Prescott to stand down at election and focus on Council of Europe role

John Prescott will tell his Hull East constituency at the weekend that he is stepping down as an MP at the next general election, bringing down the curtain on a colourful Commons career that has spanned more than three decades.

Close allies said his departure was not a signal that Gordon Brown was about to call a snap election in October. His office dismissed reports yesterday as "press prattle" but he has told friends he wants to announce his departure to his constituency first, and members of his local party have been called to a meeting on Saturday.

Mr Prescott is 69, but is in no mood to give up politics - he was recently elected chairman of the UK delegation to the Council of Europe - and there is a likelihood that he will go to the Lords after the election.

He has already embarked on his memoirs, with Hunter Davies as his ghost writer, and spent last week in the Lake District working on the book to be called Prezza: Pulling No Punches.

Yesterday, Mr Prescott pulled out of a speaking engagement in Liverpool, where he was to call for a national day to draw attenmtion to slavery, because his wife felt unwell. Last weekend, he attended the arrival of the Amistad, a replica of a slave ship, to mark the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery by William Wilberforce, a former Hull MP.

Mr Prescott is planning to make the campaign against slave labour one of his key issues in the Council of Europe and has told friends he wants to "put some punch" into Labour's next election campaign.