities. In a spat earlier in the debate, the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Mr. Hogg) made some ill-judged sedentary comments about the civil servants in the Box. Knowing the hon. Gentleman, I am sure that he regrets those comments and did not mean what he said.

Mr. Norman Hogg: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The rule is that civil servants in the Box should not be mentioned. I hope that hon. Members will bear that in mind.

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Mr. Hughes: I will give way to the hon. Gentleman later. I wish to make a wider point that relates to my experience of the debate about the civil service in the House--not, of course, about the remarks that were made earlier.

The problem is that, in my direct experience, the Labour party in power does not understand the difference between politicians and those people who are employed by a council or by the Government as civil servants. So, if civil servants express a view with which Labour Members do not agree, Labour Members assume that the civil servants are on the side of the Conservative party.

Mr. Eric Illsley (Barnsley, Central): That is a stupid thing to say.

Mr. Hughes: It is no good the hon. Member for Barnsley, Central (Mr. Illsley) saying that. I have heard his colleagues make that assumption in the Chamber. I have heard people who represent--or rather misrepresent-- civil service trade unions say it in debates, including debates that I have had to answer. That is their view. They do not understand the difference.

The hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) thought that there was nothing wrong with wanting to employ Reg Race, a former Member of Parliament, as a senior officer of the Greater London council. I was a member of the appointments committee. I hasten to say that I voted against the appointment of Reg Race. Reg Race told the committee that he had nothing to do with politics any more. He said that he was no longer interested in politics and that he did not intend to seek another Labour seat. We knew that it was not true. The beatific smile on the face of the hon. Member for Brent, East shows that he knew that it was not true. I am not surprised that he is leaving.

Certainly in London, we have seen systematic attacks on skilled and professional council officers for not being sufficiently sympathetic to the Labour party. We have seen many of those people hounded out of their jobs. Pressure has been put on people to obey the diktats of the Labour party. The people in those communities need professional officers giving professional advice.

Mr. Hogg: How does the hon. Gentleman explain the confusion that has been caused by Ministers appointing people who are described as special advisers? I have just picked a letter off the board which is from the Ministry of Defence, Whitehall, London telling me some good news, but it is signed by Crispin Blunt, a "special adviser". What is going on? Why do not Ministers write to Members of Parliament? Are not the Government confusing the position in the way that the hon. Gentleman is accusing local government of doing? The hon. Gentleman really ought to acquaint himself with what is going on.

Mr. Hughes: I am well acquainted with what is going on. The hon. Gentleman is seeking to mislead, and I have heard that line from the Labour party before. Special advisers have a particular position, just as they did during the time of the previous Labour Government.

Mr. Hanley: The hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw), for example.

Mr. Hughes: Indeed, the hon. member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) was in that position. There are a number of

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special advisers, but the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth forgot to mention--as Labour people always do--that the taxpayers' money spent on special advisers is matched by the "Short money" paid to the Labour party to run its administration and research. All parties get that money, including the party in government, and the hon. Gentleman knows that that is true.

Mr. Hogg: That will not do. It does not matter about the money being matched. It is the principle that a Member of Parliament elected by his constituents is receiving a letter from a political appointee instead of from a Minister of the Crown when it is appropriate for a Minister to write to the Member. That is unacceptable.

Mr. Hughes: I am sure that a representative of the Patronage Secretary will pass on the hon. Gentleman's touchiness at being written to in that way.

My point has not been contradicted. I do not think that the Labour party understands the difference, and that has been proved time and time again in local government in London. What the Labour party in local government is too often about--not always, as the hon. Member for Newham, North-East correctly pointed out--is the exercise of power, rather than the representation of communities. Nothing could provide more evidence of that than the party's conduct in housing during the century.

No Conservative railed against the ridiculous and dangerous nature of mixing up the collection of votes with the collection of rents more than Octavia Hill, and she was right. I have always taken an interest in housing. I was a member of a local authority, and I then stood for Parliament in that Conservative stronghold of Stepney and Poplar against the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) who was a Secretary of State at the time.

When I stood for election there, I could not believe what I heard. Labour councillors were standing outside the polling stations saying, "Vote for me today and I will make sure that I do something about that council flat you have wanted." That was not an isolated incident--it was the naked use of power. Anyone who doubts that does not understand what was going on in Tower Hamlets at that time. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Barnsley, East is commenting, and he is supposed to have a view about local government. He obviously knows none of the history of local government in London, because it was a Labour Secretary of State who, during the time of a Conservative Greater London council, stepped in and abolished the housing committee in Tower Hamlets. Did he do that for fun or because he thought that it was a good idea? He knew that he had to do it because the whole thing was corrupt, and was being used as an instrument of power. [Interruption.] It is no good the hon. Member for Barnsley, East muttering. That is not a fantasy--it is a matter of fact. Everyone knows that that was the case.

