Chakrabarti threatens to sue over innuendo

David Davis and Shami Chakrabarti have both reacted with fury to remarks made by Culture Secretary Andy Burnham, first reported here yesterday, about the former shadow Home Secretary's relationship with the director of the civil rights group Liberty which, like Davis, opposes the controversial extension of pre-charge detention to 42 days for terror suspects. Chakrabarti has written to Burnham demanding an apology and threatening to sue if he repeats his innuendo. Davis has accused Labour of resorting to "personal smears and lies".

Burnham, in an interview with the Blairite magazine Progress, had attacked those people he said had been "seduced" by Davis's liberal credentials, and said he found something "very curious in the man who was, and still is I believe, an exponent of capital punishment, having late-night, hand-wringing, heart-melting phone calls with Shami Chakrabarti".

Today, Chakrabarti, 39, a qualified lawyer who is married to a barrister, wrote to Burnham saying that he had "set out to smear her dealings" with Davis. "By your comments you debase not only a great office of state but the vital debate about fundamental rights and freedoms in this country. Indeed you seem reluctant to engage in that debate except in this tawdry fashion. I look forward to your written apology as I'm sure does Mrs Davis [referring to Davis's wife of 35 years, Doreen].

"If on the other hand you choose to continue down the path of innuendo and attempted character assassination, you will find that the privileged legal protection of the parliament chamber does not extend to slurs made in the wider public domain. The fruits of any legal action will of course go to Liberty." Chakrabarti copied in the Prime Minister and the Attorney General on the letter.

Earlier, Davis, 59, said of Burnham's comments: "While Gordon Brown cowers in Downing Street, his henchmen are out and about to attack me personally rather than engage in rational debate." On the day he formally resigned as an MP, as he had promised to do, he added: "Labour has now resorted to personal smears and lies rather than make its case for 42-day detention and for the other illiberal measures it has taken."

The Culture Secretary also told Progress that Davis should be made to pick up the entire cost of the by-election he has forced in Haltemprice and Howden - reckoned to be in the order of £80,000. "I think there's a bloody good case to be made for it," said Burnham. "Why should the resources at local level and national level be devoted to this? Why? The more I think about this thing, the more it staggers me as an outrageous act of arrogance."