The handling of proposals to develop Wembley stadium have been branded a "cock-up" by the head of UK Athletics.

David Moorcroft was giving evidence to MPs investigating the failure of the new stadium to be able to host track and field events as originally intended.

The chief executive of UK Athletics said the over-complicated way the government, lottery bodies, sports bodies and stadium owners had all tried to find a compromise on uses for Wembley had been partly to blame.

'No conspiracy'

Mr Moorcroft told the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee: "I don't think it is a conspiracy, but you might not be a million miles away with cock-up."

The designs for the new national stadium had been launched in July last year but by December Culture Secretary Chris Smith had to declare to the Commons the stadium could not be used as part of a UK bid to hold the Olympic Games in 2012.

Explaining why the project had floundered, Mr Moorcroft said it "would have been a compromise between football and athletics and possibly the Olympic games."

He suggested that a minister given overall responsibility for major sporting events may help create a "more logical process" to ensure a similar situation did not recur.

Speaking for the British Olympic Association, Craig Reedie told MPs of his surprise when he found the stadium architects had not taken into account the needs of an Olympic stadium into their designs, only three days before its launch.

He said: "We specifically asked the architects involved - what instruction do you have to make it suitable for a Olympic capacity at 80,000 people and we found out they have had not had instructions to build that into the design."

The stadium attracted millions of pounds of lottery money, £20m of which the Football Association has said will be returned to athletic bodies.

An Olympic stadium is reckoned to need a capacity of more than 80,000 while the plans for Wembley could have only coped with 67,500 for track and field events.

Former sports minister Tony Banks, who stepped down last July, also told the committee that he had been surprised when the original idea for Wembley had to be ditched.

He said: "I became very concerned when I saw this thing beginning to unravel, because I thought we had a deal."