The British government inquiry into the Hinduja passport affair will be wide-ranging and should be completed by the end of February, Downing Street said yesterday.
After days of damaging headlines over the resignation of Mr Peter Mandelson, during which the Prime Minister's official spokesman appeared to question his mental stability, Downing Street attempted to slow down the stream of highly personal stories by focusing on the terms of the official inquiry.
The former Treasury solicitor, Sir Anthony Hammond QC, will be able to investigate the role of any minister in the affair. In recent days speculation has increased about the role played by the Europe Minister, Mr Keith Vaz, and it is understood Sir Anthony will be asking questions about his involvement in the passport applications of Mr Srichand Hinduja and his brother, Gopichand.
Mr Vaz has admitted making representations to the Home Office and Downing Street about their applications, but he has denied any wrongdoing and he has the support of the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair.
While the government clearly hoped that press interest in Mr Mandelson's resignation would have subsided this week, that desire was dashed when another of Mr Mandelson's friends sprang to his defence yesterday.
The author Robert Harris, who helped Mr Mandelson draft his Sunday Times article in which he claimed he resigned in a moment of weakness, said the former Northern Secretary could have saved his job if he had been given more time.
"I think certainly it was unfortunate that the whole of this affair seems to have turned on having the news ready to give to the morning lobby meeting at 11 o'clock on Wednesday," he told BBC Radio 4.
"If that briefing had been postponed by maybe only an hour, then the information that Peter Mandelson's private secretary handled this whole thing would have been in the Prime Minister's hands. To the extent that the whole thing was being driven by a media deadline - that is a very bad thing."
In a speech to Welsh businessmen in Cardiff, the Tory leader, Mr William Hague, said a "bitter civil war" was consuming most senior ministers. He said the Home Secretary, Mr Jack Straw - he alerted Mr Blair to the Mandelson-O'Brien telephone call - the Chancellor, Mr Gordon Brown and Mr Campbell had "rushed to bury the body of their old friend while it is still warm".
And he declared that cabinet ministers needed to "get a grip on something other than each other's throats".