NICK Raynsford has held on to the Greenwich & Woolwich seat for Labour but condemned the count conditions as "absolutely disgraceful".

He received 20,262 votes, ahead of Conservative Spencer Drury, who polled 10,109.

Mr Raynsford said afterwards: "In these circumstances to win with a majority roughly the same as last time is a source of great pride to me.

"I think we did all the things we needed to do to win."

But he joined other critics in slamming the cold conditions and the length of the count at the London Soccerdome, Greenwich.

Many of the 350 staff wore coats and scarves to keep warm in the huge room.

Mr Raynsford said: "It was absolutely disgraceful.

"People were working in freezing conditions and to end up with a declaration of two relatively straight forward poll counts at 7.15am was a very unfortunate experience.

"I hope lessons can be learned."

Mr Drury said afterwards that the night had been "very disappointing" for the Tories.

But he said: "I've had a really enjoyable campaign.

"I've had the opportunity to take the Conservative message to all sort of communities.

"I came second rather than thirs and from my point of view that's as good a result as I could have hoped for."

Liberal Democrat Joseph Lee received 7,498 votes, while the British National Party's Lawrence Rustem got 1,151.

Green candidate Andy Hewett dedicated the 1,054 votes he received to his grandmother, who died yesterday.

Topo Wresniwiro from the English Democrats polled 339, and Edward Adeleye from the Christian Party got 443.

Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition candidate Onay Kasab received 267 votes and Tammy Alingham, who stood as an independent, got 65.

Labour received 49.2 per cent of the vote, the Tories 24.5 and the Lib Dems 18.2.

The constituency saw a 5.1 per cent swing from Labour to Conservative.