It has been my view for a long time that, to a greater or lesser extent, such matters go right to the core of the Labour party's approach to housing. Labour Members want a return to mass council house building because of the political power that they know that that will deliver into their hands. Their view was, never mind about the people or the fact that Labour councils created states and empires which they could not conceivably start to run efficiently, for which they could not manage repairs and

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in which they could not do anything to help people. Matters were beyond their control and all that they cared about was the power that was delivered into their hands.

Mrs. Maria Fyfe (Glasgow, Maryhill): The hon. Gentleman seems to be completely unaware that, for as many years as I have been involved with local government--that goes back some 15 years--the Labour party has been making it quite clear to all its candidates for local office that it is totally inappropriate for them to engage in the individual allocation of housing. Labour has made it utterly clear that if it ever happens in individual cases, that is clearly against Labour's guidance and rules.

Mr. Hughes: As the hon. Lady is talking about a period that goes back just 15 years, she is pleading guilty as charged. This matter has long been in the culture of the Labour party and, as she admits, it is only comparatively recently that the Labour party has stopped-- Mrs. Fyfe rose--

Mr. Hughes: I will give way in a second. The hon. Lady must contain herself. I know that she is embarrassed but she must be patient. It is only comparatively recently that, in the words of the hon. Lady, Labour stopped individual councillors making housing allocations. That has not stopped the power being used in a more general way.

Mrs. Fyfe: I think that the record will show that I said that I personally became aware of it when my experience began some 15 years ago. I do not know when the Labour party made the statement of principle. I am sure that it must go back longer than 15 years. The hon. Gentleman misunderstood what I said, and he is making a silly point if he thinks that there is any value in saying that so many years are involved. The Labour party has consistently told its members who are seeking election to local authorities that they must not engage in this activity. Does the hon. Gentleman realise that that is the case?

Mr. Hughes: I recognise that this is another way in which Labour sought to use its power and got caught. A Conservative Government came along and changed the rules to make the practice more difficult, and Labour realised that it could not go on in that way. I recognise that, and doubtless the Labour party also recognises it.

Mr. Livingstone: In this interesting tour of corruption, may I ask why the hon. Gentleman has not regaled us with his personal experience as a member of the GLC? We had to establish a committee to investigate the fact that Strongbridge housing association had been set up to benefit financially the then Conservative chief whip, Geoffrey Seaton. He was forced to resign from the council when we discovered that £74,000 that was to have been spent on repairs was unaccounted for.

Mr. Hughes: As the hon. Gentleman says, I was a member of the GLC at that time and Strongbridge close is in my constituency. Therefore I know about it. The hon. Gentleman knows that this matter has been through the courts and that the arguments there did not go the way that he and his hon. Friends had wanted.

Mr. Livingstone: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hughes: Of course I shall give way, but first I should like to finish the sentence. The hon. Gentleman also knows that on the GLC I voted in favour of that investigation being set up.

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Mr. Livingstone: The hon. Gentleman says that the arguments did not go the way that we wanted. Does he recall that the Director of Public Prosecutions decided not to bring the case to court on the ground that the members were very old and might not live long? That was five weeks before the 1993 general election.

Mr. Hughes: I also recall that some other members took a great deal of money from the people who made the accusations. These matters can be put both ways. I am not attempting for a moment to justify such happenings. I am saying what everyone knows in his heart--that the Labour party housing empires did not work, except to people's disadvantage. They were instruments of power and were designed to be such.

Mr. Stephen: Does my hon. Friend recall that the abuse of power, particularly by Labour housing authorities, has been going on for at least 50 years? Does he also recall that a leading member of the immediate post- war Labour Government was quite brazen about it when he said, "We will build the Tories out of London"?

