Cameron's Conservatives brush off scandals, try to refocus on economy

BIRMINGHAM England (Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative party on Sunday shrugged off a lawmaker's defection to the anti-EU UKIP party and a sex scandal that forced a minister's resignation, urging voters to focus on its economic plans instead. Meeting in the English city of Birmingham for its last party conference before a May 2015 election, the Conservatives scrambled to limit the fallout from the two scandals which threatened to overshadow their drive to get re-elected. Grant Shapps, the Conservative party chairman, said the imbroglios were a temporary and unimportant blip and that voters should focus on how his party was promising to continue to fix the expanding economy instead. "In politics the weather comes and goes and you get some choppy times, but actually the important thing for this country is to secure its future," Shapps told BBC TV. Saturday's defection of Conservative MP Mark Reckless to the UK Independence Party, which wants Britain to leave the EU, brings to two the number of such defections. Shapps said he didn't expect any more defections before the election. (Reporting by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge)