Liam Fox made serious mistakes – Cameron

British Prime Minister David Cameron said yesterday his defence minister had made “serious mistakes” in allowing a close friend to operate as his advisor despite having no official government role.

His spokesman’s remarks came just minutes after Defence Secretary Liam Fox issued a defiant account of his conduct in the House of Commons, and after Cameron received the first findings of an inquiry into the scandal.

Those findings revealed that Mr Fox had met Adam Werritty, his former flatmate and best man at his wedding, on 18 overseas visits since taking office in May 2010, and Mr Werritty had visited him 22 times at the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

Mr Fox has been under pressure for days over his ties to Mr Werritty, after claims that the 34-year-old posed as his advisor, brokered meetings with businessmen and accompanied him on ministerial trips including to Sri Lanka and Dubai.

In a statement to lawmakers, the 50-year-old defence secretary said the 18 trips where he met Mr Werritty “in the margins” included family holidays, and insisted most of their meetings at the MoD were “short, social meetings”.

“Mr Werritty was never present at regular departmental meetings, during private meetings we did not discuss either commercial or defence matters, he had no access to classified documents, nor was he briefed on classified matters,” Mr Fox said.

However, he repeated comments he made on Sunday that “it was a mistake to allow distinctions to be blurred between my professional responsibilities and my loyalties to a friend”, and said such meetings with Mr Werritty would now end.

Mr Cameron had earlier offered Fox his support while the minister challenges the allegations against him, and said he would wait until the full inquiry by the MoD’s top civil servant was completed before making a judgement.

'ut a spokesman for the Prime Minister later said the preliminary investigations had raised serious concerns. 'It is clear, as Liam Fox himself said yesterday, that serious mistakes were made in allowing the distinction between professional responsibilities and personal loyalties to be blurred -and this has clearly raised concerns about impropriety and potential conflicts of interest,' Mr Cameron's spokesman said.

He said it was clear that 'much tigher procedures' were needed to ensure no future breach of the rules on ministerial behaviour.

And he added that another senior civil servant who reports directly to Mr Cameron would join the inquiry into Mr Fox's behaviour, 'addressing all the remaining questions that have been raised by this issue'.