Cunningham rebuffs critics of office move

04 March 1998

Cunningham rebuffs critics of office move

JACK Cunningham, agriculture minister, defending his £2m office move said he would make a profit for the taxpayer from the sale of surplus government buildings.

He broke off from his speech in a Commons debate on the countryside to issue an angry rebuff of claims he had spent £10,000 on a desk, equivalent of the annual income of a hill farmer in his Copeland constituency, according to one Tory MP.

He said he was reorganising the ministry from “the shambles” it was left in by the Tories”.

• The Daily Telegraph 04/03/98 page 8