MP blames British Cycling and Team Sky for damaging Sir Bradley Wiggins' name

Britain's most decorated Olympian discovered on Wednesday he would not face a charge after UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) closed its investigation into a package, or jiffy bag, that was delivered to his doctor at the end of a race in France six years ago.

Despite talking to 37 witnesses over 14 months, UKAD boss Nicole Sapstead was forced to admit her agency had been unable to find out what was delivered to the doctor, and administered to Wiggins, because there are no records of the package's contents or his medical treatment.

The doctor in question, Richard Freeman, has been too unwell to speak to UKAD but neither British Cycling nor Team Sky could produce any paperwork to prove his claim it was a legal decongestant and not a banned corticosteroid - as was alleged to UKAD in September 2016 - and Freeman kept his notes on a laptop that he said was stolen in 2014.

Wiggins later criticised UKAD's investigation in a written statement, claiming it provoked a "witch hunt" and suggesting he might sue.

However, the first British rider to win the Tour de France also wrote none of this would have happened if "the infrastructure for precise record keeping been in place".

In an interview with this week's House magazine, Damian Collins MP agreed with the former Team Sky leader.

Collins said: "With the Bradley Wiggins case, you can look at it both ways and say it's a massive failure on the part of Team Sky and British Cycling that we can't prove what was in the jiffy bag. We can't prove what he was taking.

"Also for them, it's a massive failure on their obligations to Bradley Wiggins as well. If the allegation is that something suspicious is going on, people can neither prove it nor disprove it.

"The suspicion hangs over him, he can't prove his innocence either and this is one of our senior Olympians and you think how could we have got ourselves into this position."

It was Collins' select committee that arguably uncovered more in this saga than anybody else, as the top brass at British Cycling and Team Sky were asked to explain themselves last December and Sapstead came in to explain the dead end her investigation had reached in March.

The committee is currently writing a report on its investigation into doping in sport and his House interview has given several clues as to what might be in it.

As a solution to Wiggins' dilemma, Collins believes athletes' medical records should be shared between "a tight group of people or medics who work within their sports".

He said: "Why is it that in the case of the Bradley Wiggins jiffy bag that the doctors were effectively reporting to the coaches?

"They don't have their own separate chain of command where it's easy for a senior medic to come and spot check what's going on. It's all kept very tight."

And unlike UKAD and sports minister Tracey Crouch, Collins is an advocate of criminalising doping.

"There's not enough legal power behind UK Anti-Doping as a body, they don't have the power to seize medical records or financial records," he said.

"The police do. Therefore, if it was a criminal offence the police would have a clear, legal power and obligation to do that and there's a strong case to say we would have a more robust system if we did that."