Byers faces calls to quit after Jo Moore departure
British Transport Secretary Stephen Byers is facing demands to resign after his spin doctor and press chief were forced to quit.
Mr Byers announced that Jo Moore and Martin Sixsmith were both giving up their jobs.
It follows a blunt warning to the Transport Secretary from Downing Street to end the "civil war" raging in his department which has rocked the whole of Whitehall.
The row followed the leak of an email - apparently designed to damage Ms Moore - warning her not to try to use the funeral of Princess Margaret to "bury" sensitive announcements.
Ms Moore has been in the media spotlight ever since the leak of an earlier email which she sent after the September 11 terrorist attacks suggesting it was a good day to "bury" bad news.
In her resignation letter to Mr Byers, Ms Moore hit out at "some individuals" in the DTLR who, she says, had deliberately invented stories about her.
For the Tories, shadow transport secretary Theresa May says the whole affair shows Mr Byers is incapable of running his own department - let alone the railways and she called on him to resign.
Mr Byers acknowledged that the controversy which had raged around Ms Moore since the disclosure of her infamous email relating to the events of September 11 is affecting the work of the department.
"It is clear that there has been a breakdown of trust within the department. This could not be allowed to continue," he said in a statement.
Earlier, the Prime Minister's official spokesman Godric Smith told journalists: "It is apparent from all that is going on here that there are issues that are going to have to be looked at and sorted out by Stephen Byers and his Permanent Secretary."
