From No 10 to the BBC, Guardian writers look at the difficult questions posed by the Hutton inquiry to the leading institutions involved
Michael White, Richard Norton-Taylor, Patrick Wintour and Matt Wells
Monday January 26, 2004
Guardian
Downing Street
For Tony Blair the long wait for Lord Hutton to report has been a time of immense frustration. Here is a restlessly active politician in his prime, for once unable to pick up the phone and do something to resolve a crisis that may end his premiership. He wants to “move on” and thinks that most voters do too.
Despite the polls that say he must go if he is found to have lied, he expects to survive. Downing Street press officers keep saying they are not going to provide a “running commentary” on every rumour or theory that has surfaced, but those close to Mr Blair have been quietly hopeful.
Michael Howard’s decision to run with the issue at prime minister’s questions on two successive Wednesdays got them thinking it must mean the Tory leader’s backroom analysts have decided Mr Blair will not be found guilty of “sexing up” the Iraq intelligence dossier or of being responsible for the “naming strategy” that outed Dr David Kelly. Mr Howard, they reason, is getting his retaliation in first, before the report undermines it.
“Would I have set up the inquiry if I was not sure of my facts?” is the reassurance Mr Blair seems to have given colleagues in private. Others may be hammered by Lord Hutton – on both sides of the row with the BBC – but the prime minister will es cape serious censure. Elderly establishment judges do not destroy elected premiers, so the argument runs.
Optimists inside the Blair camp, Alastair Campbell (only half in these days) included, even think Geoff Hoon will survive. The defence secretary himself is less sure. Emotionally, he seems to have prepared to follow the path taken last year by Stephen Byers and conclude that he may have to go because the drubbing will not stop.
Downing Street has already taken steps to clean up its act. As Mr Blair told the Guardian in an interview last week, he now holds an open monthly press conference, the morning lobby briefings are open to all – and will be televised if the Phillis report on government communications has its way. He faces quizzing for several hours twice a year by the liaison committee – chairmen of all the Commons committees – as he will on Tuesday, ahead of Hutton, MPs noted wryly.
He might have added that Mr Campbell himself has resigned and left. Except that both men insist that the Kelly furore delayed his decision to step down – last spring or summer – rather than accelerated it.
Mr Campbell himself has his life on hold until “after Hutton” and is unrepentant in his disdain for the BBC’s conduct. Kevin Tebbit of the MoD and John Scarlett, head of the joint intelligence committee, were models of fastidious professionalism and detachment by comparison, he tells friends.
But hopes of a quick report in October, or even earlier, faded in the complexity of the extraordinary inquiry and the window it – and its website – opened on the workings of government.
If it was, as Blair loyalists complained, a “Beltway issue” (the Beltway is Washington’s equivalent of the M25), it had certainly put the politics junkies inside the Westminster/Whitehall Beltway under the microscope.
Yet Lord Hutton, the former chief justice of Northern Ireland, exudes rectitude. His determination to control the writing and publication of his report on his terms made it clearer with every day that passed that he would brook no interference, let alone a friendly call via the No 10 switchboard. No 10 is as much in ignorance of Lord Hutton’s conclusions as the average Sedgefield voter. It is an extraordinary situation.
Fortunately for Mr Blair, fate found an issue with which he could busy himself. “We might have been sitting around worrying about Hutton, instead we’re utterly focused on the tuition fees vote,” one official said this week as colleagues murmured that, though they were finally winning the argument with recalcitrant Labour MPs, they were still not winning the votes.
“It might still be 100 [Labour MPs] against us, it might be 90, it might be more than 100. I don’t like it,” said one insider. The whips have to get that number down to below 82 if the leadership is to be safe when MPs vote on the higher education bill’s second reading on Tuesday night.
The result will come at about 7.15pm. But it is likely that before then that the thumbs up – or down – will be given, that the body language will be lighter or more drained by the time the rebels enter the No lobby.
