Blair Defends Cabinet `High Living' By EMMA ROSS .c The Associated Press LONDON (AP) -- Prime Minister Tony Blair's government is fighting back against accusations that its Cabinet ministers are living it up at the British taxpayers' expense. After a string of media reports of ministerial trips involving Concorde flights, luxury resorts and chartered helicopters, the prime minister's spokesman, Alastair Campbell, insisted that the travel arrangements were necessary and governed by strict rules. Blair's Labor government swept into office in May 1997 on a public vow to clean up what it labeled the excesses of the Conservative Party, which was often accused of cronyism and sleaze during its 17 years in power. But a story in last week's Sunday Times, headlined ``Seduced by the perks of power,'' questioned whether Blair's government was falling into the trap it vowed to avoid. And in the House of Commons on Thursday, the government faced criticism both from Conservative politicians and from within its own Labor Party ranks. ``Some of us on this side of the House are not very happy about the way in which people want to live the high life and fly in Concorde and all the rest of it,'' said Dennis Skinner, a veteran left-wing Labor member of Parliament. Conservative Party member John Wilkinson dubbed Home Secretary Jack Cunningham ``Concorde Jack,'' a reference to a flight the minister had taken to the United States earlier this month. He also accused the government's top finance minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, of abandoning ``frugality.'' Brown reportedly chartered a plane in September 1997 to travel from South Africa to Thailand for a meeting after he missed a connecting flight, and then hired a helicopter to move around Bangkok. On Thursday, in a letter to the tabloid Daily Mail, Health Secretary Frank Dobson defended his decision to travel to Barbados in mid-November for a three-day conference of Commonwealth health ministers. ``I left the conference a day early and did not take part in any cruise, go swimming or sunbathing,'' he wrote. ``We can either have politics run on the level of gossip with the media trying to turn everything into a scandal or we can have a government getting on addressing the real problems facing this country,'' he added. Alan Milburn, the chief secretary of the Treasury, also defended his colleagues' travel choices, saying they met the regulations. ``We abide by those rules and they are the same rules that applied when the Conservative Party were in government,'' he said. The rules state that ministers ``must always make efficient and cost-effective travel arrangements.'' The Cabinet Office said Friday that ``there are clearly instances when a more expensive means of travel is the only way of meeting ministerial obligations.''
