Labour's shameful cancer postcard campaign

Labour leaflets are waging class war against Cameron because of his university days.

They are dishonestly scaring pensioners with lies about Tory intentions on the Winter Fuel Allowance.

They have lied about Tory intentions on the NHS in direct mail.

Today, from The Sunday Times, they've reached a new low. Targeting people at high risk of cancer, a Labour postcard campaign targeted on 250,000 homes asks: “Are the Tories a change you can afford?”

"Cards addressed to sufferers by name warn that a Labour guarantee to see a cancer specialist within two weeks would be scrapped by the Tories. Labour claims the Conservatives would also do away with the right to be treated within 18 weeks."

Andrew Lansley has this morning issued this challenge to Health Secretary Andy Burnham:

“It is shameful that the Labour Party, knowing that we are the only party that is going to increase investment in the NHS, have decided to deliberately scare patients and misrepresent what we have said.  I’m actually rather shocked that they are trying to target breast cancer patients and alarm them  by making up stories about what the Conservative  Party would do.  I think Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, should write to every woman Labour sent these cards to and apologise and withdraw these claims.” 

I can't say it better than Dizzy Thinks so won't.

Tim Montgomerie

Monday 10am update:

Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley has just launched a new website - www.StopTheScaremongering.com - in order to encourage members of the public to join Tory calls for an apology from Labour over its scare tactics on cancer treatment. He says:

“Cancer sufferers across the country have condemned Labour’s scaremongering breast cancer leaflets, but still Gordon Brown and Andy Burnham refuse to apologise. This new website gives everyone who was upset by these leaflets the opportunity to write to Labour, demand an apology and call on them to stop sending them out. Labour’s postcards were beyond the pale. We want them to assure people that they will not try repeat these dirty campaign tricks again in this General Election."

11.15am update:

In a related development, the Times' Sam Coates has posted a shocking story online about how Labour have obtained GPs' confidential email addresses and are contacting them to try and get their backing at the election. Read it here.

Jonathan Isaby

Labour MP has no positive message and uses leaflet for class war attack on Cameron and Ashcroft

I think the double-sided leaflet from Gordon Prentice speaks for itself. Click on the image to enlarge and give here to the Tory PPC Andrew Stephenson's campaign.

Labour use dishonest leaflets to scare pensioners about Tory plans

Yesterday an angry Cameron accused Labour of lying about Tory plans on the Winter Fuel Allowance and other benefits for pensioners. Pensioners are a crucial electoral constituency. There are twice as many grey voters as young voters and they're twice as likely to vote - making them four times more important to the result of the General Election.

The Daily Mail has today got hold of examples of the scare campaigns being run by Labour MPs.

Dr Phyllis Starkey writes: "The winter fuel allowance, free bus fares, free eye tests, pension credit. All introduced by the Labour government. All at risk if a Tory government gets back in."

John Trickett is unequivocal: "If you are a pensioner, you could lose your winter fuel allowance, free travel, free eye tests, swimming, TV licence and passport (free if you were born before September 2, 1929) and your pension credit."

At his press conference Cameron said:

“If the Prime Minister has a moral compass, could he please dig it out from under the sofa, have a look at it and stop his candidates from lying about Conservative policies?"

Mr Cameron - against the advice of Policy Exchange - is committed to keeping the WFV, free bus travel and a free TV licence.

Tim Montgomerie

> Labour talk about a cross-party consensus on elderly care in London... but in Bolton (and in other marginal seats) they play dirty with the issue

"Not true," Mr Brown, Defence chiefs accuse the PM of starving the armed forces of funds

2.45pm: This graph (hat tip to Burning our Money) gets closest to the truth about Labour's record on defence spending (click on the image to enlarge it):

For the reasons pointed out by BoM, because defence costs have risen faster than inflation the second graph is most relevant. At a time of two wars Labour has cut the buying power of our armed forces.

***

Yesterday Gordon Brown told the Iraq inquiry that he gave the military all they needed. Liam Fox hit back, accusing the Prime Minister of being "evasive" and pointing to contradictory statements issued by others.

