TONY Blair yesterday hit back at England's senior clergy, accusing them of double standards after they had levelled the same charge against him over the prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq.
The Church of England was criticised for the fact that its leaders remained silent during Saddam Hussein's reign of terror, but were now exercising their moral outrage about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
Yesterday, in a leaked letter, the church's leaders, including Rowan Williams and David Hope, the respective archbishops of Canterbury and York, warned that the mistreatment of Iraqi detainees had deeply damaged the west in the eyes of Muslims, who viewed the coalition and its leaders as acting with "double standards".
The letter, drawn up following a meeting in Liverpool of all 110 English archbishops and bishops this month, warned the prime minister that the credibility of western governments throughout the Muslim world was undermined by reports of abuse and deaths in custody. Moreover, it said, Britain's ability to act as an "honest broker" in the Middle East had been put at risk.
It read: "There is a wider risk to our own integrity, if we no longer experience a sense of moral shock at the enormity of what appears to have been inflicted on those who were in the custody of western security forces."
However, in the Commons, the prime minister retaliated.
Ann Clwyd, Labour MP for Cynon Valley and the PM's special envoy on human rights to Iraq, said: "The bishops who have written to the prime minister are the very people who remained silent over the last 25 years when Saddam Hussein was executing, torturing and ethnically cleansing his own people."
Mr Blair replied bluntly: "I entirely agree with my honourable friend."
A spokesman for the Church of England said the clergy's letter had not been intended for publication but was designed to set out the priorities the bishops would like to see the government pursuing with the new Iraqi administration.