Give Fox time to explain, says PM

10 October 2011 Last updated at 09:34 ET

David Cameron has said Defence Secretary Liam Fox should be given time to answer questions about his working relationship with Adam Werritty.

The prime minister said “rushing” would lead to “trial by the media”, adding that he believed Mr Fox would “come through all of this”.

Mr Fox has denied wrongdoing, but has admitted mistakes and apologised.

Mr Werritty, who has no government role or national security clearance, sat in on several meetings with Mr Fox.

Mr Fox set up a Ministry of Defence inquiry into his conduct, and will answer questions from MPs at 2.30pm.

The BBC has been told the prime minister will consider the interim report but will not make a final decision on Mr Fox’s future until he sees the full report due on 21 October.

Mr Werritty, 34, was Mr Fox’s best man in 2005 and a former flatmate and also used to carry cards describing himself as an adviser to “the Rt Hon Liam Fox MP”.

In his statement, Mr Fox admitted it had been “a mistake to allow distinctions to be blurred between my professional responsibilities and my personal loyalties to a friend”.

Mr Fox said that at no stage had he or his department provided classified information or briefings to Mr Werritty, who vid him a number of times at the MoD, or assisted with his commercial work in the defence industry – “let alone benefit personally from this work”.

“Nevertheless, I do accept that given Mr Werritty’s defence-related business interests, my frequent contacts with him may have given an impression of wrongdoing, and may also have given third parties the misleading impression that Mr Werritty was an official adviser rather than simply a friend,” he said.

The prime minister said Mr Fox had been “a very effective defence secretary”, but it was right that an investigation was being carried out.

“I’m sure that we can answer these questions and come through all of this,” he said.

“One can’t rush these things… there are important elements of natural justice have to show as prime minister. ’ve got to give people the time to answer questions, to unearth the information necessary to do that.

“One can’t run these things to some sort of pre-ordained media timetable.”

The BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson said: “This may not, after all, be D-Day for Liam Fox. The prime minister’s verdict is likely, I am told, to prove to be ‘interim’ as well.

“Downing St speeded up the process, persuaded Liam Fox to apologise and to throw himself at the mercy of MPs in the Commons. They hope he will come through.

“However the prime minister is being given the wriggle room that if the facts change between now and the 21 October so too can his verdict.”

‘Whitewash’

He added that a main source of information in this story had been involved in a complex and bitter legal case in the US courts, and it would have been impossible for the government to analyse all the information available over the weekend.

Earlier, Shadow Defence Secretary Jim Murphy said a weekend inquiry into years of allegations was not good enough.

“If David Cameron tries to clear his cabinet colleague today then it’s obvious that someone at number 10 has spent the weekend down at B&Q and buying enough paint to organise a whitewash.”

He said Liam Fox’s “partial apology” had been a “tacit admission” that he had broken the ministerial code.

Conservative MP Greg Hands said Mr Fox had made a “very full and frank admission of things that did go wrong”, which should be taken “at face value”.

He said nothing illegal had happened and there had been no breaches of national security.

He added: “There’s a lot of background to this case in the United States between a major corporation and a private equity firm and there is actually quite a bad smell about some of the briefing against Liam Fox that’s been going on.”

Employment Minister Chris Grayling also gave Mr Fox his full backing, telling BBC Radio 4’s World at One: “I’ve read through all the details of all the allegations very carefully and I can’t see that Liam has actually, tangibly done anything wrong – beyond, as he accepted, allowing the blurring of a friendship [and] his professional life to get too pronounced.”

But another Tory MP, Patrick Mercer, said he was concerned the affair would not go away quickly at a time when the armed forces needed a “capable and undistracted” defence secretary.

A series of newspaper revelations over the weekend increased the pressure on Mr Fox since he set up the inquiry on Friday:

• A video from a Sri Lankan TV broadcast emerged that showed Mr Werritty at a meeting the Sri Lankan president had with the defence secretary in London last year, although the MoD said Mr Fox had attended the meeting with Mahinda Rajapaksa in a private capacity
• Email correspondence published by the Guardian called into question Mr Fox’s claim that a meeting with defence industry businessmen in Dubai had been impromptu – suggesting, rather, that Mr Werritty had been involved in planning the discussions for some time.

On the Dubai meeting, which was said to have been brokered by Mr Werritty, the defence secretary said it had been “wrong to meet with a commercial supplier without the presence of an official”.

“I have apologised to the prime minister and agreed with my permanent secretary to put in place new procedures to ensure that this does not happen again,” he said.

He pledged to answer “all questions” in the House of Commons.

— ’re ’s , . : A ‘Malign Intellectual Subculture’ – George Monbiot Smears Chomsky, Herman, Peterson, Pilger And Media Lens.