Rail crash smear opens No10 rift

Charles Reiss12 April 2012

The Government today plunged into fresh trouble over the attempt to smear survivors of the Paddington rail crash amid suggestions of a rift between Downing Street and Tony Blair's newly-appointed Transport Secretary Alistair Darling.

The Transport Department has released yet another email which widens the evidence that a Government adviser was seeking to dig up dirt on the Paddington Survivors Group.

Last week the department issued a series of messages from Dan Corry, an aide to former Transport Secretary Stephen Byers, seeking to know if members of the group were Tories. The additional email says, however: "Any other checking useful. They seem to have anti-SB (Stephen Byers) agenda, and we want to find out what lies behind it."

The department said the new message had not been discovered earlier because of an "electronic glitch".

The tension between Mr Blair's communications chief Alastair Campbell and Mr Darling emerged after it was reported that No10 believed the profuse apologies from the new Transport Secretary when the emails first surfaced last week were "over the top".

Meanwhile, opposition MPs today sought to highlight separate charges of spin after it was revealed that civil servants were asked to investigate the motives of MPs who had put Commons questions to ministers. Others, though, thought it legitimate for ministers to be made aware of the interests of MPs they would have to face.

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