The Hutton Inquiry

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Tuesday, 23rd September 2003
(10.15 am)
MR TOM KELLY (called)
LORD HUTTON: Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Yes. Sit down Mr Kelly.
Examined by MR SUMPTION
LORD HUTTON: Yes Mr Sumption.
MR SUMPTION: Mr Kelly, we have heard evidence from Mr Godric Smith about a suggestion by Alastair Campbell on the evening of 7th July that a newspaper should be briefed in advance of the Prime Minister's appearance before the Liaison Committee with the fact that someone had come forward as a possible source. Were you, yourself, present when Mr Campbell made a suggestion on that subject?	MR KELLY: No, I was not.
MR SUMPTION: There is a difference of recollection as to exactly what was said, whether it related to briefing a newspaper or the press generally. What did you first hear about it and from whom?	MR KELLY: Godric Smith came back into the room where he and I share an office, sitting opposite each other; and Godric said that Alastair had suggested getting the fact that someone had come forward out into the press. Now, I am not clear, in my own mind, as to what form Godric suggested that that would take place but he and I had a very quick conversation and both agreed that it was not a good idea.
MR SUMPTION: Why did you not think it was a good idea?	MR KELLY: Because I think it was better that we let events take their course and I thought it was premature. I also thought that whenever we did reveal the knowledge we should do it in the right way, rather than seem to pre-empt it in any way.
MR SUMPTION: What did you regard as the right way?	MR KELLY: The right way I regarded to let the MoD procedure go forward, because that was what the Prime Minister had insisted on all the way through; that the MoD procedures should be allowed to take their course and that the MoD should be allowed to make the announcement in the way that they wanted; and I understood that statement was being prepared.
MR SUMPTION: Did you discuss your view with Mr Campbell?	MR KELLY: Well, Alastair had left No. 10 at that point, so Godric contacted him on his mobile phone and we put the call on speaker phone; and we had what was a very short conversation in which we both said that we did not think it was a good idea and Alastair immediately accepted that the idea should not go forward. What I should stress is that what we were discussing was whether we should do this rather than the detail of how we might do it; and I think also what is important is to recognise that this all took place in a matter of a few moments. In fact, my memory of it was so fleeting that until Godric mentioned it to this Inquiry I had entirely forgotten the conversation.
MR SUMPTION: I would like to turn to the Lobby briefings at 9th July of this year, Mr Kelly. We know that there are two Lobby briefings each week day and that you and Godric Smith do them on alternate days. Can you summarise for us the format of these meetings? Can we get some idea of the way that they work and their atmosphere?	MR KELLY: Well my job as Prime Minister's Official Spokesman is to represent the views of the Prime Minister on the events of the day; and to answer questions on the Prime Minister's behalf at Lobby. The Lobby consists of anything between 20 and maybe even up to as many as 50 journalists in any day asking questions. It can range in duration from 15 minutes to an hour. There is no restriction on the number of questions and there is no restriction on the subject matter. So, you can be asked about the full range of Government policy.
MR SUMPTION: What do you have to do in order to be prepared to deal with this?	MR KELLY: Obviously I have to identify what the likely questions are going to be; find out (a) the Prime Minister's view, if that is relevant; (b) find out information from the departments; and work out what it is I can say. However, I would stress that no matter how much you prepare, you are not going to be able to anticipate every question that you are going to be asked. So quite a lot is thinking on your feet.
MR SUMPTION: What happens if you do not know the answer to a question?	MR KELLY: Well, that frankly depends on the seriousness of the issue. If it is what the press judge to be one of the main stories of the day and you do not know the answer then that is obviously thought to be a major failing and there is always the danger that they will interpret the fact that you do not know as either No. 10 distancing itself from the policy or as an inconsistency or lack of clarity about the policy.
MR SUMPTION: When you began to prepare for the Lobby briefings on 9th July, what were the matters that you expected to be asked about?	MR KELLY: Well, obviously, the MoD statement which had been issued on the evening beforehand was going to be the major subject; but that was very much going to be conditioned by the BBC statement which had been issued just an hour afterwards, which had called into question two of the central elements of the MoD statement.
MR SUMPTION: What elements had that statement called into question?	MR KELLY: Well, what they had called into question was the fact that Mr Gilligan, the MoD had said, had known or the official who had come forward had known Mr Gilligan for a matter of months; the BBC said it had been longer than that, it had been for years; and also the BBC stated that the official -- Mr Gilligan's source -- did not work for the MoD.
MR SUMPTION: What issues did those two statements give rise to that you thought were liable to provoke questions?	MR KELLY: Well, clearly that the underlying theme was that the MoD statement lacked credibility, because if it was wrong about where the person worked, if it was wrong about how long the source had known Mr Gilligan, then the whole credibility of the MoD statement was at risk. If the whole credibility of the MoD statement was at risk then the idea that this official might be Mr Gilligan's source was completely at stake.
