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U.K. Minister in trouble

LONDON: A senior Cabinet Minister was on Friday counting the cost of straying beyond his brief after human rights activist Shami Chakrabarti threatened to sue him for making allegedly inappropriate suggestions about her relationship with the former shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, who resigned last week over the government’s approach to civil liberties.

Ms. Chakrabarti, who heads the human rights group Liberty, accused Andy Burnham, Secretary of State for Culture and a potential aspirant for prime ministership, of “attempted character assassination.” She threatened to take him to court if he did not offer a “written” apology.

This followed Mr. Burnham’s remarks in an interview to Progress magazine that Mr. Davis had “late-night, hand-wringing, heart-melting phone calls with Shami Chakrabarti.” Questioning Mr. Davis’s “liberal” credentials, the Minister suggested he was swayed by Ms. Chakrabarti, who had heavily lobbied MPs ahead of the vote in the Commons last week over a controversial Bill to increase the period for which terror suspects can be detained without charge. After the Bill was passed, Mr. David announced he was resigning his seat and would contest again on a civil liberties’ platform.

Mr. Burnham told the magazine: “To people who get seduced by Tory talk of how liberal they are, I find something very curious in the man who was, and still is I believe, an exponent of capital punishment having late-night, hand-wringing, heart-melting phone calls with Shami Chakrabarti.”

In a letter to Mr. Burnham, Ms. Chakrabarti said Mr. Burnham had sought to “smear” her dealings with Mr. Davis and “debase” the “vital debate about fundamental rights and freedoms in this country.”

“I look forward to your written apology…If on the other hand you choose to continue down the path of innuendo and attempted character assassination, you will find that the privileged legal protection of the Parliament chamber does not extend to slurs made in the wider public domain,” she wrote.

A spokesman for Mr. Burnham said his comments related to politics. “An interpretation has been placed on Andy’s remarks that he did not intend…. He regrets if any personal offence has been caused,” he said.

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