NOBODY in the Labour and trade union movement should mourn the departure of arch-Blairite ministers James Purnell and Hazel Blears.

The latter is a complete disgrace. She claimed expenses to within £1 of the maximum for three successive years and has been shamed into paying back £13,000 in Capital Gains Tax, which she avoided paying on the sale of her second home.

Mr Purnell was Work and Pensions Secretary before his resignation – a strange position to hold really for a man who doesn’t seem to have done a day’s useful work in his life.

Born with a massive silver spoon in his mouth, he progressed from elite schools to Oxford and to a political career in next to no time.

While renting a flat between 2004-06, he claimed (without submitting receipts) £100 a month for cleaning expenses and £586 for repairs.

However, at the end of his lease the flat was said to be in an “absolutely dreadful condition”

and after an exchange of letters between Mr Purnell’s lawyer and the landlord, the landlord kept the full £2,500 deposit.

This is the same James Purnell who launched a hideous poster campaign against single parents on benefits who do a bit of work on the black economy to make ends meet.

John Gilmore, Bishop Auckland.

GORDON Brown’s latest Cabinet reshuffle just shows how shallow this New Labour Government’s ability base is.

Quite a lot of his former ministers, who see that the end is near for New Labour, have come up with all sorts of excuses to stand down and disappear from public view by joining the backbenches.

In doing so, they have shown that all these young recruits who were given the seats of those MPs that chose to take the House of Lords route are nothing more than party servants.

This observation is based on the fact that Mr Brown has now had to ask some of these people who make up our unelected Upper House to join him in government because he can’t find anyone with governmental ability on the backbenches.

Our loosely put together democracy now allows for a Prime Minister, who most of the country doesn’t want, to put together a Cabinet made up of elected and accountable to Parliament MPs and unelected and unaccountable to Parliament friends of Mr Brown under the guise that the country needs them. The quicker we have a General Election the better.

Peter Dolan, Newton Aycliffe, Co Durham.