Senior Labour MP tells party's anti-Murdoch campaigner: 'shut up about Sheridan'

Sunday 3 June 2012

ONE of Scotland's most senior Labour MPs has slapped down a party colleague for claiming disgraced former Scottish Socialist leader Tommy Sheridan was wrongly convicted of perjury.

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exclusive By TOM GORDON AND PAUL HUTCHEON

Ian Davidson, chair of the Scottish Affairs Committee at Westminster, suggested his fellow Labour MP Tom Watson should give way to those with "a greater understanding of politics in Scotland" before defending Sheridan in light of the phone-hacking scandal at the News Of The World.

The rebuke came after Watson, the leading House of Commons inquisitor on malpractice at News International (NI) under Rupert Murdoch, claimed Sheridan's perjury conviction was "unsound".Andy Coulson, David Cameron's former communications director and former News Of The World editor, was charged on Wednesday with perjury by Strathclyde Police in relation to Sheridan's own trial for perjury in 2010.Calling for an urgent review of Sheridan's conviction, Watson said: "The detention of Andy Coulson further highlights why Mr Sheridan's conviction was unsound. It is now abundantly clear that members of the jury were not in full possession of the facts. If they knew what the police now know, it seems impossible not to conclude that Mr Sheridan would be a free man."But Watson's comments have irritated senior Scottish Labour politicians, who believe that even if Sheridan was a phone-hacking victim, he was still rightly convicted of perjury. Asked about the possibility of Sheridan being a victim of injustice, Davidson, the MP for Glasgow South West, which includes Sheridan's former political base of Pollok, joked: "Let me look out the window and see if there are pigs flying past."He added: "I entirely understand why Tom Watson is interested in that element of Tommy Sheridan's case, which covers the possibility of phone hacking. He ought, however, to be aware that there are wider dimensions to these matters which are perhaps dealt with by people with a greater understanding of politics in Scotland."Sheridan was convicted after a jury found he lied during the defamation action he brought against the News Of The World in 2006, after it claimed the then Glasgow MSP was an adulterer who had visited a swingers' club. He won £200,000 in damages, but a video tape surfaced of him confessing to adultery, and police launched an inquiry into whether he had lied in court.He was sentenced in January 2011 to three years in prison but released after one year.Watson said: "I have the highest regard for my colleague Ian Davidson, and I'm sure he knows me well enough to know that I wouldn't take up this case if I didn't have strong concerns that the jury was not in full possession of the facts."

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Senior Labour MP tells party's anti-Murdoch campaigner: 'shut up about Sheridan'

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