Cherie Blair is to be paid £30,000 to speak about life in Downing Street, by a wealthy American widow at the center of a row with the Jewish community

Richard Eden:

Before making the speech in Florida on Tuesday, the Prime Minister's wife will also be a lunch guest at Everglades, a private members' club which has in the past been criticised for excluding Jews and black Americans. Her son Nicky, 20, will accompany her.

Mrs Blair's speech and the lunch will be funded by Maureen Donnell, 74, who provoked controversy in 2004 by arguing successfully that Palm Beach was discriminating against Christians by erecting a menorah, a lamp lit during the Jewish festival of Chanukah. The case divided the city, which has a large Jewish population.

Mrs Blair's lecture, the John R Donnell Memorial Speech, which she will give at the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach, will come on a speaking tour of America during which she is expected to earn about £150,000.

It comes after revelations yesterday that the Blairs have mortgage debts of almost £4 million - higher then previously thought - with monthly payments of at least £16,000 on properties in London, Bristol and Durham.

Mrs Blair has told friends that she "needs the money" from her lectures to fund huge outgoings, particularly the £3,467,000 mortgage on the central London townhouse bought in 2004. She has been embroiled in controversy over offending Jewish people in the past. In 2002, she appeared to express sympathy for Palestinian suicide bombers within hours of an explosion in Jerusalem that killed at least 19 people.

She was forced to apologise after saying during a visit to a Palestinian medical charity in north London: "As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make progress."

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