Cherie Booth's father in pensions protest

Cherie Booth's father has handed back his 75 pence weekly pension increase to her husband Tony Blair and told him to keep it.

Cherie Booth's father has handed back his 75 pence weekly pension increase to her husband Tony Blair and told him to keep it.

The 68-year-old actor Tony Booth, who was best known as the radical "Scouse Git" from the television comedy Till Death Us Do Part until his daughter married an ambitious barrister, has joined a national campaign for better pensions.

The Prime Minister pointed out last night that the pension incident was not the first example of his father-in-law taking offence at his policies. "I don't think it would be the very first time I had a little bit of grief from Tony along the way," Mr Blair said in an interview with Radio Scotland.

"If we were to relink pensions to earnings, broken by the last government, the cost for future generations would be enormous."

Mr Booth looks likely to become a persistent thorn in the Prime Minister's side over the issue and plans to address a pensioners' rally at Westminster in November alongside the veteran campaigner and former minister Baroness Castle of Blackburn.

A spokesman for the National Pensioners' Convention said Mr Booth was an old friend of its president, Jack Jones, who had also returned the "derisory" increase.