Not so with Hutton. By that time Mr Blair and his inner circle will have received Lord Hutton’s report, promising not to divulge its contents, let alone “spin” them.
BBC
If ever there was an example of getting your defence in first, it has been the BBC’s Hutton strategy over the past few months.
Instead of pulling down the shutters and refusing to comment on the inquiry until it reported – as the government did – the corporation busied itself with structural and editorial changes intended to pre-empt the expected criticism.
It appointed a deputy director general with the specific brief to overhaul the complaints and compliance procedures; one of the key weaknesses to emerge during the inquiry was the lack of a clear mechanism for dealing with the government’s complaint about Andrew Gilligan’s report on the Today programme.
The BBC has also tightened the rules on journalists writing for outside publications, reflecting the concern within the corporation about Gilligan’s article in the Mail on Sunday that named Alastair Campbell as responsible for “sexing up” the Iraq dossier.
Producers on the Today programme – and elsewhere in BBC News – must now log all bids for interviews with government ministers. The BBC and the government disagreed on whether Adam Ingram, the armed forces minister, was briefed about the Gilligan story before he appeared on the programme on the day it was broadcast last year.
This decks-clearing operation is intended to allow the BBC to mount a robust defence of Gilligan and its news executives next week. Greg Dyke, the director general, is determined that, while the corporation must learn legitimate lessons from the mistakes it has admitted over the Kelly affair, the integrity and strength of its journalism should not be undermined.
In private he is adamant that no one should be forced to resign, as it would give the impression that the government of the day could launch a “regime-change” operation on the BBC by shouting loud enough if it disliked one of its stories. Mr Dyke also feels a duty of care towards Gilligan, and believes journalists should be allowed to make mistakes, but recognises that the BBC has not had the structural mechanisms to admit those errors later.
Intelligence agencies
The intelligence agencies, thrust into the spotlight at the Hutton inquiry, are bracing themselves for sharp criticism in the law lord’s report.
At first, attention concentrated on allegations and denials that No 10 sexed up the Iraqi weapons dossier. Now it has shifted to the quality of the information provided by the intelligence agencies, MI6 in particular.
Though the inquiry showed that members of the defence intelligence staff protested at many of the claims in the dossier, they were ignored – not by Downing Street but by top intelligence officials. Downing Street suggested ways to harden up the dossier but the inquiry did not produce any evidence that claims were inserted in the dossier against the wishes of the intelligence agencies.
What the inquiry did reveal was that Tony Blair’s closest advisers, including Alastair Campbell, his communications chief, and Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff, put pressure on senior intelligence officers and they succumbed.
John Scarlett, chairman of Whitehall’s joint intelligence committee, insisted that the dossier was under his “ownership”. Mr Blair underlined the point in his evidence.
The way the dossier was compiled is highly relevant to Hutton’s terms of reference – the circumstances which led to the David Kelly’s death – since it could help to explain the scientist’s state of mind when he criticised the document in conversations with Andrew Gilligan and other BBC journalists.
There is no evidence so far to back up the dossier’s central claims, notably that Iraq continued to produce weapons of mass destruction. Equally damaging for the intelligence agencies, another highly controversial claim – that Iraqi forces could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes – was attacked by the parliamentary intelligence and security committee and the Commons foreign affairs committee as taken out of context and given undue prominence in the dossier.
The intelligence agencies, and Mr Scarlett in particular, believe they are vulnerable to criticism from Hutton on at least two counts: Mr Scarlett told the inquiry that the 45-minute claim referred only to battlefield weapons, and not longer-range missiles as the dossier implied; and Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6, admitted the committees’ criticisms were “valid”.
Intelligence officials are now distancing themselves from some of the dossier’s claims. They argue that intelligence is almost always a question of assessment and judgment, not hard facts. That should have been made clear by ministers when the dossier was published, they say. The issue is all the more serious, they add, as intelligence comes increasingly under the spotlight because of the threat from terrorism.
