Blair's inner circle targeted in cash-for-honours inquiry

London: The net was tightening around Tony Blair's inner circle this weekend as police stepped up their drive to obtain fresh evidence in the cash for honours affair.

Police sources say that Superintendent Graham McNulty, the officer in day-to-day charge of the inquiry and main interviewer, has in the past few days ordered the Labour Party to provide any remaining documents that might be relevant.

His communication with the party strongly suggests the police believe further key e-mails, letters and other documentation central to the affair have not yet surfaced. Furthermore, police gave Labour a list of the 11 individuals of the greatest relevance to the Met's latest trawl for evidence.

The individuals - whose names were listed just before Supt McNulty interviewed Blair at Downing Street on Thursday - include the Prime Minister's praetorian guard at Number 10: Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff; Lord Levy, his fundraiser-in-chief; Ruth Turner, his director of government relations; and John McTernan, his director of political operations.

Party officials who held senior office at the time of the 2005 general election, when Labour raised millions in secret loans, are also on the list: Ian McCartney, who was Labour chairman at the time; Matt Carter, then the party's general secretary; and Peter Watt, who succeeded him.

More intriguing are two further names, again previously unconnected with the investigation - Stephen Uttley and Andrew Roberts. Uttley was controversially hired as Labour's finance director in 2003, free of charge to the party, from the consultancy firm KPMG, which was, and still is, involved in billions of pounds of government contracts.

Roberts has worked in Labour's constitutional and legal unit, which examined the impact of the changes to party funding laws introduced in 2001.