- guardian.co.uk, Wednesday January 30 2008 14.44 GMT
Gordon Brown was accused of being "physically incapable of answering straight questions" today as he clashed with David Cameron over terrorism and policing.
The Conservative leader used prime minister's question time to insist repeatedly that Brown was "unable to answer a question or take a decision".
Pressing Brown on whether he would scrap the stop-and-search forms police are currently required to fill out, the Tory chief said they had been a "colossal waste of police time".
Brown side-stepped the question, saying he would publish the final conclusions of the Flanagan Report on the issue next week.
Cameron retorted that he should "stop flannelling about the Flanagan report".
Amid increasingly bitter exchanges Brown hit back, claiming Cameron had prepared his questions yesterday and could not "react to the situation today".
Brown insisted the government was "taking action" to reduce police bureaucracy and said the Tories should support that.
Moving on to terrorism, Cameron said he had identified preachers of hate who should not be allowed into the country. Would the government ban Yusuf al-Qaradawi from the UK? Brown said an announcement would be made shortly but the decision had to go through the proper judicial process.
"We are not slow to expel people from this country," Brown said.
Cameron said "people would conclude he can't answer a question and he can't make a decision".
"Shouldn't he just accept that people are not safe under Labour?" Cameron said.
Brown insisted crime was down and everyone should feel safe under Labour.
