Prescott accuses MPs of knifing Byers

John Prescott rampaged on to the political frontline today by accusing Labour MPs of "knifing" Stephen Byers and finishing off the former transport secretary's Cabinet career.

The Deputy Prime Minister singled out veteran backbencher Gwyneth Dunwoody, chairman of the transport select committee, whose report savaged the Government's ? 180billion 10-year transport plan two days before Mr Byers quit.

Mr Prescott said: "They made a savage attack in words and language and frankly we must say that the select committee and Gwyneth Dunwoody put the final knife in the back of Stephen Byers."

He went on the attack the day after his surprise return to some of the Government's key policy areas - when Tony Blair's reshuffle handed him his own department and the power to deal with housing, planning and local government.

In a typically pugnacious display, shot through with his own brand of tortured grammar and syntax, Mr Prescott used a Radio Four interview to sneer at the media for concentrating on "trivia" and to round on the critics who had claimed he was on the way out.

Dismissively calling his Today programme interviewer Ed Stourton "Eddie", Mr Prescott said: "You guys go on about it - I'm in a wheelchair and I've got diabetics (sic) and therefore I must be finished and I'm 64 on Friday so I'm obviously knackered.

"Don't talk rubbish - talk about the substance. Let the people who listen through this microphone think about whether you've still got your abilities to be able to make judgments and to deal with the problems as they see it."

He was particularly scornful about the civil war inside Mr Byers's own department. He claimed: "It's a pretty trivial point. It's the kind of prattle we get from you press people. Do you think transport is about Martin Sixsmith and Jo Moore? They were involved in some terrible circumstances. People have paid a heavy price and probably rightly so."

Mr Prescott referred to Alistair Darling, the man chosen to replace Mr Byers in a stand-alone transport department, as "poor old Alistair" and claimed long-standing transport problems were not going to be solved overnight.

Meanwhile, Mr Blair attempted to draw a line under the disastrous Byers saga by throwing the political focus back on schools and hospitals.

The brightest stars of his new-look Government, David Miliband and David Lammy, took up their jobs as, respectively, schools standards minister and junior health minister. While they were getting down to work Mr Darling began his first day as Transport Secretary and warned there would be "no quick fixes" to Britain's gridlocked transport problems.