Guido has a sore head from Political Scrapbook’s drinks last night. As revenge he has some bad news for them. They thought they were on to a winner earlier this week with a story claiming that John Prescott was the victim of a vicious Tory smear campaign. It was claimed that a series of questions over Prezza’s use of public credit cards were placed in MPs’ names without their knowledge. However, the Table Office have now conceded that the entire mess was down to a simple admin error by them, as the Tories insisted all along:

Dear Mr Elphicke,

I can confirm that the questions were wrongly recorded as being in the name of Sir Alan Beith due to an administrative error in this office. We took steps to correct this shortly after they were tabled, when we realised the error had been made. Unfortunately, when the questions were answered, some were returned under the original wrong name of Sir Alan Beith, which overwrote our correction. We have since corrected this again and I have just checked the Parliamentary records and confirmed that they all now appear correctly in your name.

I am very sorry for this error and the inconvenience it has caused you – please do get in touch if there is anything further we can do to assist.

Best wishes,

Sue Griffiths

Clerk, Table Office

House of Commons

Oh well…