HARD DRUGS 'RIFE' AT AITKEN'S JAIL

Jonathan Aitken told a friend that it was so easy for his fellow prisoners
to buy drugs that his jail sometimes "smelt like a kasbah", it was reported
yesterday.

The former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who was released last Friday,
was said to have tried to save one inmate at Standford Hill Prison in Kent
from becoming a heroin addict. The prisoner had bought the drug from other
inmates in exchange for phone cards.

"He ran up a debt of 200 phone cards, which meant he was in terror of drug
barons and had no way of paying them off. His fear and addiction led him to
abscond," Mr Aitken told a close friend, according to the Mail on Sunday.

The former Cabinet minister said of Standford Hill prison: "At the weekends
it sometimes smelt like a kasbah in a permissive Arab country. Almost every
drug was available. And there is a further appalling irony. Prisoners have
little cash. Their principal prison currency is phone cards. So hard drugs
are usually cheaper in prison than on the outside."

Mr Aitken also claimed that some prison staff turned a blind eye to the
problem. He alleges that he was attacked when an inmate mistakenly believed
he was receiving special treatment.

Alan Duncan, Conservative trade and industry spokesmen and a close friend of
Mr Aitken, is reported as saying: "A prisoner who had been forbidden to go
to a family funeral read in the papers that Jonathan Aitken had got special
release to go to Willie Whitelaw's funeral. He thought it was unfair and he
thumped him. Actually, it was untrue. He hadn't been released at all."

Mr Aitken, 57, yesterday made his first public appearance with his family
since his release. He attended a church service near his London home with
his mother, daughter, son and a family friend. After serving just over a
third of his 18-month sentence for perjury and perverting the course of
justice, he wears an electronic tag which will alert the authorities if he
leaves the house between 7pm and 7am.

He also faces a battle to stop creditors seeking more than pounds 3 million
from claiming a share of his home in Lord North Street. Worth pounds 2.75
million, it is in the name of his former wife, Lolicia, but solicitors for
the Guardian and Granada TV are believed to have sought a court order to
prevent it being sold.

John MacGregor, the Tory MP who chairs the parliamentary pension fund, also
said he had been approached by lawyers acting for the creditors who want to
stop Mr Aitken retaining his pension.