Local Elections: Parties trade accusations of deals War of words on third-party deals

LABOUR and the Tories locked horns yesterday over local government links with the Liberal Democrats, as each claimed the other had indulged in formal and informal pacts with the third party.

Michael Portillo, Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the London local elections campaign co-ordinator, kicked off the dispute with a document claiming that formal Labour- Liberal Democrat power-sharing alliances on at least eight councils had been sanctioned by both parties' leaderships. In London, 'the Liberal Democrats and Labour are two sides of the same coin', he added.

John Smith, the Labour leader, gave the opposite message at a London local election rally: 'We are seeing evidence of a number of electoral pacts between the Tories and Liberals in London, with Tories standing down to give Liberals a free run . . . People in London should know that if they vote Liberal they may well be supporting John Major by the back door.'

The Conservative Research Department document, The Liberal Democrats in Local Government: Socialists in Soft-Focus, lists what it says are officially sanctioned power-sharing arrangements in Berkshire, East Sussex, Essex, Hampshire, Hereford & Worcester, Lincolnshire, Shropshire and Suffolk. A Liberal Democrats spokeswoman said: 'We have a programme that we want to pursue. We will work with whichever party wants to pursue part of that programme.'

But she said the Liberal Democrats could list a number of councils on which Labour and the Conservatives were 'in cahoots' to deny them the right to rule locally. Examples included St Albans in Hertfordshire, where 23 Tories had installed a Labour group of nine in committee chairs to stop 24 Liberal Democrats from exerting influence.

According to Labour sources, the Conservatives have contacted all known supporters in one ward, Coleraine, and told them to vote Liberal Democrat, while in Waltham Forest's Leyton ward the three Conservative candidates had stood down to give the Liberal Democrats a free run against Labour.

The Tories were meanwhile fielding only 12 candidates for 51 seats in Barking and Dagenham and contesting only two- thirds of the seats in Tower Hamlets.