Cameron: PM 'shameless defender' of old elite
Updated on 08 February 2010
David Cameron launches a highly personal attack on Gordon Brown calling the prime minister "secretive, power hoarding and controlling" and scoffing at his ability to reform the political system.
Mr Cameron promised new laws to stop MPs using parliamentary privilege to avoid prosecution. Downing Street dismissed his attack as "desperate".
Labour has now suspended the three MPs facing fraud charges over their expenses and the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, said their "golden goodbye" payments would be suspended while legal proceedings were going on.
Speaking in east London, Mr Cameron said the prime minister is simply incapable of reforming parliament, citing what he called his "disastrous interventions" on the issue.
The Tory leader said: "He can't reform the institution because he is the institution: he made it.
"The character of his government - secretive, power-hoarding, controlling - is his character."
The Labour party announced that David Chaytor, Elliot Morley and Jim Devine, who have been charged with false accounting, had been suspended from the party. They had already been banned from standing as Labour candidates.
The Tory leader described Mr Brown as a "shameless defender of the old elite" who tolerated "the disgusting sight" of Labour MPs charged with fraud trying to use Parliamentary privilege rules to avoid prosecution.
Underlining his tough talk, Mr Cameron promised to change the law to make sure that did not happen in future, vowing to bring in a new Parliamentary Privileges Act to stop MPs using the 1689 Bill of Rights to protect themselves.
Downing Street called the speech "a sign of desperation" as a poll in the Sunday Telegraph showed a drop in Conservative ratings. The party is still ahead of Labour but it has fallen below 40 per cent for the first time since last June.
The leader of the Commons, Harriet Harman, said Mr Cameron should not be speaking about the cases at all - as his comments could affect the chances of the accused MPs getting a fair trial.
It is a plague on both their houses for the Liberal Democrats, as their leader Nick Clegg accused both main parties of blocking political reform.
He said: "It's like a couple of cowboy builders coming back to your house to tell you how bad their workmanship."
Political editor Gary Gibbon writes: "The Tories think some of their most successful attacks on Gordon Brown have come from moments like this when they feel they've forced him to act. They believe this plays into some the negatives that voters have of the prime minister.
"They must also recognise that few will be focused on the minutiae of this saga and that putting the expenses story in the headlines, layered with personal abuse against the prime minister, risks reviving the public's 'plague on all your houses' view of the parties."
