The Labour party in Britain today suspended three MPs facing criminal charges over their expenses to try to limit the damage from the case before an election to be held by June.
The three, already barred from standing again as Labour candidates, will remain members of the House of Commons but will be excluded from Labour party meetings and will no longer be part of its parliamentary bloc.
Conservative leader David Cameron said the suspension was a "humiliating change" for prime minister Gordon Brown's Labour and said it was in "headlong retreat".
Mr Cameron had sought to exploit public outrage over the MPs conduct after a week of opinion polls showing the Conservatives slipping to a single-digit lead over Labour.
Analysts say that could lead to a hung parliament with no party winning a majority in the election, an outcome that worries financial markets already concerned over Britain's record £178 billion budget deficit.
Mr Cameron had raised the pre-election rhetoric by launching a personal attack on Mr Brown, calling him a "shameless defender of the old elite" and a roadblock to political reform for failing to take action against the men.
The Labour party said it had been considering the position of the three members of parliament (MPs) - Elliot Morley, David Chaytor and Jim Devine - since they were charged on Friday. It said it made the suspensions "in the light of the serious allegations against them".
The Conservatives had already suspended from their party Lord Hanningfield, a member of parliament's upper chamber, who was charged with false accounting along with the three Labour legislators.
The prosecutions are the most serious turn in a long-running scandal over parliamentary allowances that has seen legislators from all leading parties shamed by excessive and frivolous claims for dog food, moat cleaning and ornamental duck houses.
Public anger over expenses makes the election outcome even more difficult to predict.
The legislators are expected to argue in court next month they have protection from prosecution under parliament's centuries-old right of privilege.
Politicians from all parties have dismissed the suggestion the jealously guarded privilege, which gives MPs immunity over what they say in parliamentary debates, could also block a criminal prosecution.
Today, Mr Brown's spokesman said the prime minister did not believe any MP was above the law.
"Criminal law obviously applies to MPs in the same way as it does to anyone else," the spokesman said. "Obviously parliamentary privilege was not intended to cover this use by MPs."
Reuters