Civil servants told to investigate MPs

The Government was accused last night of using the techniques of spin to politicise the Civil Service because officials have been asked to investigate the background and motives of MPs before answering their parliamentary questions.

Documents obtained by The Independent reveal how officials at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) were instructed to determine whether an MP asking a question was "friendly" before deciding how to respond to the inquiry. The Civil Service has a long-held principle that all questions should be answered on the basis of fact – that a question should have only one answer, regardless of who is asking it.

Civil servants were also asked to let the minister know if there has been any media interest in the subject of the question. The official advice is still used by officials in the DWP, which until two weeks ago was run by the reputedly "anti-spin" Alistair Darling, who took over as Secretary of State for Transport from Stephen Byers.

The guidance also asks for the profiles and political party of the MP to be checked before drafting a reply for a minister. It tells them to inform the minister of the motivation behind the question. The memo discloses that "personal profiles" of MPs are also held by the department, which civil servants can check before replying.

Opposition MPs reacted angrily last night and accused ministers of attempting to "politicise" the Civil Service. They fear that MPs such as Gwyneth Dunwoody, the Labour chairwoman of the Transport Select Committee, who has been critical of government policy, or John Bercow, the Tory frontbench MP who asks hundreds of probing questions, were being obstructed because of their persistence.

The Liberal Democrats plan to refer the matter to the anti-sleaze Committee on Standards in Public Life "for urgent consideration. This is the most alarming and explicit of the secret instructions being given to civil servants," said Andrew Stunnell, the Liberal Democrat Chief Whip. "By holding personal information on MPs and peers in a government library for the use of civil servants preparing answers to parliamentary questions, the Government is completely undermining the purpose of its own published rules.

"These instructions were in place when Alistair Darling was Secretary of State at the Department for Work and Pensions. Is he really the man to get the Department for Transport to clean up its act?"

The internal guidance was drawn up by civil servants in the parliamentary section of the DWP and has been in use "for many years" but officials could not say whether it had been introduced since Labour came to power in 1997. However, the document includes model answers with the date 8 January 2002 – when Mr Darling was in charge of the department. It also contains the names of government officials appointed after 1997.

The document says "ministers find it helpful to have a note explaining the thinking behind the suggested reply ... What are the MP's interests? ... Does the MP belong to any committees?"

Parallel advice from the Cabinet Office on answering questions, which is used by other departments, does not urge civil servants to vet MPs and tells them to deal with each question without political bias.

Last night a spokesman for the DWP denied that civil servants were being politicised but admitted that it was "political awareness with a lower case". She said that no minister, including Mr Darling, had seen the guidance.