Now Meacher is told to apologise

Michael Meacher MP

THE Liberal Democrats have accused another Oldham MP of spreading smears.

Oldham East and Saddleworth MP Phil Woolas was stripped of his seat and barred from standing in an election for three years after being found guilty of making untrue statements about his opponent Elwyn Watkins.

Now the Lib-Dems claim that Oldham West and Royton MP Michael Meacher has repeated one of the smears and are demanding an apology and retraction.

But the Labour MP is adamant he has done nothing wrong.

In a blog written the day after the Woolas judgement, Mr Meacher wrote: “In the course of the one-week election court proceedings it appears that Watkins himself admitted that he had spent some £200,000 on the election, which is seven times above the maximum permitted limit.”

Lib-Dems say Mr Watkins did not say this, and the statement is factually untrue and found to be untrue by the judges.

Oldham East and Saddleworth Liberal Democrats chairman Keith Begley said: “It’s just shocking. Less than 24-hours after one Labour MP was stripped of his seat in Parliament for saying things that weren’t true about Elwyn, another one is doing more of the same.

“It shows that this personal, American-style character assassination politics runs much deeper through Labour than just Phil Woolas.

“Elwyn’s a straight-talking, decent guy. He doesn’t deserve this constant barrage of lies from Labour. You’d think they’d have learned their lesson. But clearly they haven’t. Folk in Oldham East and Saddleworth, and across the country, deserve better than this.”

But Mr Meacher claimed that when Labour provided evidence to the election court that Mr Watkins had spent more than £200,000 over the election period it had not been disputed by the Lib-Dems. He said it was expenditure from the point of the election being called and not just the final run in.

He said: “The fact that it wasn’t denied seems to be an admission.

“I would have thought that it’s true. How can I apologise when there’s no evidence it’s not true?

“It’s such a striking fact and is a very large sum of money. I think it’s justified to mention a figure used in the court procedures and never denied.”

In their summary, the judges said the statement that Mr Watkins had breached the law by spending a sum of money in excess of what had been declared was untrue — but cleared Mr Woolas of illegal practice on this point as he could have had reasonable grounds for believing it to be true.

In their judgement they said Labour’s claim that Mr Watkins spent more than £200,000 on election leaflets had not been challenged.

But Mr Watkins’s election expenses were declared to the Electoral Commission as £36,000 and this was not challenged by Mr Woolas either, so he therefore accepted this.

They added that they were satisfied the statements that Mr Watkins had breached the law by not declaring all his expenses were untrue.