Minister slammed over holiday slur

A SENIOR Tory Minister was under mounting pressure to travel to Sheffield and apologise to residents last night after saying the Government does not want more people from the city to able to afford cheap holidays.

Council leader Paul Scriven said he was shocked and demanded an apology from Oliver Letwin as MPs in the city branded the remarks “absolutely disgraceful” and “completely inappropriate and unfair”.

Mr Letwin, David Cameron’s policy supremo at the Cabinet Office, reportedly made his comments in a private meeting with London Mayor Boris Johnson who said he was “absolutely scandalised” by the remarks. It is thought the pair were discussing Mr Johnson’s push for the Government to build new airports at the time.

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In a furious letter to the Minister, Mr Scriven said: “Your comments are both deeply offensive and out of touch with ordinary hard-working families in Sheffield and the rest of the UK. If that is really your view then I would invite you to visit our city so that you can explain why you are against more Sheffield families being able to afford to have a holiday.”

The millionaire Minister went to ground yesterday as the row escalated. He blundered during the 2001 election campaign when he claimed the Tories wanted to cut £20bn from public spending, and attracted claims of elitism in 2003 when he said he would rather “go out on the streets and beg” than send his children to an inner-city London comprehensive.

Mr Johnson sparked the controversy by revealing: “I was absolutely scandalised the other day to hear a Government Minister tell me he did not want to see more families in Sheffield able to afford cheap holidays.”

He did not name Mr Letwin but he was “outed” as the culprit in reports at the weekend. The comments are particularly embarrassing for the Government given the luxury foreign holidays enjoyed by Ministers, such as Chancellor George Osborne’s skiing break in Switzerland over the new year.

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Downing Street distanced itself from the comments as a spokesman said the Prime Minister supports the idea of people going on holiday where they choose.

Paul Blomfield, Labour MP for Sheffield Central, will try to raise the issue with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, MP for Sheffield Hallam, in the Commons today.

“I’m demanding that David Cameron gets Oliver Letwin to apologise to the people of Sheffield who are as entitled to their foreign holidays as Oliver Letwin and his millionaire colleagues in the Cabinet,” he said.

“They enjoy their holidays abroad but don’t think ordinary people deserve them. It’s absolutely double standards and it reflects on the thinking that perhaps explains some of the policies they are putting in pace which are going to hit the North.”

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Penistone and Stocksbridge MP Angela Smith said: “Well now the cat’s out of the bag, we now know what this Tory-led Government really thinks about the good people of Sheffield.

“These remarks by a senior government figure are completely inappropriate and unfair.

“Just why does this government think it is wrong that people from Sheffield take a well-earned holiday, or do they think only multi- millionaires such as Mr Letwin should take holidays?

“It’s now important that the Government apologises to the people of Sheffield for these uncalled for remarks and my fellow Sheffield MP Nick Clegg makes sure that happens and he himself personally disassociates himself from these remarks.”

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Mr Johnson said the comments were “absolutely disgraceful, a bourgeois repression of people’s ability to take a holiday”.

His involvement in the story is ironic given he was ordered by then-Tory leader Michael Howard to go to Liverpool in 2004 and apologise after claiming Liverpudlians were “hooked on grief”.

A spokeswoman for Mr Letwin said: “We are not commenting.”