Government plotting to 'neuter' one of its harshest backbench critics

The Government is plotting to "neuter" Gwyneth Dunwoody, one of its sternest critics, by packing her Commons committee with Blair loyalists.

Labour whips are preparing to use the reconstitution of the Transport Sub-Committee to remove rebel MPs who support Mrs Dunwoody. The committee, whose scathing report on the Government's 10-year transport plan helped to bring down Stephen Byers, will be broken up by a parliamentary order and recast next month on the eve of Parliament's summer recess.

The change has been prompted by the break-up of Mr Byers' Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions into two new Whitehall departments. The new Transport Select Committee will monitor the work of the Transport Department, while a sister committee will scrutinise the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, including environment and the regions.

MPs believe whips intend to use the changes to ensure that the committee does not criticise transport policy. The new members could even attempt to remove Mrs Dunwoody as chairman, although that might not wash with the wider party.

The move would be sweet revenge for a Government that tried and failed last summer to oust Mrs Dunwoody from her post. A backbench rebellion ensured she remained in place.

It is understood that Labour committee members such as Louise Ellman, Brian Donohoe and George Stevenson are in the whips' sights.

The first hints of an attempt to muzzle the sub-committee came last week in an article in Tribune magazine when Helen Jackson, Labour MP for Sheffield Hillsborough and a member of the committee, criticised her fellow committee members for "rubbishing" Mr Byers and saying it posed a "dangerous challenge to the democratic base on which the Government rests".

Mrs Dunwoody hits back today with a letter to Tribune that attacks Mrs Jackson for failing to attend the sub-committee's meetings. "I'm so sorry she doesn't drop in on us more often," she writes.

Meanwhile Tony Blair refused to make a direct apology to the Paddington rail crash survivor Pam Warren. He insisted there had been no attempt to discredit her. But he agreed to "stand by" the apology issued by the Department of Transport after The Independent revealed former special adviser Dan Corry's e-mail attempt to find information about the survivors' action group.