Tory leader asks Blair to confirm Byers misled MPs

Pressure on Stephen Byers increased last night after Iain Duncan Smith, the Tory leader, wrote to Tony Blair demanding a response to allegations that the Transport Secretary had misled Parliament.

Mr Duncan Smith's letter centred on a report in The Independent on Thursday that Mr Byers' statement to MPs conflicted with an account given by Martin Sixsmith, his director of communications.

The Tory leader's letter was sent as Parliament's standards watchdog said it was preparing to call Mr Sixsmith, Alastair Campbell and Jo Moore, Mr Byers' former special adviser, to give evidence on the role of spin doctors in Whitehall.

In an interview to be broadcast tomorrow, Sir Nigel Wicks, chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said he would be "a little surprised" if his committee failed to summon the three of them.

Mr Byers could face further embarrassment after Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, admitted that the Government was no longer seen by the public as "whiter than white" because of his misleading comments on television.

In his letter to Mr Blair, Mr Duncan Smith highlighted the fact that Mr Sixsmith's dossier of conversations with Mr Campbell and Sir Richard Mottram, the permanent secretary at the Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions, appeared to contradict Mr Byers' comments in the Commons.

Mr Byers told MPs on Tuesday that he had not demanded the resignation of Mr Sixsmith as a condition of the departure of Ms Moore, his former special adviser, last month. But notes kept by Mr Sixsmith and published in The Independent subsequently suggested that the Transport Secretary told both Sir Richard and Mr Campbell that he had promised Ms Moore that the former BBC correspondent's head would roll.

In questioning over his role in the affair in the Commons on Tuesday, Mr Byers said: "There was no linkage between the two. Jo Moore resigned without any conditions being attached."

In his letter, Mr Duncan Smith said: "I would be grateful if you would clarify this. Did Alastair Campbell and Sir Richard Mottram say those words, or anything like them, to Martin Sixsmith? This could be cleared up by a simple answer by you as to whether or not Martin Sixsmith's published account is correct."

Mr Byers announced the resignations of Ms Moore and Mr Sixsmith on 15 February, after a row about an e-mail warning against attempts to "bury" bad news on the day of Princess Margaret's funeral. Mr Sixsmith has since denied that he offered his resignation.

Sir Nigel Wicks told a pre-recorded interview for GMTV's Sunday Programme that he wanted to run an investigation into the role of special advisers and how they related to ministers and civil servants.

"I would be a little surprised if those people Jo Moore and Martin Sixsmith were not on our list. If Alastair Campbell would like to come to talk to us, I'm sure we would be very willing to listen to him," he said.

Interviewed for the same programme, Ms Jowell said she understood public anger at recent events. "Yes, I understand why people feel bewildered, angry and frustrated," she said. When asked if she would accept that the Government was no longer perceived as being "whiter than white", Ms Jowell replied: "I think that's right. I think that allegations of sleaze and worse do affect public perception and I think that's a very bad thing."