PM faces pressure over Libya deals

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Lord Jones, then trade minister, travelled to Libya in May last year to speak to business representatives, the Cabinet Office confirmed.

Former health minister Dawn Primarolo conducted talks with the Libyan prime minister last November, and Bill Rammell, then Foreign Office minister, held discussions with his Libyan counterparts in February.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson also met Libyan health ministers at the World Health Assembly in Geneva last year when he was health secretary.

The Libyan visits - detailed in a ministerial statement released on July 16 and relating to all ministers' overseas travel - will add more fuel to the row over the freeing of terminally-ill Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi on compassionate grounds.

Earlier this week, opposition parties said ministers had "serious questions" to answer after Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's son, Saif, claimed that the decision to release Megrahi was tied to a trade deal. Business Secretary Lord Mandelson dismissed the suggestion that the bomber's case was on the table during talks as "offensive".

The Prime Minister has come under fire for his silence on whether he agrees with Scotland's Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill's decision to release the man convicted of the 1988 terror attack on compassionate grounds.

Former deputy prime minister John Prescott became the first senior Labour figure to back Mr MacAskill's decision. Asked in a Sky News interview if he had any objection to the decision to release Megrahi, Mr Prescott said: "No, I don't have any objection.

"If the man is dying, if compassion is passed as it is in the Scottish administration, and the medical authorities then gave proof to that effect as they did, then it's a decision for their legal authority. You know Scotland has always had a great deal more independence in its legal authority, going back many years, so we have to respect that decision and I do."

His comments were immediately seized on by the Scottish National Party (SNP), who contrasted them with the stance of Labour in Scotland, and by Tories who said Mr Brown should state his views on the release.