John Reid found to be UK's most 'slippery' politician

The Home Secretary, John Reid, is named today as "Westminster's worst waffler", according to a survey of politicians and their dissembling answers.

His Tory shadow, David Davis, is Britain's most "straight talking" MP, with 57 per cent of direct answers in the study. The research showed Tony Blair was just pipped to the title of the most slippery politician.

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Many MPs are given media training to avoid a simple "yes" or "no" answer, but the careful answers have tended to leave them looking disingenuous.

A team led by Professor Geoff Beattie, the head of school and dean of psychological sciences at the University of Manchester, made a study of the replies given by politicians over three weeks. They marked MPs according to how they answered the questions, and discovered that on average Mr Reid gives a full answer in only a third of cases (36 per cent), giving an intermediate response to one in five questions (20 per cent), and no response to nearly half (44 per cent).

The report reveals that Mr Blair splits his responses between a direct answer (40 per cent) and a non- response (42 per cent). John Prescott made the top three with 39 per cent non-replies, 39 per cent direct responses and 22 per cent of intermediate answers.

The three least evasive politicians were David Davis, the shadow Home Secretary, who gave a direct reply 57 per cent of the time; Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat MP, who responded directly to 52 per cent of questions; and Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader, who replied directly to 54 per cent of questions.

William Hague and the Tory leader David Cameron gave a direct response to 47 per cent of questions.

Gordon Brown offered the most direct answers among senior Labour MPs, with 47 per cent.