Miliband: Promoted too soon, believes Dalyell

Westminster's longest serving MP has criticised Tony Blair for fast-tracking young backbenchers ahead of more experienced Labour colleagues.

Tam Dalyell told the BBC that the promotion of the prime minister's favoured high-fliers sent the wrong message to hard working MPs who have put in more time at the parliamentary coalface.

Promoted "whizzkid" MPs David Miliband and David Lammy both faced accusations of "parachuting" into safe Labour seats and both are regarded as close to the prime minister's inner circle.

South Shields MP David Miliband, a former Downing Street policy chief and brother of Treasury adviser Ed Miliband, was made schools standards minister less than one year after entering parliament.

And his Tottenham colleague David Lammy, the Commons' youngest MP, was elected in 2000.

Miliband should have been made to wait "just a little longer" said the father of the Commons, Dalyell.

"Bluntly, I don't think people should become ministers when they have only been a year in the House of Commons," he told Radio 4's Today programme.

"I don't think people should be appointed after only one year whatever the service they may have given to the leader of the party."

The veteran MP's intervention is regarded as an indication of bitterness on the Labour backbenches, where time serving and party loyalty is no longer a sure step to promotion.

"The difficulty in appointing people so young is that a lot of others rather loose heart and think that they have been passed over," said Dalyell.

"I am very, very sad for a number of colleagues - 40, 50, 55 - who may think that they have no chance of showing what they can do as ministers."