MR SUMPTION: What information did you seek in order to deal with the questions that you anticipated on that point?	MR KELLY: I sought -- at the 8.30 morning media meeting in No. 10, I identified these two issues as two issues which I was going to have to address and I sought clarification of what the answers to those issues were from the FCO and the MoD; and I made it clear that, obviously, the answers I would have to give at 11 o'clock.
MR SUMPTION: Can you just tell us what information you obtained from the FCO and the MoD in preparation for the Lobby?	MR KELLY: In terms of who paid for or which Department, rather, Dr Kelly worked for, I was told that he worked for the MoD but that his salary was paid for by the FCO. The FCO made it clear to me that I could say that so long as I did not imply that he was a permanent member of the FCO staff because they did not want suspicion falling on members of the FCO. And in terms of the salary, I learned both from the MoD, I think, and from Jonathan Powell in an e-mail that the reason why there was a discrepancy over how long Dr Kelly had known Mr Gilligan was because that Dr Kelly had given press briefings which Andrew Gilligan had attended for a number of years.
MR SUMPTION: Yes. What were your objectives in dealing with possible questions from Lobby journalists? Did you go into the Lobby briefings intending to make it easier to identify Dr Kelly?	MR KELLY: Well, I have to stress that at no point did I try to give information or drop clues which I thought would lead to Dr Kelly's identification. There was no --
MR SUMPTION: If I can just stop you there, I am going to take you to the actual briefings in a moment. At the moment I would just like to be clear about the intentions that you had in mind when you went into that briefing before you said anything.	MR KELLY: Well, the BBC statement had created considerable difficulty for me and I was under no illusion about the difficulties I faced. I had to balance what I thought were a number of competing pressures. I genuinely wanted to try to protect Dr Kelly's identity as much as possible but I had to explain the discrepancies between the BBC statement and the MoD statement; and I had to do so without misleading the Lobby, which is the golden rule for Prime Minister's Official Spokesman, you cannot mislead the Lobby. One other factor was that I did not want to implicate anybody else as being the possible source because that would put suspicion on other people as well.
MR SUMPTION: If we could have CAB/1/506, please, this is the morning briefing on 9th July. Can you summarise for us how much information you gave out about the source in the morning briefing, which was not already in the public domain?
LORD HUTTON: Could I just ask you Mr Kelly, I think we have already been given evidence, but just remind me of it: is this a summary or a note kept by someone of what you said in the course of the Lobby briefing?	MR KELLY: It is a summary which is prepared after the Lobby briefing, which I then check for accuracy.
LORD HUTTON: Prepared by an official in No. 10?	MR KELLY: Prepared by an official in No. 10.
MR SUMPTION: It is prepared from tapes or from a shorthand note?	MR KELLY: It is prepared from tapes.
MR SUMPTION: How much information did you give out in the morning briefing which was not already in the public domain?	MR KELLY: Well, my intention was to give information but to do so in as limited a way as possible to address the discrepancies between the MoD statement and the BBC statement. So, I identified that I thought the important information was partly what this person was not. So I stressed that the source was not a member of the Intelligence Service, that the person was not a member of military intelligence; and also I put the importance of that because the BBC had placed so much onus on that. What I did try to explain was the discrepancy over which Department the person worked for, by explaining that he worked for the MoD but his salary was paid for by another Department, but despite repeated questioning I did not say which Department that was; and I also explained the discrepancy over how long Dr Kelly had known Mr Gilligan by saying that the person concerned had known Andrew Gilligan in a number of different guises, in a number of different ways over the years. I deliberately chose that euphemism to try to give as little information away as possible, whereas what I actually knew was that Mr Gilligan and Dr Kelly had come across each other in press briefings over the years. I thought that was too specific, so I chose the phrase "different guises".
MR SUMPTION: Yes. You have the morning briefing notes open. If there is anything you particularly wish to draw our attention to to fill out that summary, this is your or an opportunity to do so.	MR KELLY: The one point I would like to underline is -- well, there are two points really. Firstly, the impact of the BBC statement is obvious from the second paragraph of the summary, in which I am asked three times in the one paragraph how the source that we have identified, the person who had come forward, could possibly be Mr Gilligan's source, given what the BBC have said in response. So the effect of the BBC statement had been to seriously call into question the MoD's statement. That I had to deal with. Secondly, the other issue, if I may deal with it, is in the middle of the first paragraph where I say that I address the question of the position of the source. As long ago as 4th June, a few days after we had returned from Iraq, I had identified the position of the source as being a key issue. I did so because my understanding was that only a member of the JIC had the full intelligence picture on which to make the kind of claim that the Today Programme had done. That is why I thought it was important to stress that the official who turned out to be Dr Kelly could not have been in a position to make that claim.
