Gordon Brown finally said sorry today for an aide's planned smear campaign against Tory MPs.

But his apology was immediately rejected as "spin" by one of the intended victims of the slurs, who said that the Prime Minister was just trying to deflect attention from the news that a Conservative frontbencher arrested in a leaks inquiry last year would not be facing any charges.

The Prime Minister's apology came on a visit to Glasgow five days after the resignation of Damian McBride, Mr Brown's head of strategy and trusted adviser.

Mr McBride resigned after the publication of e-mails showing that he had planned to set up an "attack blog" to sexually smear top Tories in the run-up to the next election. Among the victims of the slurs were David Cameron, the party leader, and George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor.

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This is another gift for the Opposition in a week of Easter presents

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“I am sorry about what happened," Mr Brown said. “I take full responsibility for what happened. That’s why the person who was responsible went immediately.”

Mr Brown had already sent handwritten notes to the four Tories named in the smear e-mails, including Nadine Dorries, MP for Mid-Bedfordshire, but had stopped short of a personal apology.

Ms Dorries said today that the Prime Minister had only said sorry because "a bad news story is coming out which he wanted to suppress" – referring to the announcement by the Director of Public Prosecutions that no charges are to be brought against Damian Green over his role in a series of Home Office leaks.

"I'd love to accept this apology but what we are seeing here is another example of how this government spins," Ms Dorries said. "It is spin and news management again".

The MP also complained that Mr Brown "didn’t say he was sorry to me, he said he was sorry to a camera crew in Glasgow- which is not the same thing".

Mr Brown has apologised before, most recently over his decision to abolish the 10p rate of tax in his last Budget as Chancellor. He never explicitly used the S-word over the 10p tax fiasco, however, only accepting that he was sorry when asked.

Mr Green, the Tory immigration spokesman, was arrested at his constituency home in Kent last November and grilled by police for nine hours into a series of Home Office leaks. While he was held police launched an unprecedented raid on his Commons office which many MPs felt had ridden roughshod over the principle - if not the actual rules - of parliamentary privilege.

The Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, said today that after careful consideration of the evidence neither Mr Green nor Christopher Galley, the young Home Office employee responsible for the leaks, would face charges because the leaks did not involve national security.

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