Redwood anger at 'sleeping' claim

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A senior Conservative MP has angrily denied dozing off during a speech by shadow chancellor George Osborne.

John Redwood was accused by Chief Secretary to the Treasury Yvette Cooper of sleeping through "about half" of Mr Osborne's speech on the economy.

She also accused Uxbridge Tory MP John Randall of nodding off.

Mr Redwood insisted he had heard every word and accused Ms Cooper of trying to "mislead" MPs - but she ignored his call to "correct the record".

In his speech, opening a Conservative led debate on the economy, Mr Osborne said Prime Minister Gordon Brown's refusal to apologise for past mistakes showed he was unable to lead the country out of recession.

'Finally woken up'

Ms Cooper, leading for the government in the absence of Chancellor Alistair Darling, said Mr Osborne "has tried to entertain the House with drama".

But, she added: "Unfortunately I noticed that the Honourable Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) and the Honourable Member for Uxbridge seem, in fact, to have slept through about half of his speech.

"The rest of us listened to a huge amount of bombast and feigned indignation that would have been right at home in the floors of the Oxford Union."

The government's policies to tackle the recession are simply not working Shadow chancellor George Osborne

Mr Redwood, who was sat directly behind Mr Osborne during his speech, intervened during Ms Cooper's response and called on her to retract her statement.

He said: "You might like to correct the record. I have followed every word in this debate and it is quite wrong of you to mislead the House."

Ms Cooper replied: "I'm glad to know the right honourable member concentrates so hard with his eyes closed and his shoulders shrugging."

When Mr Randall, who was sat near Mr Redwood on the Commons' green benches, later intervened Ms Cooper suggested he had "finally woken up".

'Running away'

The Conservative MP, who runs a family furniture store, Randall's of Uxbridge, told her: "Perhaps you don't appreciate what it's like to run a business. I have got a retail business with 30 employees.

"Sometimes when I see a government that is so complacent and so useless I do lay awake, it's difficult to sleep at night, because I have got 30 people's jobs that I have got to worry about.

"With 15 members of the Labour backbenches here only to discuss this important measure I cannot understand why the country doesn't realise that your party is not interested."

In his speech, Mr Osborne said the government's failure to provide real help now was a "cruel joke" to the thousands who had lost their jobs.

He accused absent Chancellor Alistair Darling of "running away" from the debate after the "highest rise in unemployment on record" and of having "completely given up" on attempting to control public spending.

He told Ms Cooper: "The government's policies to tackle the recession are simply not working.

"The government has still not faced up to the fundamental failure of the debt-fuelled model of economic growth that the prime minister pursued for a decade and has led us into the longest recession in the world and the deepest recession in our recent history."

Ms Cooper claimed the government's "extensive measures" to support the economy, including action to help families and firms, were not supported by the Tories. Further measures would be forthcoming.

She told MPs: "We will go even further because we believe in it and the party opposite doesn't because they are not prepared to fund it. Time and again they have said they will not be prepared to put the investment in that is needed to support the economy."