John Prescott gave the go-ahead for a firm of developers to to build an enormous shopping centre months after the owners of the company secretly loaned Labour £3.3 million. Sir David Garrard and Andrew Rosenfeld, the 'Minerva Two', won the backing of the Deputy Prime Minister, to build a £500 million retail centre in Croydon, South London, which will become one of the country's 10 biggest shopping malls. Mr Prescott, who claims that he did not know about the series of loans that have plunged Labour into a crisis about sleaze, ruled last October that a rival retail development should not go ahead.