A robbery, a knife and a strange man in Clapham

IT HAD been a long, busy day and the Welsh Secretary, Ron Davies, had just driven back to London from his South Wales home.

A couple of hours earlier he had left his detached Tudor-style house in the village of Draethen, near Caerphilly, swept down the long driveway and headed for the M4 and the Severn Bridge.

He was driving himself in his own ageing Ford Granada rather than his ministerial car.

For once it was a dry evening, a welcome change from the rain and winds that had brought floods to much of Wales. The previous day he had phoned and cancelled an interview with GMTV, as he felt the news team might be trapped by the River Rhymney, which was in flood.

The day had been taken up with ministerial matters. At 8.20am he had hosted a meeting of the National Assembly Awareness Campaign in the Welsh Office. Then after working out his media commitments for the week with his press officer, he attended a meeting of the constituency Labour Party.

From there he had gone to address the Institute of Welsh Affairs at Cardiff's Park Hotel before returning to the Welsh Office at Cathays Park for a further 90 minutes of meetings. At around 12.30 he had then gone to open a squash and health club near the village of Hensol in the Vale of Glamorgan, posing for photographs while sitting on an exercise bike surrounded by four women wearing leotards.

Derek Lamb, Mr Davies's constituency secretary, said the Welsh Secretary had been under intense pressure from his workload, but those who saw him on Monday said he had been in good spirits.

His diary was free for the rest of the day and it is understood Mr Davies then returned home to Draethen.

After leaving the pounds 150,000 home he shares with his second wife, Christina, and young daughter, Angharad, he arrived back in south London, where he has another home - an unremarkable terrace house in Bewick Street.

He said he arrived back mid-evening. "After driving back from Wales last night, I parked my car near to my home in south London. I went for a walk on Clapham Common," Mr Davies said yesterday. "Whilst walking, I was approached by a man I had never met before who engaged me in conversation. After talking for some minutes he asked me to accompany him and two of his friends to his flat for a meal."

Mr Davies agreed to give the man a lift in his car to go and pick up his friends, one male and one female. What happened next is not entirely clear but Mr Davies said the men then produced a knife. He said: "Together with his male companion (he) robbed me and stole my car, leaving me standing at the roadside."

The strangers - who also took his wallet and mobile phone - sped off, leaving Mr Davies to call the police.

Police said the alleged robbery happened at around 9.30pm in the St Matthew's estate area of Brixton, some miles from Clapham Common. In a statement, they said they were investigating a robbery.

They added: "The victim was Ron Davies MP. Further inquiries are in hand and we are not prepared to discuss the situation further at this stage."

Mr Davies last night refused to explain why a cabinet minister should feel the need to go for dinner with strangers he had just met walking across Clapham Common. Police last night issued descriptions of three people wanted in connection with the incident. One, a 50-year-old black man, about 5ft 7in tall with shoulder-length dreadlocks, is believed to be the man whom Mr Davies first encountered on the common. He w as wearing a multi-coloured jacket. The other suspects were a 30-year-old black man and a black woman in her twenties. The minister's parliamentary pass was found discarded in Dray Gardens, the Brixton street where he was forced out of the car at knifepo int. The Prime Minister's spokesman said last night that the minister had explicitly denied that the incident was linked to a sexual encounter when he spoke with Tony Blair during a 45-minute meeting at Number 10 yesterday morning. Mr Davies also spoke at len gth to Mr Blair's official spokesman, Alastair Campbell. Mr Davies said: "Isn't it enough to say that as a member of the Cabinet I am accepting that I was guilty of an error of judgement? I put myself into a position where I was a victim of a crime. I believe that that has caused ... certainly caused embarrass ment to me; I believe it has the potential to cause embarrassment to the Government. The matter of the misjudgement is a matter for me, of course. I consider it was a sufficiently grievous error of judgement to warrant my resigning from Government." In his constituency, reaction to Mr Davies's decision was mixed. Heather Morgan, who took over from him as the councillor for his home village when he became an MP, said: "The whole village is totally shocked at the news. I feel desperately sorry for his family."