A committee of British members of parliament has begun an inquiry into what the opposition has called the fiasco over the redevelopment of Wembley stadium in London.

The MPs have no power to punish, but a BBC sports correspondent says they will ask awkward questions of those involved, including the former sports minister, Tony Banks.

Culture Secretary Chris Smith, who has overall responsibility for sport, last month scrapped plans to rebuild the seventy-seven-year-old stadium for both football and athletics, after an independent consultant reported that it would be unsuitable for the Olympic Games.

Mr Smith decided that the new Wembley, which will cost four-hundred-and-seventy-five million pounds some seven-hundred-and-fifty-million dollars, would be for football only. Wembley National Stadium Limited, the subsidiary the Football Association set up to handle the project, was ordered to repay twenty million of the one-hundred-and-twenty-million pounds of national lottery money it was given to help build the dual-purpose stadium.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service