The denial came amid continuing argument about the reliability of the computerised control systems of the ill-fated RAF Chinook helicopter which ploughed into the Mull of Kintyre.

Both the magazine Computer Weekly and Channel 4 News have come forward with fresh allegations of a cover-up in the crash, which senior officers said resulted from negligence by the pilots.

Computer Weekly first raised questions about the nature of the crash in May of this year when it said it had evidence which suggested engine control software may have been the cause of the crash.

Magazine has "new evidence"

The latest allegations stem from a legal row between the MoD, Boeing, and another firm after an RAF Chinook being tested in the United States was damaged in 1989.

The MoD has maintained that this case concerned testing procedures and not the computer system itself, as the problem would have been picked up in advance if the testing had been properly done.

But Computer Weekly said it had new evidence showing that in a 1995 legal battle with the other firm, Textron Lycoming, the MoD maintained there was a fundamental design flaw in the software.

The magazine states: "The document shows that the lawyers based the MoD's case against the suppliers principally on the role that the FADEC system (the electronic control system) played in the destruction of a test helicopter in 1989, and specifically rejected that faulty test procedures were to blame."

It said government documents contradicted recent statements by former MoD minister Doug Henderson that the claim arose from the testing procedures.

The magazine said the document undermined the safety of the 1995 RAF board of inquiry into the Mull of Kintyre disaster and that details of the MoD's claim against Textron were not reported to that inquiry team.

Whitehall 'cover-up'

Channel 4 News also reported it had seen internal MoD documents suggesting a "concerted cover-up at Whitehall".

"Their case for compensation was based almost entirely around the faulty software," said the programme.

And it claimed that in private, the MoD had "no problem" with the testing procedure and had, in its own words, "refuted those assertions (that) the testing was flawed in various ways".

But an MoD spokesman responded: "There was no cover-up. "We intend to stand ready to examine any new evidence that would make us reconsider reopening the board of inquiry.

Board of inquiry

"To date, we have not been presented with any new evidence to make us want to re-open the board of inquiry."

He added that none of the new material put forward contained "any new evidence or insights".

The board of inquiry findings said the likeliest cause of the Mull of Kintyre crash was the helicopter's wrong rate of climb, and that technical malfunction was unlikely but could not be positively disproved.

The inquiry findings were categorised as "gross negligence" on the part of the two pilots of the helicopter by senior officers who counter-signed the inquiry report.