When Kim Howells made his misleading statement to Parliament that John Williams had mentioned his draft at the Hutton Inquiry, I contacted Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell asking him to ensure that Howells met his obligations under the ministerial code - to retract and/or apologise.

I have now had a reply from Sir Gus that follows exactly the same line as a written parliamentary answer from Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, studiously ignoring the simple fact that Howells made a statement to Parliament that was untrue. With no apparent sense of irony, O'Donnell included an excerpt from the Hutton Inquiry transcript in which John Scarlett denied that Williams was assisting him.

It is a constitutional outrage that O'Donnell, the country's top civil servant, has chosen to cover for a minister who has misled Parliament.