Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it! The double standards of the Leeds North West Labour campaign and the shameful way they manipulated a local charity

[Photo on left: From recent issue of the Private Eye magazine]

Ever since the Leeds North West Labour Party selected their candidate to stand against me, some two years ago, he and they have consistently run a negative campaign against me and continually misrepresented my views, Liberal Democrat and Government policies. Since his selection, Labour candidate Alex Sobel decided to spend hours writing long articles attacking every single thing I said and did, not really a great use of time, but it was he and they who decided that this was going to be a personal campaign. By doing so they made the election a choice between the kind of MP I have been - and the kind of MP Alex Sobel, former student politician and the regional organiser of Ed Miliband's campaign, would be.

Since then, I have been on the receiving end of a campaign that has consistently, grossly misrepresented my voting record, including an entirely false statement about the way I voted; a campaign that has sought to manipulate the local charity I am patron of (their word, not mine). It was the local Labour Party who published a caricature of me and delivered it to houses in Otley. It was the local Labour Party who published a grossly misleading 'Mythbusters' leaflet on my voting record that they then had to withdraw, publish 15,000 apologies and pay £2,000 of legal costs.

Now I am thick-skinned and a robust campaigner, it is water off a duck's back, but if you give it out, then you can expect to get it back.

Yet now, some Labour supporters are bleating that WE are running a negative campaign! Such barefaced hypocrisy beggars belief!

Yes, we have distributed Leeds North West Labour's apology to Kidz in Kampz around the constituency. This is because they had refused to do so and so many people with postal votes could have been wrongly influenced to vote on the basis of the false endorsement and the clear impression given by it (and intended to be given) that somehow I had let down the charity, which as someone who has raised over £5,000 and hosted them and raised their wonderful work in Parliament, couldn't be further from the truth. And before blinkered Labour loyalists are stupid or dishonest enough to suggest that the endorsement was just an "honest mistake", they need to know the background to the false endorsement.

Kidz in Kampz had taken on new premises and asked me and Cllr Sue Bentley to write and request a low rent for them. A Leeds City Council officer approved this (and there had been no letters of support from either Alex Sobel or Al Garthwaite, Labour's candidate in Weetwood) yet the senior Labour Councillor Peter Gruen intervened (the man who recently misled elderly residents at Rosemont retirement flats and who refused a House of Commons Parliamentary caseworker access to a meeting there) . A Council officer (who was unhappy at what he clearly knew was political interfering) then told Kidz in Kampz that to get their rent they would have to speak to "the local Labour Party" (even though they have neither an MP nor a councillor in the area and therefore no role in the matter). Next thing is Alex Sobel popping up at the shop offering a meeting with Cllr Gruen who, lo and behold, suddenly he decided that they would grant the low rent - and the local Labour Party then sought to take the credit for this asking Madge and Beryl to pose in photos! Rather revealingly, in both the officer's report recommending the rent (overturned by Peter Gruen) and the report granting the rent there is NO mention of any intervention by Alex Sobel, Al Garthwaite and Peter Gruen. It didn't even need a freedom of information request to expose this grubby situation (though the Council still haven't responded to one). Having milked their entirely altruistic actions claiming credit saying "Alex Sobel… solved the problem for them", Labour clearly got carried away. Such was the arrogance that this now became an actual endorsement of Alex Sobel, with the line "I think it's time for a change to elect Alex as our MP" attributed to Director of Kidz in Kampz, Mrs Madge Davey. Except that she never said that, was never asked if any endorsement could be put on the leaflet - and has made clear she does not endorse Alex Sobel.

Does anyone with a shred of honesty really think it was a coincidence the it was the charity I am patron of which was treated in this way over its application for a low rent? The charity volunteers I have spoken to are clear it was not, but a cynical and disgraceful attempt to use the charity in a low bid to damage my reputation and get votes. The wonderful people and volunteers who run the charity were dismayed at what Alex Sobel, Al Garthwaite and the Labour Party had done and in their words, not mine, they told me when discussing what action to take that they realised that they had been "manipulated" by them over the whole business and the way the rent process had been abused and then being used to apparently (and falsely) tell people to vote Alex Sobel and against me, the charity's patron.

So considering the reality of this whole unsavoury matter and then the fact that Leeds North West Labour's solicitor kept failing to respond to our solicitor's letter, I make no apology at all for us distributing their apology around the constituency and setting the record straight, as morally and legally they should have done. Kidz in Kampz asked them repeatedly to do this and never got a straight answer so we went ahead and printed the apology for them - and as we were now having to pay for it and as ask our volunteers to distribute it. Legally as we were having to pay for it, print it and distribute it, it had to be our imprint on it, but be absolutely clear - this was their apology exactly and in full (and legible- unlike the version they finally included on a leaflet after postal votes had been cast).