Today, Mr Brown gets both barrels from retired military chiefs in The Times and Telegraph.

“He’s dissembling, he’s being disingenuous. It’s just not the case that the Ministry of Defence was given everything it needed. There may have been a 1.5 per cent increase in the defence budget but the MoD was starved of funds.” - Admiral Lord Boyce, the Chief of the Defence Staff up to the start of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, quoted in The Times

"To say Gordon Brown has given the military all they asked for is simply not true. He cannot get away with saying I gave them everything they asked for, that is simply disingenuous." - Lord Guthrie in The Telegraph

“The real truth is the Armed Forces are underfunded.” - Major General Patrick Cordingley, quoted in The Telegraph

Speaking on Radio 4 at 8.15am this morning, General Sir Richard Dannatt backed his former colleagues in the armed forces. The whole of the armed forces had been robbed to provide the basics for combat operations, he told listeners.

In its leader column The Telegraph makes the obvious conclusion:

"What they do know is that there are soldiers who would not have been killed had they been better equipped and whether that was the Treasury’s fault or the MoD’s is neither here nor there. The Government must be held to account; and Mr Brown has been at its heart for 13 years."

Tim Montgomerie

Labour officials smear Samantha Cameron as "lazy"

It appears that the Chancellor isn't the only target of Downing Street's "forces of hell".

The Telegraph's Tim Walker reports this morning that "Samantha Cameron is to be the new target of a Labour smear campaign."

He writes:

"The plan is to compare Mrs Cameron, 38, unflatteringly with Sarah Brown, 46. “Much will be made of Sarah’s charity work and journalists will be encouraged to make comparisons with the amount of work that Mrs Cameron does for charity,” says my mole."

Ugly stuff that Gordon Brown must stamp out.

Gordon Brown "opens" a school... ten months after it opened (again)

The Press Association reports that part of the Cabinet's not at all politically motivated trip today to Durham (Labour majority: 3,274) was for Gordon Brown to officially open the Durham Johnston School where the Cabinet held a meeting (at a cost of about £200,000, lest we forget)  .

Intriguing to discover, then, according to the school's website, that the pupils moved into the school in April 2009 - ten whole months ago.

And some of them had to abandon their half term break today to return to school for the pantomime.

But then Brown has form in this area. Last January I blogged about him opening a school a full 16 months after it actually opened. That school, by the way, is in Swindon North (Labour majority: 2,675).

Jonathan Isaby

Cabinet accused of using publicly-funded ministerial visits for Labour campaign events

On the day when the Cabinet is heading to Durham for the latest regional Cabinet meeting, The Times splashes with allegations that ministers are using the taxpayer-funded events to go about Labour Party business. The paper reports:

As Gordon Brown takes his Government on the road to the North East, it was revealed that Harriet Harman, the party’s deputy leader, used a publicly funded trip to Exeter to hold an election meeting with activists. In a leaked letter from Ms Harman seen by The Times, she made plans to meet candidates, officials and trade unionists from across the South West region to discuss campaign strategy.

The letter, sent 12 days before the February 5 visit, said: “This will be a chance for me to hear directly from you as party members in a private meeting to talk about the issues and campaigning activity in the South West. It will be particularly helpful for me to hear from you in the run-up to the general election about the activities taking place in the area.” Details of the meeting were not released to the press at the time. Labour is vigorously defending the seat, held by Ben Bradshaw, the Culture Secretary, with a 8,559 majority over the Conservatives. Ed Balls used the same occasion to visit Plymouth, where Labour holds two seats.

Many have previously suggested - and the Times leader today agrees - that the regional Cabinet meetings are an expensive gimmick, costing at least £200,000 per meeting to host and police, and all close to or in marginal constituencies.

Tory backbencher Douglas Carswell has today written to Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell asking him to look at stopping any further regional Cabinet meetings and to investigate whether whether ministerial rules (stating that taxpayers' money cannot be used for political events or electioneering) have been breached.

Mr Carswell said:

“Gordon Brown has been caught red-handed using government money to fund political activity. It is clear that these meetings are simply designed to ship the Cabinet into marginal seats to secure good PR for Labour’s election campaign at taxpayers’ expense.”

