Calls grow for Byers to quit

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Beleaguered Transport Secretary Stephen Byers is facing fresh calls to quit today as anger grew over his winter sunshine holiday during the bitter rail dispute.

The Tories were preparing to raise the political pressure on Mr Byers, while Downing Street stonewalled on the issue and notably failed to offer him any direct support.

Mr Byers sparked fury yesterday after the Evening Standard revealed that his 10-day holiday to Asia with partner Jan Cookson had coincided with crippling strikes on South West Trains, hitting 150,000 London commuters.

The Transport Secretary is thought to be in India, although one report claimed he was on the Indonesian "paradise" island of Lombok.

He is not expected back at work until next week.

Officials travelling with Tony Blair on his visit to Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, when questioned, said simply that the Transport Department had already answered questions about Mr Byers' diary and that the problems of the railways were well known. They lay in a "botched privatisation" and in decades of underinvestment.

Asked whether Mr Blair supported Mr Byers, the reply was that the Prime Minister's views had not changed in any way.

Mr Blair has already been forced publicly to deny reports that he is poised to sack Mr Byers in the next few month after the furore surrounding the decision to put Railtrack into administration and the general chaotic state of the railways.

He has also faced fierce political attack over his decision not to dismiss Mr Byers's spin doctor, Jo Moore, for urging officials to "bury" items of bad news under cover of the 11 September terrorist attacks in the US.

Mr Byers is not thought to be in immediate danger of losing his job, but his status as one of the leading Blairite Cabinet ministers has been seriously damaged by his handling of transport, which has shot to the top of the list of domestic headaches for the Government.

Senior figures at Downing Street are understood to be exasperated by the continuing failures dogging transport policy.

Carol Bell, who survived the 1997 Southall rail crash with a fractured collar bone and ribs, claimed Mr Byers was living in a "parallel universe."

She added: "To take a holiday now has no defence.

"I think he should have resigned a long time ago but this just confirms how incapable the man is. He must go before more damage is done."

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