Smear row grows with new revelation

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

The Transport Department last night released yet another damning email which widened the evidence that a Government special adviser was seeking to do the 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 released yesterday 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 was unearthed after a "very thorough trawl" of electronic traffic between the department and the Labour Party's Millbank headquarters on 23 May. A spokesman said it had not been discovered earlier because of an "electronic glitch". And, in a threat of more embarrassment to come, it also said it was still not certain that the department's IT experts had been able to track down every email sent about the group.

Tony Blair's communications chief, Alastair Campbell, claimed only yesterday in a letter to The Independent that the newspaper had already been given access to the "full email traffic". The tension between Mr Campbell and Mr Darling emerged after it was reported that No 10 believed the profuse apologies from the new Transport Secretary when the emails first surfaced last week were "over the top".

Opposition MPs today sought to highlight separate charges of spin after it was revealed that Whitehall civil servants had been asked to investigate the background and motives of MPs who had put Commons questions to ministers.

Liberal Democrat MPs suggested this could be an attempt to undermine "difficult" MPs such as Gwyneth Dunwoody, a regular Government critic. Others, though, pointed out that it was entirely legitimate for ministers to be made aware of the background and political interests of MPs whom they would have to face at Question Time.