Civil servants are being sidelined by ministers desperate to hand public funds to big businesses that too often fail to deliver, a committee of top MPs said yesterday.

Members of the Commons liaison committee called for a parliamentary commission to investigate the Civil Service following a series of high-profile contracting fiascos, which have shown there are "systemic failings" in the way Whitehall spends public money on big schemes.

The committee, which regularly questions Prime Minister David Cameron, cited the collapse of the tendering process for the West Coast rail franchise and the universal credit, G4S and Serco debacles.