'Liar Byers denies the lot'

Charles Reiss12 April 2012

Defiant Stephen Byers today flatly denied all charges against his conduct and honesty over his ousted departmental press chief, Martin Sixsmith.

Cheered on by Labour MPs, the Transport Secretary shrugged off calls for his head from both Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.

But there was no hiding the embarrassment, and the turmoil for the Government, as Mr Byers was forced to face the music in the Commons just 24 hours after he had refused to appear.

The charge from the Opposition, accompanied by howls of "resigns" from Tory MPs, was that Mr Byers had misled Parliament by saying, in a statement to the Commons in February, that Mr Sixsmith had voluntarily resigned from the Transport Department.

Mr Byers's exit route today was seen by some, including Tory MPs, to point the blame towards his civil servants and, above all, on his permanent secretary, Sir Richard Mottram.

Mr Byers declared: "I have not misled the House, as some have alleged. All of my statements to the House have been based on the information available to me."

Amid a din from both sides that several times brought his statement to a halt, he harked back to two key conversations between Sir Richard and Mr Sixsmith on 15 February - the day both Mr Sixsmith and spin doctor Jo Moore left the department.

"These led him to inform me that Martin Sixsmith had agreed to resign," said Mr Byers. His statement also outlined how the announcement was made before it was possible to agree the detailed plans of his resignation. It was, Mr Byers went on, "the information I had been provided with" that led him to say Mr Sixsmith had agreed to go.

Mr Byers's "clean-sheet" denial was swiftly condemned by his Tory shadow, Teresa May, who complained Mr Byers had shown "no remorse, no regret and no glimmer of an apology". She went on: "If he had a single shred of decency left, would he not go and go now?"

Although Labour's rank and file, not for the first time, came noisily to Mr Byers's aid, there were only muted cheers when he tried to turn the heat on the Conservatives by reading out a list of his Department's recent achievements.

Tony Blair had been on hand to hear a statement from John Prescott immediately beforehand, but well before the Transport Secretary got to his feet, the Prime Minister had slipped out, to attend a long-scheduled engagement, Downing Street said.

Fellow ministers and Labour MPs were counting the cost as the damage to the Government grew.

The latest victim of the fallout today was a furious Mr Prescott. The Deputy Prime Minister saw his cherished proposal to set up elected assemblies across England, to be announced this afternoon, eclipsed by the row.

The plan for local parliaments had been scheduled for a big press launch, with Mr Byers appearing alongside Mr Prescott in his capacity as Secretary of State for Local Government.

But this morning, Mr Byers was hurriedly dropped from the event and there were suggestions the entire press conference might be cancelled.

Two days ago, the Transport Department issued a statement acknowledging Mr Sixsmith had never handed in his cards and voicing regret that the suggestion had ever been made.

By this morning it was clear Mr Byers had no choice but to volunteer to make a statement or be forced to make one. The Tories, headed by Iain Duncan Smith, had demanded the Speaker's consent for an emergency question, certain to be granted had not Mr Byers volunteered.

And Lib-Dem leader Mr Kennedy said: "I do think it would be better for all concerned, himself included, for Stephen Byers to just give up the ghost on this one."

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