THE GENERAL election erupted yesterday in a bitter row over alleged Tory "sleaze". The Prime Minister's flat refusal to allow parliament to sit next week to consider the full report on the "cash for questions" affair led to some of the most hostile and personal exchanges ever witnessed between Mr Major and the Labour Party leader, Mr Tony Blair, in the House of Commons.
Mr Blair told Mr Major his handling of the affair left "a stain on the character of your government". A furious Mr Major told him: "The stain, if stain there will be, is on a Labour front bench that have smeared, smeared and smeared again. You have traded in double standards from the moment you took up office.
The gathering political storm completely overshadowed Wednesday's fall in the unemployment figures, and eclipsed figures released yesterday showing a further dip in inflation.
For good measure the Commons Defence Committee criticised the defence ministers Mr Nicholas Soames and Earl Howe for failing to take a more "pro active and inquisitive" role in establishing the truth about the use of toxic pesticides during the Gulf War.
Ten Tory MPs were left facing the election under a cloud of suspicion as the Commons all party Standards and Privileges Committee failed to clear them. The interim report absolved 15 named MPs of improperly accepting money through their constituency parties from the disgraced lobbyist, Mr Ian Greer.
But it did not address the charges against those at the heart of the controversy, Mr Neil Hamilton and Mr Tim Smith who resigned from the government when they were originally made. The opposition parties turned their full fury on Mr Major after Sir Gordon Downey, the Commissioner for Standards, confirmed that his full findings would be ready next week.
Mr Blair and Mr Paddy Ashdown, the Liberal Democrat leader, challenged Mr Major to keep the Commons sitting through next week to consider the report, and accused him of breaking his word. As Labour MPs cried "sleaze, sleaze", Mr Blair, reminded Mr Major that he had given "an unequivocal promise last October to do all that you could to have the Committee on Privileges report published."
The Labour leader then asked Mr Major: "Will you confirm that you could, if you wished, without any impact on the date for the general election, extend the life of this parliament by the few days necessary to allow Sir Gordon to publish his report?"
But Mr Major said: "There has already been a Privy Council determining prorogation. I have no intention of changing that." And he claimed Labour had expressed no concern on the issue until the unemployment figures had been leaked.
Mr Blair charged: "Any members of the public watching this interchange will conclude that you simply don't want to publish because you fear its publication."
To roars of approval from Tory MPs, Mr Major launched a venomous attack on Mr Blair as a man who "sells policy to the trade unions for cash, refuses to comply with the code of practice on party funding, who calls for party openness but won't publish the secret funds of your own office, who attacks share options but takes money from millionaires for your own party ... who flew Concorde and failed to declare it, who has a deputy leader who spends a weekend at a five star hotel and doesn't declare it, and who flies to the other side of the world to do newspaper deals and never admits to them."
Mr Ashdown asked Mr Major: "Are you now to be the only person who will use a technicality to stand in the way of truth? And if you do, then you should not be surprised that those in the country will conclude that you enter the election as you conducted your administration - on a broken promise, on a slippery evasion and with your party mired in accusations of sleaze."
Mr Major retorted: "You end as pious and pompous as you have been throughout this parliament."
PA adds: Labour's campaign received a boost yesterday with a new poll giving it a 27 point lead over the Tories. However, more than half of those surveyed believed that all was not yet lost for "John Major.
The poll puts Labour on 56%, up four from last week's Harris poll, with the Tories up two, on 29%, and the Liberal Democrats down four, on 10%.