Then yes, we included a side two with press cuttings about the TWO apologies for false statements they have been forced to make. Had they done what they were asked to do, by us and by Kidz in Kampz - and ensured that all those who received the false endorsement got the retraction, before postal votes arrived, then we wouldn't have needed to do it ourselves. They didn't, so we did - and had to put the record straight after this shameful episode.

Yes, we are also exposing the Labour candidate's shameful voting record on Leeds City Council. Leeds North West Labour's caricature of me had me wearing a t-shirt with arrow pointing in two ways, suggesting I say one thing and vote the other way- an extraordinarily foolish thing to do considering the clear difference between me and Alex Sobel when it comes to following the whip and his record of saying one thing to residents and voting the other way.

• He has gone round telling residents that he opposes the NGT Trolleybus system, yet he voted FOR it on Leeds City Council.

• He has the nerve to attack me for not standing up for people on lower incomes, yet he has TWICE voted against the living wage being introduced for Leeds City Council employees, despite claiming that he is all in favour of it!

Yet somehow, according to the Labour supporters who feel so offended by these facts being communicated to voters in Leeds North West, these same Labour supporters think it is okay for them to attack - and misrepresent - my voting record. Apparently it is somehow awful and beastly to tell people about this.

The stark difference, of course, is that I have shown that I have the guts to oppose my party whip when I disagree with it. I have voted against my whip 62 times in the last 5 years, many more than any other Leeds MP and many more than any previous MP for Leeds North West. My Labour opponent, in stark contrast, has always toed the party line and explained to the hustings meeting at St Chad's why he was right to vote for NGT and do what the whips were telling him to do. Strangely, it didn't go down too well with the audience!

Yet despite the contrast and my being the most independent voting MP in Leeds, the squealing Labour trolls try to attack me for backing the Government all the time (which I haven't) AND simultaneously defend poor Alex Sobel for not having the courage to defy his whip - and for voting against what he claims to believe in. So those seeking to argue both these positions are not just barefaced, but utterly two-faced.

It isn't just about the personal attacks on me either (and as I say, I can take it, no skin off my nose that they decided to make this their campaign focus). So much of the rest of the content of their communications have been negative, the false claim about the doctor's surgery being a particularly distasteful example.

If you believed the Leeds North West Labour leaflets, you would be fooled into thinking that the last Labour Government was against privatising the NHS, against Academies and for a tax system that helped lower income workers and taxed better off ones.

The truth?

• Under the last Labour Government, those on the lowest incomes paid MORE income tax than they do now and those on higher incomes paid LESS!

• The last Labour Government created Academies, a Tony Blair initiative, taking schools our of local authority control.

• Under the last Labour Government, more NHS contracts were awarded to private companies than under the Coalition Government; Labour are responsible for the grotesquely wasteful Private Finance Initiative that sees hospitals like Wharfedale costing millions over the odds - it is costing £81 million for a £17 million hospital and the money is going to a PRIVATE company, as is the case for all the PFI projects since that is how it works; and guess what, only one NHS hospital has ever been privatised and guess who issued the tender? Yes, it was a Labour Secretary of State for Health!

So is it negative to point out their extraordinary hypocrisy? Well clearly only if you would rather erase the reality of Labour in power and give an entirely false impression to voters.

So if you can't take it, don't give it. And if you do give it, as you have for over two years - and seriously misleading Leeds North West residents - then don't complain when you are exposed for libellous falsehoods, distortions, manipulation of a local charity and for your candidate shown up as someone who says one thing and votes the other way if his Labour bosses tell him to.

It was the Leeds North West Labour Party who wanted to make this election about honesty of voting. I have ten years of achievements to talk about and a record of standing up for Leeds North West whether on the opposition or on the Government benches. So I can only really thank Leeds North West Labour Party for being daft enough to attack me on MY voting record. Those in glass houses and all that. It is they, not us, that have boiled this down to the election being a very clear choice between me, with my record of action, my 62 votes against my whip and a string of achievements locally and nationally (some of which are listed here) - and someone who defends voting for something he claims to oppose (NGT trolleybus) and against something he claims to support (a living wage) and who has defended the whipping system and, bar the disgraceful attempt to interfere in the rent process for Kidz in Kampz shop, has no local record of action.

So people can decide what kind of MP they want - and I am happy to engage in a campaign going head to head with Labour to give them the facts they need to decide.