Tories: Still trying to shake off Flight affair

Michael Howard has defended the choice of a radical Tory thinker as successor for deposed MP Howard Flight in the Arundel and South Downs constituency.

Flight was sacked by the party leadership after he claimed the Tories were planning bigger cuts in public spending than suggested.

But there is fresh controversy after it emerged that think tank chief Nick Herbert, who was selected on Wednesday night, has voiced similar views in the past.

Speaking in the wake of his selection, Labour elections chief Alan Milburn said Herbert had previously raised the issue of spending cuts.

"In November 2002, Nick Herbert wrote in the Spectator: 'The whisper is that there is a top secret, extremely clever strategy afoot: go along with spending rises now, but return to a tax cutting agenda when - if - the party is re-elected'," Milburn said.

But Herbert denied he was supportive of further cuts in spending should the Conservatives win the election.

"In that Spectator article I was warning the party against a strategy which quite rightly was never adopted," he said.

"Because Michael Howard is a very straight politician, he has always argued that you can't offer tax cuts without identifying where the money will come from."

And at a press conference in London, Howard defended the choice of Herbert.

"What Nick Herbert said in an article two years ago was a warning to the party, based on a rumour, a whisper as he described it, a warning for the party not to do this sort of thing," he said.

"He was quite right. He said it would be quite wrong if the Conservative Party said one thing and did another.

"We were never intending to do that, we have never done that, and what Nick Herbert has said is exactly what we are doing.

"We are saying what we do, what we mean is what we say, and what we say is what you get.

"That is what Nick Herbert has said we should do, and that is what we are doing."

'Misleading voters'

Howard also insisted his party had no hidden agenda on spending, and would stick to its stated plans if elected on May 5.

"With the Conservatives what you see is what you get," he said.

"What we promise is what we deliver. We are not saying one thing to win an election with the intention of doing another thing afterwards."

But Milburn maintained the Tories were still attempting to mislead voters about their spending intentions.

"Howard Flight was not a one off. Cutting public services is the ideological obsession of today's Conservative Party," he said.

Flight gave up the fight to save his career after conceding that he could damage Howard's election prospects by a long drawn out battle over his candidacy.