Liam Fox ‘was warned on Werritty’

18 October 2011 Last updated at 09:19 ET

Mr Fox resigned on Friday after a week of pressure over his links to a friend

Former Defence Secretary Liam Fox was warned about his working relationship with Adam Werritty, an official report says, according to The Daily Telegraph.

The paper says Sir Gus O’Donnell’s report will conclude Mr Fox was warned a number of times about the risks of associating with Mr Werritty.

The report, set to be published shortly, is expected to conclude Mr Fox broke the ministerial code.

But it will say Mr Fox did not gain financially from the arrangement.

Speaker John Bercow has refused Labour leader Ed Miliband’s request for an urgent question – an attempt to make David Cameron give a Commons statement about the report.

Security issues

Mr Fox resigned on Friday, saying he had allowed his personal loyalties and professional responsibilities to become “blurred”.

It followed a week of pressure about his links to Mr Werritty, a friend who was not an employee of the government, or Conservative Party but who had met up with Mr Fox on 18 overseas trips and had carried cards describing him as his adviser.

BBC News Channel chief political correspondent Norman Smith said it appeared that the contents of the report meant it would have been inevitable Mr Fox would have had to go.

He said the report would say Mr Fox chose to ignore warnings about his links to Mr Werritty and there were security issues with Mr Werritty having access to his diary.

On Tuesday Downing Street revealed that Mr Werritty had met two other defence ministers – Lord Astor and Gerald Howarth – but said the Foreign Office had no record of their ministers having met him, nor was there any record of Mr Werritty attending meetings in Downing Street.

The prime minister’s official spokesman said: “There is no record of him coming to Downing Street. The prime minister has no recollection of meeting this person. He was not aware of his name, until he was talked about by the media.”

The report is expected to be eight or nine pages long and quite narrowly focused on Mr Fox and the ministerial code.

Atlantic Bridge

Labour have said further details must be made public of any donations Mr Fox or Mr Werritty solicited on behalf of organisations they were involved with.

These include Atlantic Bridge – a now defunct charity Mr Fox founded to promote Anglo-American relations – and Pargav, which Mr Werritty reportedly set up as a not-for-profit company to fund his trips abroad.

Shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy told BBC Radio 4’s World at One the prime minister should make a Commons statement onthe report.

“We are searching for the truth here and only three people know everything. One of them has resigned, one of them is Mr Werritty about whose whereabouts we have no idea, and the third person who knows everything is the Prime Minister.

“So it is time for the prime minister to tell us the full truth and all the facts.”

He said the report had done no more than “scratch the surface” of the row and failed to show the full extent of Mr Werritty’s contacts.

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