Labour backbench MP Gwyneth Dunwoody has said she will continue to speak out on controversial policy issues faced by the government.

"When you've done it in the past, you find it difficult to break habits", she told BBC HARDtalk's Tim Sebastian.

Ms Dunwoody, chair of the influential cross-party Commons Transport Select Committee, is well known for taking the government to task when she feels they are in the wrong.

And there are some who believe the Labour Government fears such opposition from within its own party more than the massed ranks of the Tories and Liberal Democrats outside.

Too much spin

Ms Dunwoody said there was too much spin in the government.

If people don't believe you, you don't get very far

Gwyneth Dunwoody

She believes however that Tony Blair genuinely wants to be honest with the electorate.

She added: "This is not an unrealistic government and they've come to the conclusion that, even if you do the right things, if people don't believe you, you don't get very far."

The spin, she said, was down to habit. "They started off thinking that image was everything. It took them a long time to realise that people actually wanted rather more than that."

Accountability

Lord Birt moved from the BBC to advising on transport

While the government has been criticised by some for having too many special advisors, Ms Dunwoody said problems only arose where advisors were not accountable enough.

"I don't care how many special advisors there are, as long as they're answerable to parliament", she said.

She felt more openess was required regarding the transport report by Lord Birt, former Director General of the BBC and now special advisor on transport.

Between �50,000 and �100,000 of the Department of Transport's money had been spent on the report, she claimed, which prompted her to write to the Prime Minister to ask why she had not yet been allowed to see it.

The Byers affair

Stephen Byers was accused of lying

Ms Dunwoody and her Select Committee have been criticised for putting the final knife in the career of Stephen Byers.

Mr Byers, the former transport secretary, resigned in May amid allegations that he had not told the truth about the circumstances of Martin Sixsmith's leaving office as a special advisor.

Former special advisor Sixsmith was caught up in Labour spin

Ms Dunwoody said she took criticism seriously but responded by saying: "People sometimes misunderstand that if you actually criticise, it's because you want people to stop making clucks of themselves before they do it, not afterwards."

Mr Byers was sacked, she said, on a basis "that had nothing to do with transport."

She added: "If you're wrong in the House of Commons it's best to say you're sorry."

Message to PM

Ms Dunwoody said she agreed with some of the changes the Labour Party had brought, but not all of them.

She cited one example: "To bring in highly complex tax changes that do quite often produce vey good results but nobody understands seems to me to be the wrong way round."

She also spoke of her concern about other policies such as the possibility of action in Iraq, stressing that she wanted to see and hear the evidence that Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction before committing troops could be considered.

Her message to the Prime Minister was: "Don't do this before you talk to us."

The interview can be watched in full on Thursday 15 August on BBC News 24 at the following times:

BBC News 24 (times shown in BST) 0430, repeated 2230