Hutton Inquiry - The Report

The Report

Hutton initially announced that he expected to be able to deliver his report in late November or early December. The report was eventually published on 28 January 2004. It ran to 750 pages in 13 chapters and 18 appendices, though this was mainly composed of excerpts from the hundreds of documents (letters, emails, transcripts of conversation, and so on) that were published during the inquiry. The main conclusions were:

• Nobody could have anticipated that Dr Kelly would take his life
• There was "no underhand strategy" to name him as the source for the BBC's accusations
• Gilligan's original accusation was "unfounded" and the BBC's editorial and management processes were "defective"
• The dossier had not been "sexed up", but was in line with available intelligence, although the Joint Intelligence Committee, chaired by John Scarlett, may have been "subconsciously influenced" by the government
• The Ministry of Defence (MOD) was at fault for not informing Kelly of its strategy that would involve naming him

The report exonerated the Government much more completely than had been expected by many observers prior to its publication. Evidence presented to the inquiry had indicated:

• That the wording of the dossier had been altered to present the strongest possible case for war within the bounds of available intelligence
• That some of these changes had been suggested by Alastair Campbell
• That reservations had been expressed by experts within the Intelligence Community about the wording of the dossier
• That David Kelly had direct contact with the dissenters within the Defence Intelligence Staff and had communicated their reservations (and his own) to several journalists.
• That, following Kelly's decision to come forward as one of Gilligan's contacts, Alastair Campbell and Geoff Hoon had wanted his identity made public
• That the Prime Minister himself had chaired a meeting at which it was decided that Dr Kelly's name would be confirmed by the Ministry of Defence if put to them by journalists
• That Kelly's name had been confirmed after journalists had made multiple suggestions to the MOD press office.

Despite this evidence, Hutton's report largely cleared the government of any wrongdoing. In large measure this was because Hutton judged that the government had not known of the reservations in the intelligence community: it seemed they had been discounted by senior intelligence assessors (the Joint Intelligence Committee) — thus Gilligan's claim that the government "probably knew" the intelligence was flawed, was itself unfounded. Furthermore, the Inquiry had heard that these were not the words used by Gilligan's source, but his own inference. However, the judgement that No. 10 was not aware of the reservations of the intelligence community was not supported by other evidence contained in the report, such as the transcript of an interview given by David Kelly to the BBC journalist Susan Watts. In addition to clearing the government, Hutton determined that any failure of intelligence assessment fell outside his remit, and the Intelligence Services thus also escaped censure.

Instead the report placed a great deal of emphasis on evidence of the failings of Gilligan and the BBC, many of which had been explicitly acknowledged during the course of the Inquiry. Gilligan, for example, admitted and apologised for surreptitiously briefing politicians on a select committee in order to put pressure on Kelly. Gilligan, whilst disagreeing with the overall thrust of the report, also admitted that he had attributed inferences to Kelly which were in fact his own.

The Inquiry specifically criticised the chain of management that caused the BBC to defend its story. The BBC management, the report said, had accepted Gilligan's word that his story was accurate, in spite of his notes being incomplete.

Davies had then told the BBC Board of Governors that he was happy with the story, and told the Prime Minister that a satisfactory internal inquiry had taken place. The Board of Governors, under Davies' guidance, accepted that further investigation of the Government's complaints were unnecessary. In his report Hutton wrote of this:

The Governors should have recognised more fully than they did that their duty to protect the independence of the BBC was not incompatible with giving proper consideration to whether there was validity in the Government's complaints, no matter how strongly worded by Mr Campbell, that the allegations against its integrity reported in Mr Gilligan's broadcasts were unfounded and the Governors failed to give this issue proper consideration.

There was considerable speculation in the media that the report had been deliberately written to clear the government, a claim disputed by Lord Hutton at a later press conference. Many people remain convinced that this was the case. Suggestions of whitewash were supported by Hutton's careful choice of language at certain points in the report. For example, he argued that the use of the phrase 'sexed up' by Gilligan would have been taken by the general public to indicate an outright lie rather than mere exaggeration, and thus the claim was untrue.