Lord Tebbit hit out at Labour today for allowing Martin McGuinness to attend its conference in Brighton, just weeks before the 25th anniversary of the Grand Hotel being bombed.

The peer insisted it was "inappropriate" that the senior Sinn Fein figure and Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister had come to the gathering.

Lord Tebbit, then Trade Secretary, was injured and his wife permanently disabled in the IRA attack during the Tory conference on October 12, 1984.

The, then, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher survived the blast unhurt.

Mr McGuinness attended a party organised by the Guardian at the Grand Hotel last night.

This morning he spoke at a conference fringe event, where he was drawn on whether details of his past would ever be made public.

According to the Belfast Telegraph, he told the meeting: "There are times and places for everything. I certainly think that if all of us were to talk about our past then we could actually make the situation for our political associates more difficult.

"I'm not prepared to do that at this stage. As some stage in the future all of my past will be before the general public, there are ways and means of doing that.

"But I'm not ashamed of my past."