Kenneth Clarke has returned to the Conservative frontbench to launch a strong attack on the chancellor's role in the collapse of Railtrack.

Last week he was the first Tory leadership contender to be voted out of the race, a result that was seen as bringing the curtain down on his political career.

But the former chancellor made a temporary return to frontline politics on Monday afternoon.

In a Conservative debate on Railtrack, Clarke sought to turn up the heat on Gordon Brown's involvement in how the company's collapse was handled.

Following the end of the shareholder court case, in which the government was cleared of wrong-doing, former transport secretary Stephen Byers has been referred to the Commons standards committee for giving inaccurate evidence to a select committee.

But Clarke was set to take the opportunity to add to the government's embarrassment, placing the blame for the affair at the door of Number 11.

"This debate goes to heart of Labour’s arrogance in power," Clarke said ahead of the debate.

"The Treasury devised and implemented a secret plan to send a quoted company into bankruptcy.

"It was concealed from parliament and executed by special advisers under the direct control of Gordon Brown.

"Thousands of shareholders - most of them railway men - lost out as a result.

"And all so Gordon Brown could fiddle the books by keeping Network Rail's debt off the balance sheet."

The Commons motion, which will be defeated by the government, criticises the "lack of openness and transparency" over the collapse of the former rail infrastructure company.

It also "criticises the conduct of the chancellor of the exchequer's special adviser for usurping the proper role of ministers".

And it adds that the episode is "an example of disgraceful impropriety in the formation of policy and the execution of government decisions".

Defence

Defending the government's record, Alistair Darling said ministers had acted correctly.

The transport secretary told MPs it would be "quite extraordinary" if the chancellor failed to take an interest in the railways as they "consume a remarkably large amount of the public finances".

"It is no surprise that the chancellor should take an interest," he said.

Clarke said had he been chancellor he would have expected a "crucial say" in the issue.

But he added: "We would have exchanged cabinet papers, we would have had a meeting of a cabinet committee.

"I would certainly not have sent along a special adviser to make cynical remarks about all involved, to try to devise strategies for getting rid of the interests of the shareholders in a company."

The former chancellor also said he would not have expected former transport secretary Stephen Byers to "allow himself to be used as a cipher in all this".

But Darling responded that if Clarke "had taken a bit more interest in public finances he would never have allowed Railtrack to be set up in the first place".

"The setting up of Railtrack cost this country dear in every sense of that word," he noted.

Headlines

Stephen Byers also intervened in the debate to insist there was nothing new in the Conservative claims.

"I was looking for some substance and something new. I'm afraid it was a rehash of the arguments that were put on behalf of the claimants in the court case which they comprehensively lost," he told MPs. "It was all headlines and no substance."

The ex-minister defended his position, saying the decision to seek Railtrack's administration had been taken in the interests of the travelling public.

And he said the Tories were fighting past battles and failing to talk about how they would improve services.

Botched

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats said the choice of subjects for debates showed the Conservatives to be obsessed with past events.

"We should be using valuable parliamentary time to look ahead to how we can improve the railways," said transport spokesman Tom Brake.

"The decision to turn Railtrack into a not for profit company was originally a Liberal Democrat idea, and was the right decision given the Tories botched privatisation of our railways.

"The Conservatives are demonstrating yet again that they would rather look backwards than solve the problems on our railways that they created, and that Labour have failed to resolve."

A Lib Dem amendment to the Tory motion criticised the "botched privatisation of the railways" under former prime minister John Major.

It also says that "millions of pounds of taxpayers' money was lost by the massive undervaluation of Railtrack at the time of privatisation".