THE TORY former minister, Sir Nicholas Scott, last night lost his battle against deselection by his local party. A secret ballot of 977 members of the Kensington and Chelsea Conservative Association voted "by a considerable margin" against letting Sir Nicholas continue as MP after the general election.
The constituency chairman, Mr Andrew Dalton, told reporters outside Kensington Town Hall: "As a result of the ballot it was clear that Sir Nicholas Scott no longer commanded the confidence of the association as a whole."
Sir Nicholas was found face down in a road by police after a reception at a Conservative Party conference in October. He denied he was drunk, blaming his condition on painkillers.
Earlier the Labour Party accused the Scottish Secretary, Mr Michael Forsyth, of "playing with words and dodging his responsibilities" in a dispute over information on the E coli food poisoning outbreak in Scotland.
The shadow Scottish secretary, Mr George Robertson, demanded that Mr Forsyth make an urgent Commons statement on the issue, claiming the Government had not given MPs "the whole picture".
The Scottish minister Lord James Douglas Hamilton said Mr Forsyth had "refuted strongly" any allegations that he had misled the House. He disclosed that the Scottish secretary would make a statement on the issue to the Scottish Grand Committee next week.
The dispute centres on comments by Mr Forsyth in a statement to MPs last week that it had been up to Lanarkshire Health Board to release the list of outlets supplied by John M. Barr & Son, the Wishaw butcher at the centre of the health alert, and that the decision had nothing to do with the Scottish Office.
Mr Robertson said this conflicted with a leaked letter from a Scottish Office official telling health board officials that the list should be kept "confidential". Accusing Mr Forsyth of "dodging the facts", Mr Robertson said: "His officials were involved and consulted from day one of the outbreak."
The number of people being treated in Britain's worst E coli epidemic yesterday rose to 282 with 148 confirmed as suffering from the bacteria.
Lanarkshire Health Board reported that 16 more people were being treated for symptoms while four more were admitted to hospital in Forth Valley area.
There are now 55 people in hospitals in West Central Scotland with 25 seriously ill, including, four children.
The new cases were revealed as the funeral took place of the first of the five people to die in the outbreak, which has been linked to cooked meat prepared by John M.Barr & Son in Wishaw.
Mr Harry Shaw (80) was among a party of pensioners taken ill following a steak pie meal at, Wishaw Old Parish Church on November 17th. Around 200 people, many of them elderly, turned out for the service.
Earlier, Mr Forsyth visited doctors at Monklands Hospital in Airdrie, which has had to draft in extra staff to deal with the epidemic. He promised that the Scottish Office would meet the extra costs caused by the outbreak and praised medics for their "fantastic" response in dealing with the most serious outbreak of its kind in Britain.