War hero condemns newspaper that used him in Lottery fund campaign

Simon Weston, the Falklands War veteran, condemned the Daily Mail's campaign against the National Lottery Community Fund yesterday and accused the newspaper of mis-representing his remarks about the organisation at the Tory party conference last week.

Mr Weston, who suffered horrific burns in the Falklands conflict, said he believed the lottery fund did a "fantastic job" and that he would not dream of criticising its grant to a group that helped asylum-seekers.

He said its chairman, Lady Brittan, who has received bomb threats and dozens of letters of personal abuse from Mail readers, had "a good heart and a good soul".

Mr Weston added that he did not "want people to stop giving to the lottery" and said the paper had "misrepresented the whole thing".

The Daily Mail ran a front-page story last week headlined "War hero Weston blasts lottery", following a speech by Mr Weston focusing on new rifles criticised by British soldiers. This week it claimed he had "expressed fury when it emerged that veterans received just £1m from the fund while asylum-seekers picked up £58m.''

But yesterday Mr Weston, who runs a successful charity helping inner-city children, said he had not even mentioned asylum-seekers in his conference speech.

"I haven't blasted the lottery. I was speaking on veterans' affairs. I am not attacking asylum-seekers and not blasting the lottery," he said. "I have never mentioned asylum-seekers. There was a clear discrepancy in what I said and what appeared in the Daily Mail."

Mr Weston telephoned Lady Brittan yesterday to make it clear that his views had been misrepresented, and dissociating himself from the ensuing hate-mail campaign.

"I despise the hate-mail campaign and that people feel they have the right to have a hate-mail campaign against anybody. It's not right. This is absolutely abhorrent. I can't condone it at all," he said. "We can loathe and detest somebody but don't do it by daubing walls or sending abusive letters. What I would say is 'raise the issue if you want, but not at the expense of the most vulnerable people in society and people like Lady Brittan, who clearly have a good heart and a good soul."

Lady Brittan said she had had a "very constructive conversation" with Mr Weston who said he "felt that he had been misreported over asylum-seekers in particular".

Tessa Jowell, the Secretary of State for Culture, said: "People who send racist hate mail shouldn't kid themselves they are doing it because they care about the lottery."