BOLTON MP Peter Thurnham revealed just how he was started "on the road to conversion" when he made his first major speech since defecting from the Tories to the Liberal Democrats.

Mr Thurnham, MP for Bolton North-east, was speaking at the Liberal Democrats' big North-west Rally at Rochdale on Friday with party leader Paddy Ashdown and Sir Cyril Smith sharing the platform.

After outlining his disillusionment which led to him ditching the party he had served as a Bolton MP for 13 years, Mr Thurnham revealed that it was Arthur Holt, the former Bolton Liberal MP who died last year "who helped to start me on the road to conversion."

"He helped me to look at politics in the round," said Mr Thurnham. "His quiet example was born out of the horrors of being a Japanese PoW on the Burma Railway, which he so miraculously survived."

Mr Thurnham said he was proud to have been accepted as a Liberal Democrat, recalling how, when he first stood for the Tories in a by-election at Crosby in 1981, he was so keen the Tory agent was convinced he was an SDP mole.

Mr Thurnham, who has already been the Lib Dem spokesman on social services, took the opportunity to round on his former boss, Home Secretary Michael Howard. The Bolton MP was his right hand man when he was at the Environment office.

He said: "Frances Lawrence calls for us to mend our fractured society. But what does Michael Howard do? Build more prisons, when what ne need so desperately is to rebuild a proper caring society - not this lock em up and throw away the key attitude."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.