Liam Fox friend to be questioned

11 October 2011 Last updated at 00:58 ET

Senior civil servants investigating the conduct of Defence Secretary Liam Fox are expected to interview his close friend Adam Werritty.

They will ask him why he joined the cabinet minister on a third of all overseas trips since he came to office.

No 10 has said serious mistakes were made and asked an internal inquiry to address “all remaining questions”.

Labour MP John Mann has said Mr Fox should be sacked, but the minister insisted he had done nothing wrong.

Mr Werritty was present on 18 out of 48 overseas trips, according to records released by the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

They included visits to Singapore, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Hong Kong, Israel, New Zealand, Australia, Qatar and Sri Lanka.

‘Clearer rules’

Mr Werritty also vid Tampa in Florida, where he dined with General John Allen, who has since become the head of Nato forces in Afghanistan.

He also travelled to Washington DC before flying back with Mr Fox.

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”.

But he had no formal or paid role at the MoD or the Conservative Party and little is known about how the visits were funded.

The Times has claimed Mr Werritty declared around £20,000 in income from his private companies over the past four years.

In Parliament, Mr Fox said Mr Werritty’s income was “not dependent on any transactional behaviour to maintain his income”.

He also apologised to MPs for the controversy but insisted that he had never put national security at risk.

Meanwhile, Labour has been stepping up the pressure on Mr Fox over the whole affair.

MP John Mann said: “The cover-up comes across as being even worse than whatever’s been done in the first place.

“And with all this hanging over him, and this strange relationship with Adam Werritty… it does seem to me that David Cameron’s got no choice: he’s going to have to get rid of Liam Fox from his cabinet.”

But Conservative MP Nick Boles said he did not believe Mr Fox was irreparably damaged.

“I’m sure that Liam has learned from this. I’m sure that everybody in frontline politics has learned from this,” he said.

“Um, and yes, we need to have clearer rules and abide by them. But, nothing yet has been suggested that somehow the public interest was harmed.”

Mr Cameron has discussed the findings of an interim report on the inquiry with Mr Fox, a Downing Street spokesman said.

The prime minister is not expected to make a final decision on Mr Fox’s future until he sees the full report, which is due on 21 October.

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