A REVIEW team leader has denied being involved in a "stitch-up" of two former nursery workers branded paedophiles in the team's report.

Professor Richard Barker, who is being sued for libel, also denied that the team members saw their function as providing parents with a "public condemnation" of the workers after they were acquitted of sex charges.

Prof Barker was being cross-examined in London's High Court by Adrienne Page QC, for Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed, former workers at Newcastle's Shieldfield nursery.

Mr Lillie, 37, and Ms Reed, 31, are suing Prof Barker and the three other team members who wrote a 1998 report that concluded the pair had sexually, physically and emotionally abused nursery children in their care.

They are also suing Newcastle City Council, which commissioned the report, and the Newcastle Chronicle and Journal Limited which published stories on it.

Four years before the report, the two workers were acquitted of indecently assaulting young children from the nursery.

Miss Page said to Prof Barker: "I suggest your approach was to accept uncritically, without testing or checking, anything and everything that you could lay at the door of Chris and Dawn."

"You are perfectly at liberty to suggest that, indeed that is your job," Prof Barker replied. "But I do not believe I can agree with what you are suggesting."

He further denied the barrister's suggestion that the team had engaged in a "stitch-up" of Mr Lillie and Ms Reed.

The case continues.