Byers tells MPs: I did not mislead you
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Your support makes all the difference.Stephen Byers today denied misleading Parliament over the Martin Sixsmith affair and refused to resign.
In a highly charged Commons statement, the beleaguered Transport Secretary said he had acted "in good faith".
With Tory MPs baying for his resignation, he insisted: "I have not misled the House as some have alleged.
"All of my statements have been based on the information available to me.
"That is precisely why the agreed statement with Mr Sixsmith explicitly says that any misunderstanding over his resignation was in good faith."
Mr Byers was answering furious Opposition charges that he had misled the Commons in February by saying his department's communications director had resigned, when he had not.
But shadow transport secretary Theresa May told MPS: "The Secretary of State is at it again."
After reading out quote after quote from Mr Byers' 26 February statement saying Mr Sixsmith had resigned, she told MPs: "If he had a single shred of decency left, wouldn't he go and go now."
Mr Byers told MPs that his statement followed Sir Richard's account of events
surrounding the Sixsmith affair which had been published the previous day.
"Both statements made clear that discussions aimed at resolving the terms of Martin Sixsmith's departure were continuing."
The Transport Secretary on February 26 repeated time and again that Mr Sixsmith had already resigned, when an agreed statement released by his department earlier this week made clear that was not the case and Mr Sixsmith will leave his post as communications director at the end of this month by mutual agreement.
The row surrounds the Jo Moore e–mail affair when she was said to have been warned off releasing bad news on the day of Princes Margaret's funeral.
At the height of the affair Mr Byers announced on February 15 that both Ms Moore and Mr Sixsmith had quit.
The statement earlier this week said that move had been prompted by an "incorrect" understanding of the events of February 15.
Mr Byers told MPs today: "There is therefore nothing new here and indeed nothing that was not a matter of record at the time of my statement on 26 February which explicitly referred back to my Permanent Secretary's account.
"In my statement I made clear the reason for my understanding, based on the information I had been provided with, that Martin Sixsmith had agreed to resign.
"I have not misled the House as some have alleged. All of my statements have been based on the information available to me."
He later insisted: "This House has not been misled by this Secretary of State."
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