Thatcher funeral: David Cameron forced to defend cost of security and pageantry

David Cameron was today forced to defend the cost of Baroness Thatcher’s funeral as the ceremony was criticised by Labour frontbencher Diane Abbott as a “breach of protocol”.

The Left-wing London MP broke ranks only hours before Lady Thatcher’s coffin left Westminster Palace to condemn the reported multi-million pound bill for the procession and service at St Paul’s.

But her comments and their timing were immediately criticised as “insensitive and clumsy”.

The Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP argued that all prime ministers for the last century, apart from Sir Winston Churchill, had had “a family-organised funeral” with a service at St Margaret’s Church or Westminster Abbey.

Churchill was an exception, she added, because he led a national government during wartime.

“We seem to be spending £10 million on what is a state funeral in all but name and I don’t understand why what every single prime minister in the past century did, couldn’t have been done by Mrs Thatcher,” the shadow public health minister told BBC radio.

“There is just no precedent, it’s a breach of protocol and it’s going to cost £10 million... when you’re cutting disabled people’s benefits, I don’t think the public understands that.”

She also warned Mr Cameron that he “runs the risk of being seen to make this a party political event, which is quite wrong” — despite the funeral arrangements being approved by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s Labour administrations.

But the Prime Minister rejected the criticism.

“What is happening today is absolutely fitting and right,” Mr Cameron said. “She was the first woman prime minister, she served for longer in the job than anyone for 150 years, she achieved some extraordinary things in her life.”

Mayor Boris Johnson added that it was right that Lady Thatcher was “remembered properly”.

Nick de Bois, Enfield North MP and secretary of the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbench MPs, described Ms Abbott’s comments as “profoundly clumsy, inappropriate and downright wrong”.

He added: “It’s insensitive timing.”

Some Conservatives, though, questioned the response to Baroness Thatcher’s death. Mark Field, Conservative MP for the Cities of London and Westminster, highlighted that many of the tributes had overlooked the nature of Lady Thatcher’s exit from power, deposed by her own party.

“Maybe that is an element of why things are quite as they are, with slightly a hullabaloo about it all. There is an element of collective guilt about the way in which she was treated,” he said.