David Blunkett today admitted wrongly using official House of Commons notepaper to make a personal objection to a planning development near one of his London homes.
The work and pensions secretary, who is back in the cabinet after resigning as home secretary over his intervention to speed up the processing of his lover's nanny's visa, wrote to Wandsworth council to complain at plans to convert a nearby building into flats. In using officially headed Commons stationery, he breached parliamentary rules.
Today his spokesman said Mr Blunkett had committed the offence but called it "an honest mistake".
He told the Evening Standard: "After being approached by residents, he expressed his concerns about the environmental impact. He did so as an ex-resident who knows the area well.
"He dictated the letter to his office. In retrospect, he recognises he should have specified that the letter went out on plain paper. This was an honest mistake in good faith."
The row revolves around a property in Southfield, in south London, that Mr Blunkett bought in 1987 and subsequently let out.
A next door building, Clevedon Lodge, had applied for planning permission to be converted into flats, to fund a £4m improvement to the nearby Linden Lodge school for blind and partially sighted people.
Last month Mr Blunkett wrote objecting to a "loss of shrubbery and foilage".
According to the Evening Standard, the letter also stated he was "deeply concerned about the effect on wildlife, on the quiet enjoyment of the area and on the ecology".
The revelations come after a bad run of headlines for the returned cabinet minister: at the weekend he was accused of not declaring his free membership of the private members' club Annabel's after a week of reports about his relationship with a younger woman he met there.
Later David Davies, Conservative MP for Monmouth, said he had written to the serjeant at arms, Peter Grant Peterkin, calling for an investigation.
Mr Davies said: "I sat on the planning committees in the Welsh assembly for a couple of years. I know if you get involved in a planning application in which you have an interest, you have to disclose it immediately.
"It is astonishing that a minister of Mr Blunkett's experience did not know that."
Matthew Tempest, political correspondent at The Guardian Wednesday October 12, 2005
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