MP moves to block plans for biography of Fred West

The controversy over the Official Solicitor's decision to sell Fred West's memoirs and police interviews as material for a biography of the alleged serial killer was the object of renewed attack yesterday, writes Marianne Macdonald.

Douglas French, the MP whose Gloucester constituency office is yards from the Cromwell Street house where the late builder lived, has tabled an Early Day Motion calling for the "official" biography to be stopped. The motion questions whether the Official Solicitor, Peter Harris, "put a correct interpretation upon his duty" in commissioning the book and asks whether he had authority to offer the archive material for sale.

It says that the deal should therefore be stopped - or, if it is not, that the profits should go to the families of his alleged victims, rather than West's eight surviving children.