Britain's Conservatives yesterday accused Labour of a "breathtakingly cynical" attempt to buy off the Liberal Democrats with a new pact on proportional representation in the run-up to the next general election.
The Conservative Party chairman, Mr Michael Ancram, said the Prime Minister, Mr Blair, had "undermined" his own claims to be concentrating on the foot-and-mouth crisis by devoting energy to "another shabby deal" with the Liberal Democrats.
Declaring that Mr Blair had a "strange sense of priorities" during the foot-and-mouth crisis, Mr Ancram said:
"All across the UK, there is disease spiralling out of control and people want to see the government taking action, not devoting time to shady backroom deals with Charles Kennedy [the Liberal Democrat leader], to keep him quiet during the next few months."
PR is a key election issue for the Liberal Democrats. Promising the Liberal Democrats that Labour was not "stringing them along", the Cabinet Office Minister, Lord Falconer, told BBC R4's Today programme that a review was the way forward: "If that review recommends that there should be a change, then there will be a referendum. But before you get to that stage, you have got to review how the existing systems are going."
Welcoming the proposal, the Liberal Democrat MP Mr Menzies Campbell said the "march towards proportional representation" continued and the proposal marked a success for the party. "So far as the Liberal Democrats are concerned there is all to play for."