MINISTER'S SON DIES OF DRUG OVERDOSE

The 23-year-old son of the Cabinet Office Minister Ian McCartney was
found dead by his mother yesterday after he took a heroin overdose.

The body of Hugh McCartney was discovered at 10am yesterday in his
two-room flat in a tenement block in a rundown area of the East End of
Glasgow known as "shooting alley", where heroin is part of daily life.

His mother Jean Murray, who was divorced from Mr McCartney, had made
regular trips to the flat to plead with her son to give up drugs.

One neighbour said: "She was around here nearly every day with her
Yorkshire terriers trying to get him off the drugs. It's terrible
round here with the amount of drugs. The people in these flats watch
everything you do. The best thing you could do is demolish them with
the people inside."

Mr McCartney, 48, the MP for Makerfield, near Wigan, was called from a
meeting of Labour's National Executive Committee at the party's
Millbank headquarters yesterday to be told on the telephone about the
death of his only son.He returned to the meeting in a clearly
distressed state, broke down, and was comforted by John Prescott, the
Deputy Prime Minister, a close friend. Tony Blair, who had left the
meeting minutes earlier, last night sent his condolences.

Mr McCartney suffered a mild stroke earlier this year when, as a Trade
and Industry Minister, he was in charge of employment law reform. He
is widely expected to be elevated to full Cabinet rank by the next
election. Yesterday he flew to Glasgow to comfort his first wife, whom
he married when he was 17.

George Turnbull, 49, who lived close to Mr McCartney's pounds
119-a-month rented flat where he lived alone, said: "He seemed a
decent enough guy to me and he never bothered anyone. He just kept
himself to himself."