TESSA JOWELL faced an inquiry last night into her role in a transaction at the heart of a corruption investigation into dealings between her husband and the Italian Prime Minister.

The Conservatives formally asked Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, to investigate whether Ms Jowell had breached the ministerial code.

The request came after a report in The Sunday Times saying that Ms Jowell, the Culture Secretary, had signed an application to raise about £400,000 by remortgaging the London home she owns jointly with her husband David Mills.

The loan was repaid within weeks but, in a complex series of financial transactions, was used by her husband to gain access to a £350,000 long-term loan or gift that Italian prosecutors say was paid to him by Silvio Berlusconi, Prime Minister of Italy, for help in two corruption hearings against him.

David Blunkett, the former Cabinet minister who was twice forced to resign after allegations of impropriety, added to the pressure on Ms Jowell by backing the Tories’ call for an inquiry. He said that it would allow her to clear her name.

“I’ve no doubt that he has had time to think about it and will be able to do it and I hope he does it very quickly, so we don’t get these silly heads of steam up,” Mr Blunkett told BBC Radio 5 Live.

“There is always an effort to link the public and the private. I don’t believe, in reading the story this morning, that [there is] any evidence whatsoever that Tessa Jowell’s public role as a minister, past or present, has anything whatsoever to do with her husband’s affairs.”

Theresa May, the Shadow Leader of the Commons, wrote to Sir Gus to ask that he investigate whether the transaction amounted to a conflict of interest with Ms Jowell’s role as a member of the Government. “The question is has there been any breach of that ministerial code,” Mrs May told The Sunday Programme on GMTV. “I think that, in issues like this, what people look for is an independent party, if you like, looking at that ministerial code.

“I have written to the Cabinet Secretary and asked him to confirm that there has been no breach of the ministerial code so people can feel that there is somebody other than the parties immediately involved, who is showing that actually has been dealt with appropriately if that is the case.

“I think the question that is difficult from what we see in the papers is how much she actually knew about these transactions that were going on.” William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, told the Jonathan Dimbleby programme on ITV1 that any inquiry should consider the role of civil servants at Ms Jowell’s department in issuing a statement on Mr Mills’s behalf denying wrongdoing in the affair.

Mr Hague said: “There are one or two questions to answer. We are not going to get involved in a legal case that is nothing to do with politics, but we will want to know whether any Government resources have been used — as has been alleged in one or two newspapers — in dealing with this.”

Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the Lord Chancellor and a close friend of Tony Blair, lent support to Ms Jowell yesterday. He said that he was confident that she had done nothing wrong. On The Politics Show on BBC One he said: “She has been a really good minister. She should stay in her job.”

He added: “She is the best Culture Minister we could have. She has my full support.”

THE CAREER OF DAVID MILLS

1968 David Mills is called to the bar

1978 Mills opens the London office of Italian law firm Carnelutti

1979 Leaves his first wife to marry Tessa Jowell

1982 Sets up his own commercial law firm called Mackenzie Mills, which attracts Silvio Berlusconi as a client

1990 The firm now has a 50-strong client base

1994 Investigators start to look at offshore businesses belonging to Berlusconi

1996 The Serious Fraud Office stages a raid on an office that is connected with Mills over the activities of Berlusconi’s companies

1997 Mills allegedly misleads an Italian court trying Berlusconi and leaves his law firm

1998 The lawyer allegedly makes a false declaration during a second hearing

1999 A £350,000 “gift” is placed for Mills in an offshore hedge fund

2000 Mills and Jowell take out a mortgage of £450,000

2000 The £350,000 “gift” is brought onshore in order to repay the mortgage

2004 Mills tells his accountants that the gift has come from “the B people”

2004 Mills tells Italian prosecutors that the money was from Berlusconi, but later retracts this.

2006 Mills’s home and office are raided by British police at the request of Italians

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