Mr. Hughes: That is right. Everyone in London--my hon. Friend was previously involved in London politics--knows that full well. I want to make a couple of other arguments; the first about Monklands. I know that the subject arouses sensitivities on the Opposition Benches, but I want to say that, whatever the rights and wrongs of what happened in Monklands, the extraordinary thing has been what I regard as a campaign of intimidation run by the Labour party against those people seeking to uncover what is going on. I do not count the hon. Member for Monklands, East (Mrs. Liddell) in that, because much of what I am talking about happened before she entered the House. If she had witnessed the way in which the Labour party ganged up on my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mr. Shaw) when, quite rightly and almost singlehandedly, he was exposing what the Labour party was doing in Monklands, and the way in which the Monklands council treated the local newspaper when it was uncovering what was going on there, and indeed some local Conservatives and doubtless others as well, she would have agreed with me that it was shameful. We should acknowledge that we would never have known the truth about Monklands without the work that was done by those people and by my hon. Friend the Member for Dover.

Lady Olga Maitland rose --

Mrs. Liddell rose --

Mr. Hughes: I will, in all fairness, give way to the hon. Member for Monklands, East first.

Mrs. Liddell: I find those charges of intimidation astonishing, and I do not believe that the hon. Gentleman does the hon. Member for Dover (Mr. Shaw) any good by saying that he is a man who can be easily intimidated--a man who was in court, not so long ago, because of an action relating to his attack on a woman photographer. If the hon. Gentleman has evidence of intimidation carried out by Labour party members, he must make that evidence available and he must name names and give dates. He must not become involved in unsubstantiated allegations.

Mr. Hughes: Let me give an example of what I meant. When it was known that my hon. Friend the Member for

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Dover was going to speak in a debate and might mention that subject, the Labour Benches would fill with the Labour party's thugs; they would fill up with the people who would shout him down, scream abuse at him and raise points of order. In at least three debates that I can think of, my hon. Friend was silenced, and the reason for that was that the Labour party was deeply embarrassed.

Mrs. Liddell: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hughes: The hon. Lady was not here at that time and did not witness it, but it was true.

Mrs. Liddell: I am very interested in the fact that the hon. Gentleman is worried about the intimidation of the hon. Member for Dover. He was obviously not in the Chamber on Wednesday of this week when I had to have the protection of Madam Speaker and, indeed, the hon. Member for the Dover came very close to being named because of his behaviour on the Back Benches. We all remember the statement by the former deputy chairman of the Conservative party about the yobboes on the Back Benches. Indeed, the hon. Member for Dover was happy to be included in that number.

Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): Order. Before we continue this debate, may I say that I expect the highest standards of conduct from the House of Commons, and that I shall not look kindly on what I would describe as intemperate language, whether or not it falls within the definition of "unparliamentary"?

Mr. Hughes: My hon. Friend the Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) rightly paid tribute to the hon. Member for Monklands, East. It is encouraging that she has obviously moved on quite a way from her opinion of a year and two days ago, when she regarded the allegations of corruption as tittle-tattle.

Lady Olga Maitland: On the subject of intimidation and cover-ups, is my hon. Friend aware that exactly the same was happening in Islington? The evidence came out in the White report, which devoted a whole chapter to missing files. That happened at a time when children were being sexually abused and the leader of the council was none other than the hon. Member for Barking (Ms Hodge).

Mr. Hughes: My hon. Friend makes her own argument. I did not necessarily intend to draw attention to what happened in Islington or in Hackney, but it is quite serious, and I hope very much that my hon. Friend will draw attention to it in her speech. I wanted to suggest why that happened. I think that it results from the culture of some of those Labour councils, by which I mean that political correctness and unwillingness to investigate things that people could see were going on before their eyes--

Dr. Reid: Why does the hon. Gentleman connect that to Monklands?

Mr. Hughes: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will keep out; I think that we are talking about Islington now; I accept that I was not talking about Monklands. I accept that that would have been a silly point to make.

The financial corruption in Hackney and the dreadful stories about what happened to little children in the care of Islington council came about because of a culture. I recognise that the hon. Member for Barking (Ms Hodge)

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has moved on from dismissing the allegations as nonsense. The culture was such that people felt that they could not investigate those matters, because, in the Labour party, it would have been wrong to investigate them because that would have brought up views on sexism and racism which would have been thought to be wrong. That was what stopped those investigations and that is the point that the Labour party needs to address.

Mr. Illsley: Surely the hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that a certain sort of culture means that Labour councils throughout the rest of the country are hiding allegations of sex abuse or child molestation.

Mr. Hughes: I am merely referring to what has been made clear by the White report and to what happened in Hackney. I do not think that anyone disputes these points. I am amazed that the hon. Gentleman disputes them.

