Byers under more pressure

Today's fatal train crash puts another big question mark over the future of beleaguered Transport Secretary Stephen Byers.

Mr Byers - attempting to fight off claims that he lied to MPs over the "resignation" of his press chief Martin Sixsmith - was in the North East promoting plans for regional government.

After hearing of the tragedy, he cut short a visit to Newcastle-upon-Tyne to return to London. In his first comments on the crash, he said: "All of our thoughts must be with the families and friends of those who have been killed or injured today.

"The emergency services are doing a marvellous job and they must be allowed to complete their work. In addition, the safety investigators from the Health and Safety Executive and representative of Railtrack and the train company are at the scene.

"The HSE will be undertaking an investigation. I have asked them to let me have preliminary findings as soon as possible."

The cause of the crash was not immediately clear - but any suggestion that the state of the rail network was to blame would pile more pressure on Mr Byers.

Only yesterday he attempted to shrug off Tory calls for his head over the Sixsmith affair by dismissing it as "froth", and claiming his department was delivering on the issues that "matter to people" including "making progress on the railways".

He insisted in yesterday's statement to the Commons: "By the next election what will really matter to people will not be the debate that we are having here but whether their trains are safer, more punctual and more reliable - and they will be."

Before today's crash, Mr Blair's aides had been urging the Prime Minister to use a likely July reshuffle to remove Mr Byers from the transport hot seat and put him into a lower-profile Cabinet job.

His cause was not helped today when the Labour party chairman Charles Clarke, one of the leading candidates to replace him as Transport Secretary, admitted the Sixsmith affair could have damaged the government. He told GMTV: "If there is an impression that misleading is going on, then of course it's damaging."

Mr Sixsmith is to pile further embarrassment on Mr Byers with an upcoming TV documentary detailing New Labour's manipulation of the civil service.

Channel 4 will screen the one-hour film, which threatens to reopen the fiasco of Mr Sixsmith's de par ture from Mr Byers's department.

Mr Sixsmith, a former senior BBC correspondent who stands to receive a £200,000 payoff after being forced out of his job, claimed today: "This is not a film about my personal agenda."

He added: "My experience gives me a locus on the relationship between politicians and the civil service. But I want to examine the broader concerns that have been expressed - that the Government is undermining the role of the civil service in pursuit of its political objectives."