Melanie Phillips…

Daniel Kawczynski, Conservative MP for Shrewsbury and Atcham, seems to have taken leave of his senses. On Conservativehome's Centre Right blog he accuses me of being 'the most incompetent journalist in Britain' for 'lambasting' him over the report published yesterday by the International Development Select Committee of which he is a member 'without even bothering to pick up a phone to check her facts'.

In my post yesterday I cited Stephen Crabb as the sole Tory MP out of three on the committee to have dissented from its conclusion that Britain should talk to Hamas, and from other views it expressed. Mr Kawczynski now claims that he too dissented from this report. In a series of abusive and incoherent messages to and about me which he sent me last night while I was out, he wrote:

Why do you not even bother to ring people to find out their views before writing such trash about us?

and

This person has grossly distorted my views on the report and has written some quiet [sic] dreadful things without even bothering to check facts with you in CFI [Conservative Friends of Israel] and with me.

He then published his remarks on Centre Right without waiting for me to reply to him.

As can be seen from my blog entry, I did not write about Mr Kawczynski's views at all. I merely observed that that, unlike Mr Crabb, the two other Tory MPs on the committee had not dissented from the report. The fact is that there is no sign whatever in this report that Mr Kawczynski dissented in any way from it. Indeed, on the amendments which Mr Crabb put down and were defeated Mr Kawczynski did not even vote. On Centre Right he reproduces part of a communication with the committee's chairman Malcolm Bruce in the course of which he says:

I understand your disappointment but I feel that at no point did I mislead you as to my position.

However, he omits from it these sentences at the beginning which he sent to me:

Malcolm,

At the outset I would like to tell you that I will not be issuing any press releases to our national media following receipt of your e-mails. You have convinced me that I have not followed procedures properly.

Since Mr Kawczynski did not issue any press statement, did not vote for Mr Crabb's amendments, attached no note of dissent to the report and, as far as I can see, produced nothing whatever in public to suggest he had any problems at all with the report's conclusions, there was nothing to indicate that he did not endorse them. It is therefore totally untrue to say that I 'grossly distorted' his views.

If a committee report is issued in the name of members who do not publicly dissent from it, it is of course absurd to expect journalists to ring every member of that committee to discover whether they might harbour reservations which they have not made public. To produce a statement which he says he sent to CFI (the first of the 'communications with the chairman' he cites on Centre Right) which refers to his reservations about the report but which he does not seem to have sent to the media or published more widely, along with an equally opaque message to the committee chairman referring to his reservations and making it clear to him privately 'where our positions diverge', and then claim - on the basis of remarks that he has chosen not to make public - that I misrepresented his views, is clearly preposterous.

On the basis of this travesty, Mr Kawczynski then published abusive and defamatory remarks about me on Centre Right. What outrageous behaviour from a Member of Parliament. I await his apology.