The intelligence agencies are deeply concerned that the row over the dossier has provoked widespread scepticism about the value of the information they provide.
The agencies are also worried that the row over the dossier, and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, will lead to calls for much greater independent and parliamentary scrutiny of the intelligence they provide to ministers.
If Mr Scarlett is criticised by Lord Hutton he will find it difficult to stay at his post. Untouched, he could take over MI6 from Sir Richard Dearlove who is due to retire in the summer.
MoD
The Ministry of Defence has been holding its collective breath, officially keeping mum throughout the Hutton inquiry and since.
It is well aware, for Hutton made it plain during his questioning of witnesses, that its officials are likely to be severely criticised over its handling of Dr Kelly, especially in its “duty of care”.
Though the military was not involved in the affair, morale throughout the ministry has been rock-bottom. The ministry’s problems have been compounded by Geoff Hoon’s troubles over the shortage of equipment for British soldiers in Iraq and calls for his resignation – partly brought upon himself, officials agree – over the case of Sergeant Steven Roberts, killed because he was ordered to hand over his body armour to another soldier.
MoD officials believe they were treated unfairly by the inquiry, by lawyers as well as the media. Privately, they have been painting an unattractive picture of the senior government scientist. Those tactics will not help, especially if Janice Kelly, the scientist’s widow, seeks compensation for her husband’s death.
Pent-up anger and frustration provoked Mr Hoon into an attack this week on Dr Kelly and defence of his senior officials in the Sunday Times. He was reported as describing Dr Kelly as “no martyr” and that he killed himself because he feared exposure as a liar.
Mr Hoon also defended Richard Hatfield, the MoD’s personnel director who was savaged by the Kelly family’s lawyer during the inquiry, and Pam Teare, the ministry’s chief press officer.
With both Mr Hoon and his top civil servant, Sir Kevin Tebbit, pointing the finger at Downing Street for the unmasking of Dr Kelly, relations between the two institutions will not be the same again.
Meanwhile, the assumption in the ministry is that Mr Hoon will go sooner rather than later. It will then get a clean start with its activities more transparent.
Civil service
The civil service plan to exploit the Hutton inquiry by demanding clearer rights to allow whistle-blowers to reveal wrongdoing by their political masters and to refuse to give personal evidence to parliamentary select committees.
The First Division Association, the union representing top civil servants, is expected to point out that civil servants should not be required to give evidence to parliamentary select committees on their own behalf.
They complain that the government scientist, David Kelly, was summoned before the foreign affairs select committee to give evidence about his own actions, rather than in his capacity as an adviser to ministers, the previously agreed basis on which the civil service speaks to committees.
The rules on attendance, the so-called Osmotherly rules, have not been approved by parliament, but the parliamentary bible Erskine May states it has been agreed that civil servants largely give evidence on behalf of ministers and that committees should not act as a disciplinary committee.
A review by the Commons liaison committee of its handling of the Kelly affair published earlier this month conceded that the foreign affairs select committee asked “off limits questions”.
The liaison committee accepted that Dr Kelly was asked to give evidence “in respect of his personal behaviour, rather than as a spokesman for government policy or as an expert witness on factual matters”.
The decision to require Dr Kelly to give evidence was taken by the defence secretary Geoff Hoon who tried to circumscribe the questions asked, but was not in a position to enforce the rules.
The FDA is also likely to use the Hutton report to press the case for a civil service act in which civil servants have clear access to commissioners to make complaints.
Lord Hutton may also raise questions over the role of the cabinet secretary and his failure to organise the free flowing decision making process at Number 10. It was striking that Sir Andrew Turnbull, the cabinet secretary, gave no formal evidence to the Hutton inquiry, suggesting that he was not closely involved in the Number 10 decision making process on how to handle Dr Kelly.
He is expected to be urged to ensure better record and minute keeping.