Party Lines: December 3rd

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

There weren’t many Labour people speaking in the media today, with most of the news time eaten up by the failure of Phil Woolas’s appeal against his suspension as an MP, and David Chaytor’s guilty plea over his expenses claims. Elsewhere in the news, Bob Ainsworth defended British soldiers, Frank Field suggested that Harriet Harman was wrong over Phil Woolas, and David Blunkett welcomed Frank Field’s report for the coalition government into poverty.

Former defence secretary Bob Ainsworth disagreed with leaked US embassy cables that suggested British soldiers were not “up to the job” in Afghanistan in an interview with BBC News this morning:

“This is gossip spilling out on an ongoing situation. It would be very surprising if people were not commenting on these different conversations that were going on but they shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

“I think that they were up to the job. The fact that Helmand province was enormously difficult to do with 8,000 British troops is well known, we have known that for years. We now have 13,000 foreign troops in Helmand… If we didn’t know that 8,000 troops were struggling with the situation in Helmand, why on earth have we got 13,000 there.”

On the Daily Politics, Frank Field suggested that Harriet Harman was wrong in her treatment of Phil Woolas before his appeal:

“I thought that given that he said he was going to appeal, and given that we were in the courts, I thought that we should wait for the courts to decide this. If we don’t go to the courts who else do we go to? We go to the house of commons.”

David Blunkett welcomed Frank Field’s report for the coalition government into parenting:

“I very much welcome the emphasis on parenting and the key role of the family. That is why more resources should be devoted to family and parenting, rather than cuts arising from the abolition of the Area Based Grant which is destroying schemes funded through local government, and the opportunity to join up investment going into families along the lines suggested.”