Jonathan Isaby

Who believes Labour's David Wright?

Earlier today this was tweeted from Mr Wright's Twitter account (and captured by ToryRadio)?

He now says (after media interest) that his Twitter account was hacked.

Do you believe him?

Because - as Andrew Paradigm has tweeted, Mr Wright has accused the Tories of being "scum" before...

9.45pm: And another example (discovered by Dave Luckett):

10pm: And another one...

Labour talk about a cross-party consensus on elderly care in London... but in Bolton (and in other marginal seats) they play dirty with the issue

Pressed earlier by Andrew Lansley (watch here), the Health Secretary Andy Burnham again refused to rule out a £20,000 'death tax' to pay for the care of the elderly. Given that Labour has increased tax more than 100 times since 1997 it is not unreasonable for voters to conclude that Brown would very likely introduce this new tax if re-elected in coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

Unable to deny plans for a death levy the party of Damian McBride is attempting to claim the moral high ground and accuse the Conservative Party of negative campaigning. The hypocrisy! CCHQ has sent me the letter below which is going out from a Labour campaign office to marginal voters. It proves that Labour is scaremongering over the care of the elderly and the NHS more generally.

Click on the graphic to enlarge.

Tim Montgomerie

Labour special advisers exposed for using the civil service to create anti-Tory attacks

Francis Maude has today revealed how special advisers to government ministers have been abusing their position by commissioning civil servants to produce work explicitly for the purpose of  attacking the Conservative Party.

Click here to download some of the evidence he has uncovered through the use of Freedom of Information requests.

Mr Maude has written to the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, outlining what he has uncovered and demanding "swift action" with a view to initiating disciplinary proceedings against those responsible. Here is what he says in the letter:

"The Special Adviser’s Code of Conduct clearly states that Special Advisers “must not: ... ask civil servants to do anything which is inconsistent with their obligations under the Civil Service Code” and that they “should avoid anything which might reasonably lead to the criticism that people paid from public funds are being used for party political purpose”.

"Despite this guidance, it is apparent that Labour has once again compromised the impartiality of the Civil Service and used the taxpayer funded service for political attacks.

"On 4th January 2010, the Labour Party kicked off their general election campaign with a 148 page report on Conservative spending plans. It stated: “the Labour Party is today publishing a factual account of the cost of a Conservative government based on the Conservative Party’s own figures and analysis from publicly available figures, such as costings from HM Treasury” (Labour Party, Conservative Tax and Spending Promises). A new Freedom of Information Act request (HM Treasury, Ref: 10/03) has revealed the background to the production of these opposition costings; despite requiring independent civil servants to undertake the work, they were commissioned by Special Advisers to attack the Conservative Party. Although most of the names of the Special Advisers were removed from the Freedom of Information Act request, Treasury Special Adviser, Sam White, is named.

"Opposition costings are not new. However, crucially, the Freedom of Information Act documents show that the requests were not made to inform Ministers about the merits or demerits of a particular policy proposal, nor to help Ministers respond to an Opposition Day Debate in Parliament (where the use of the Civil Service could be justified). Instead, they were used to help the Labour with rebuttal attacks on the Conservative Party in the media. For example, the costings of the Conservative Party’s council tax freeze policy was commissioned on 20th November 2009. This is despite the policy being announced in September 2008, and there being several Parliamentary debates on council tax since. Those costings were subsequently deployed for the first time in the Labour Party dossier of 4th January 2010.

"It is absolutely essential that the integrity and impartiality of the Civil Service are not compromised and taxpayers’ money is not used for party political purposes. Public confidence in Special Advisers was severely shaken by the Damian McBride incident and it is imperative that Special Advisers adhere to the Code of Conduct clearly set out for them. I would urge you to take swift action to address this issue and ensure that these breaches of the Code of Conduct are addressed, with a view to potential disciplinary proceedings being initiated against these Special Advisers who have broken the Code."

Is it too much to hope that action will be taken?

Jonathan Isaby