Sir Andrew Turnbull

Whitehall's top mandarin as rejected Clare Short's claim that the proper machinery of government was by-passed in the run up to the Iraq war.

In an interview with the Tablet on Thursday, the former international development secretary continued to criticise the government's conduct.

"The deceit on the road to war and the deliberate marginalisation of the UN led to an unforgivable failure to prepare for the aftermath of the inevitable speedy victory," she wrote.

The latest comments followed her claims at the weekend that Cabinet secretary Sir Andrew Turnbull allowed a "rush to war".

"He allowed us to rush to war in Iraq without defence and overseas policy [sub-committee] meeting, looking at all the military options and the diplomatic options and political options," she said.

But giving evidence to the Commons public administration committee on Thursday, Sir Andrew insisted that proper procedures had been followed.

"Iraq was discussed at virtually every Cabinet meeting that I went to since I took the job on in September 2002.  There were probably discussions even before that," he said.

"But I would say there was a discussion on the emerging situation in Iraq, the negotiations with the UN, consistently week by week.

"It wasn't in a Cabinet sub-committee, it was in Cabinet itself."

He added that there was "regular discussion in Cabinet".

"What is clear is that she [Short] thought she wasn't...learning as much about what the prime minister was doing directly bi-laterally with colleagues, with the president of the United States, as she had an appetite for.

"She is entitled to that view," he said.

Sir Andrew went on to say that the Cabinet committee system "is pretty much what it always was".

"My point of reference is, I sat through Cabinet meetings in the Thatcher era, they weren't terribly different from what we have now," he told the MPs.

"Indeed, the way Cabinet is working now there is probably more discussion than there was in the final years of Mrs Thatcher."