Major: 'Labour must apologise for sleaze slurs'

The attack by one former Premier on another reopened old wounds over the sleaze which saw the Conservatives forced out of office.

The rare criticism from Sir John also came ahead of a report by MPs this week into Labour's worst sleaze scandal - over "cash for peerages".

Sir John said it was the governments of both Mr Blair and Gordon Brown - and not his own - which had been guilty of "systemic sleaze".

He compared the tactics adopted in the 1990s by Tony Blair against members of his government to the McCarthyite witchhunts against alleged communist sympathisers in the United States in the 1950s.

'What happened in the 1990s, there was a deliberate attempt to portray the Conservative Party as an institution - it was almost McCarthyite, frankly - as though it were sleazy, and it wasn't.

"The distinction is that sleaze has seemed to be systemic since 1997," he told BBC's Andrew Marr.

Calling on Mr Blair to say sorry, he added: "What they did at the time was absolutely unscrupulous.

"Lots of people misbehaved in the 1980s and 1990s, but they were all individuals.

"It was never institutional. It was never related specifically to the Conservative Party or to the Conservative government."

Mr Blair's spokesman could not be contacted last night.

Sir John's final months in office were overshadowed by the "cash for questions" scandal, with the disclosure that Harrods boss Mohamed al Fayed had been paying Tory MPs to ask questions for him in Parliament.

Also, a series of senior Tory figures were forced to quit over revelations of extra-marital affairs.

Mr Blair has since expressed regret at the way Labour used the accusations of sleaze, acknowledging that all political parties were basically honest.

Sir John said that Labour in power had been 'institutionally careless in the grand manner'.

There was, he said, a "clear pattern" linking the row over Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone's £1million donation to Labour in 1997 to the current "proxy donors" scandal involving North East property millionaire David Abrahams - with "serial offences" in between.

He also attacked Gordon Brown's record as Chancellor, claiming that the losses suffered as the result of Mr Brown's decision to sell Britain's gold reserves now outstripped those sustained under the Tories on Black Wednesday - when Britain was forced out of the European exchange rate mechanism.

He warned that the country could face even bigger losses as a result of the Northern Rock collapse, which could be traced directly to the changes to the system of regulation brought in by Mr Brown.

The Treasury dismissed Sir John's criticisms, saying: "He was the architect of one of the deepest recessions Britain has endured."

The Commons Public Administration Select Committee will publish its report into the cash for peerages scandal on Wednesday.

Last night it emerged that Mr Blair's fund-raiser Lord Levy had tried to block the committee publishing evidence about his role in the affair.

He was unhappy with claims by Sir Gulam Noon in a letter featured in the committee's report that a "senior party man" told him not to declare his £250,000 loan to Labour while his nomination for a peerage was being considered.

A spokesman for Lord Levy confirmed his lawyers had tried to prevent publication of ready meals tycoon Sir Gulam's letter in full, adding: "We did state to the committee that there were certain contents of the letter which we did not agree with."