(Reuters) - Bank of England Deputy Governor Paul Tucker has requested a hearing before parliament's Treasury Committee "as soon as possible" to clarify his position after allegations over his role in the Barclays Bank rate-fixing scandal.

"Mr Tucker is keen to give evidence to the Committee in order to clarify the position with regard to the events involving the Bank of England, including the telephone conversation with Bob Diamond on 29 October 2008," the Bank of England said in a statement on Wednesday.

Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond resigned from his post earlier this week after the bank was fined almost half a billion dollars for manipulating interbank lending rates.

On Tuesday, Barclays published a 2008 internal memo from Diamond refering to a telephone conversation with Tucker.

A senior manager had understood the memo to mean that the Bank of England and government might approve if they gave artificially low estimates of their borrowing costs at the height of the banking crisis to avoid giving the impression that Britain's banks were in difficulty.

Diamond will take questions from the Treasury Committee at 1300 GMT.