MPs on Monday berated officials involved in the privatisation of Qinetiq, the defence research group, for acting like “naive babies in a sea of sharks” by signing off a deal “that stank to high heaven”.

In a bruising two-hour hearing before the public accounts committee, Sir John Chisholm, then chief executive of Qinetiq, was repeatedly forced to justify how he and nine other civil servants made a return of £107m ($220.8m) from a deal they helped to negotiate in 2003.