LONDON, Feb 21: The inquest into the death of Princess Diana is a “farce and a circus” that should be halted on national security and cost grounds, senior British politicians said on Thursday.

George Foulkes, a Labour member of Britain’s unelected upper House of Lords who sits on the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, said the hearing was a “fruitless exercise” as all the claims had been aired before.

“It’s becoming a farce and a circus and it will put the whole judicial system into disrepute if it continues,” he told BBC radio, adding that many of the theories about the 1997 Paris car crash had been aired already.

A French judicial inquiry and a separate British police review of the crash both concluded it was an accident, caused by Diana and her lover Dodi Fayed’s driver, Henri Paul, driving too fast whilst over the drink-drive limit.

But Fayed’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed, maintains the couple were murdered as part of a plot by the British establishment and security services.

He told the inquest on Monday the assassination had been carried out on the orders of Queen Elizabeth II’s husband Prince Philip because of opposition to the mother of the future king marrying a Muslim and having a child by him.

The former head of Britain’s overseas intelligence shadows, Richard Dearlove, came out of the shadows on Wednesday to refute the allegations, describing them as “absurd” and a slur on both him and the secret service.

Foulkes, a former government minister, said he was concerned about the implications for national security after hearing that a number of serving MI6 officers would be giving evidence anonymously at the inquest next week.

He was backed by another committee member, Labour lawmaker Dari Taylor, who told The Times that calling the MI6 officers was “going far too far” at a time when the security services were already overworked.

“We understand Mr Fayed’s grief. But the fact is that he has got to accept at some stage that there was nobody involved in his son's and princess Diana’s death. It was an accident... There was no conspiracy,” he said.

The former Foreign Office minister Denis MacShane also told the newspaper that Fayed had overstepped the mark, while a retired senior judge was also quoted as saying he was baffled as to why the MI6 officers had been called.—AFP