Mr. Illsley: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hughes: It might be better if I finished at least one sentence in response. I do not think that anyone has disputed the fact that those matters should have been investigated. I assume that the hon. Gentleman does not dispute that. He probably does not dispute that those matters would have been investigated if the councils involved had not been concerned that the investigations would mistakenly be thought to be racist or sexist. I imagine that he does not dispute that point because that is what everyone has found.

My point is simple. The Labour party has got deeply into those matters for reasons that I understand, especially in terms of an anti-racist stance. We all abhor racism and some of us have spent a great deal of time fighting such things. It is, however, easy to be misled. What has happened is that mistakes have led to certain things happening or being allowed to carry on. Both sides should accept that point and work out how to tackle the problem.

Mr. Illsley: I did not dispute the hon. Gentleman's point. I asked whether he was suggesting that, because of the culture to which he referred, the vast majority of Labour local authorities were failing to investigate allegations of racism, sexism or child abuse. Is the hon. Gentleman attributing that failure to other authorities?

Mr. Hughes: Like the hon. Gentleman, I have no idea about other authorities. We know, however, of two examples; who is to say that there are not others? It is more likely that such incidents would happen in a Labour or Labour and Liberal Democrat-controlled authority. Perhaps Labour Members should look at that point. Even in my own council of Harrow, there have been some changes to employment practice that could have led us along the road that I have been talking about, although I do not believe that they will.

I am not making allegations that such problems exist in other places. I suggest merely that if they have happened in two places, we should not wait until something dreadful happens or something dreadful is uncovered before we investigate whether a particular culture is causing the problems. Again, I do not think that the hon Member for Barnsley, Central and I disagree on that.

Mr. Illsley: The hon. Gentleman is making allegations.

Mr. Hughes: I am not making an allegation. I am concerned about the fact that the hon. Gentleman is so sensitive on this point. I do not understand why he is so sensitive. Perhaps he will tell us about that later.

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We had an apology about Nottinghamshire county council from the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson), as if the fact that a couple of Conservative councillors were carried along and voted for the staggering increase of 300 per cent., putting the total amount paid out to councillors in allowances at more than £500,000, made it all right. It does not make it all right; it is a disgraceful thing for those councillors to do. It is also clear, that without the campaign that has been run by my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell), who is sitting listening to this debate, the leader of the Labour party would not have acted.

Instead of ordering an expensive investigation and instead of hiring a firm of accountants to tell the council what would be a reasonable level, why does the council not just make a reasonable decision? That is all that it has to do--withdraw what is there and replace it with a reasonable sum. That is not difficult. It needs not to spend extra money, but to act reasonably.

Dr. Reid: Is not the real difference between the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends and the Opposition the fact that the Opposition are prepared to condemn corruption or wrong practices wherever they occur and whatever party carries them out, as has been exemplified by my hon. Friend the Member for Monklands, East (Mrs. Liddell) and by the leader of my party whereas Conservatives talk endlessly in a party political fashion about corruption, but, as exemplified by the hon. Gentleman himself, they manage to forget about corruption by Tory Greater London councillors--and he has managed to make a speech without mentioning the hundreds of millions of pounds worth of corruption in Westminster. The problem will never be solved so long as the Government pursue it in a narrow partisan party political fashion. We stand against corruption wherever it is and whoever carries it out.

Mr. Hughes: That sounds very grand but very thin. The hon. Gentleman is an hon. Friend of people such as the hon. Member for Barking, who originally called the allegations about Islington council a

"sensationalist bit of gutter journalism".

Is that the even-handed Labour party? It does not stack up with what the hon. Member for Motherwell, North said.

When the allegations about Monklands were first put to the late John Smith's office, it described them as:

"pathetic . . . It just shows how desperate the Tories are". We have moved on from that, and we are being even handed. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Barnes said, we condemn all corruption when it is brought to our attention, if it is there. We do not wait until it is proved.

Dr. Reid: Can we nail once and for all the lie that has been perpetrated outside the House and, unfortunately repeated inside the House by hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes)? The Monklands allegations were not dismissed in an early-day motion or elsewhere as merely a smear.

Mr. Hughes: No?

Dr. Reid: I know the early-day motion; I signed the damned thing. In it, 110 Members said that unless the Government were prepared to act and to investigate the

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allegations, they would be regarded as nothing more than a smear. The Government, with all the power of the state, the law, the Administration, the personnel and the money behind them, refused to do that, yet the Labour party, without any of those, did it twice. That is the difference between the hypocrites in the Conservative party who are protected up to Cabinet level--some people who have been up to their necks in fraud--and Opposition Members who have challenged--

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