Stephen Byers is widely viewed in the papers as badly damaged, with the stories about who said what to whom about Railtrack continuing to dog his troubled department.

The Conservatives have demanded a civil service inquiry into allegations that the transport secretary deliberately gave a misleading account of unminuted comments from Railtrack's chief, John Robinson.

Jo Moore's position as special adviser to the transport secretary was again in the spotlight last night after it emerged that she ordered civil servants to brief selected journalists about Railtrack during Gordon Brown's pre-Budget report.

According to some reports, Moore supervised a "spinning" operation while the chancellor was speaking, whereby faxes of the minutes of a crucial meeting on Railtrack were sent to newspapers seen to be sympathetic to the transport secretary's stance on Railtrack.