MR SUMPTION: I want to turn to the afternoon briefing. That starts at CAB/1/511. I do not want to take you through the whole of these rather long notes but if you look at the bottom of 511 and over to the middle of 512, and at pages 513 and the top of page 514, and then at the last paragraph to begin on page 514, you will find that you gave out more information in the afternoon briefing than you had done in the morning.	MR KELLY: Again, I think what was important was that I knew I was going to come under persistent questioning, and indeed I did so. In the morning briefing and in the afternoon briefing I deliberately drew a line forward, a defensive line, if you like, forward of my actual state of knowledge and, therefore, what I tried to do was give away as little information as possible. Hence my description of Dr Kelly as a technical expert, because I thought if I described him as a WMD expert I would get persistent questioning on what kind of WMD expert, where he was, et cetera. Again, in the afternoon, I got persistent questioning on why we would not say what Department paid for his salary and hence I tried to give away as little information as possible. But inevitably I did give away some information but I do not believe that that actually helped any of the journalists identify Dr Kelly.
MR SUMPTION: Can you summarise the additional information that you gave out in the afternoon briefing which you had not given out in the morning and which was not in the public domain?	MR KELLY: The information I think I gave out in the afternoon briefing was the reason why I refused to say which Department paid for his salary, which was that there were only a few people who were paid in this way and therefore that is why I could not give it out because they would be able to identify Dr Kelly. I felt I had to do that because otherwise the Lobby would think that there was something underhand about us refusing to say. I had to give them an explanation. There are times in the Lobby when assertion is not enough. It was also put to me that was this person a secondee. If I had refused to address that issue the assumption would be -- because people were putting to me that this person worked for the FCO or was paid for by the FCO, the assumption would be that he was a diplomat. I could not let that assumption rest because the FCO had made it very plain to me in the morning that they did not want people to assume he was a diplomat because they thought suspicion would fall on other people. So I had to describe him as a consultant. I thought consultant was a very vague term and I did not think it would help people identify Dr Kelly.
MR SUMPTION: Did you need and, if so, did you have authority to give out the information about Dr Kelly which you did give in answering questions at these two briefings?	MR KELLY: Well, I prepared for this Lobby in the same way that I prepared for all Lobbies, in that I asked Departments for information, Departments came back with information; and as with any other Lobby, if they had intended I should not give out that information I would have expected them to tell me before the Lobby. At the 8.30 meeting I was clear about the information I was seeking; and it is understood at that meeting you only ask for information if you are going to use it and it is for people to flag up if there are sensitivities.
LORD HUTTON: Can I just ask you: apart from asking the departments for information, did you have any discussion with any official in No. 10 or in the Ministry of Defence about the particular line you would take if you were asked about the source?	MR KELLY: No, I did not have any particular discussion, but that would not be normal practice, in that I would expect the departments to clear within their systems, as indeed they did, what could be said and what could not be said, my Lord.
LORD HUTTON: Yes.
MR SUMPTION: The suggestion has been made that Dr Kelly was some kind of pawn in a game that you were playing with the press. What do you say about that?	MR KELLY: Absolutely not. There were lots of pressures on everybody at this time, but I genuinely feel that I and I do not believe others that I worked with lost sight of that there was an individual caught up in this controversy, in the middle of it, and that therefore we had to respect that individual. At the same time, there was a logic of events which stretched back to 29th May which unfortunately, and I did not like that logic, but there was a logic which was working its way through. Now, there were times whenever if the BBC had stepped back, I think that logic could have been stopped, but as the effect of the BBC statement on what I had to do on the 9th June showed, it was very difficult to get out of the pressure of those events.
MR SUMPTION: Finally, Mr Kelly, if I can turn to one matter arising after Dr Kelly's death. You have already made your position clear, very publicly, on the Walter Mitty remarks and you have apologised without reservation for that. What I want to ask you is this: it has been suggested that what you said on that occasion about Dr Kelly was part of a broader plan on the part of the Government or yourself to belittle him, so that his disclosures to Andrew Gilligan would seem less significant. Do you have any comment to make about that?	MR KELLY: Well, I was not aware of or part of any strategy to demean or belittle Dr Kelly. I have accepted that my remark was wrong, it was a mistake, it was a too colourful phrase to use, but it was a mistake in what I thought was a private conversation. It was not part of any broad strategy and I would not have been part of any broad strategy.
MR SUMPTION: Thank you very much.
Cross-examined by MR GOMPERTZ
MR GOMPERTZ: Can we go to the Lobby, please, Mr Kelly? I am sorry, but I have been working off another version of these documents in the papers which are at CAB/1/220. I wonder if you could have that on the screen, please. Can we go to the bottom of the page on CAB/1/220 and let me indicate to you that that is an extract from the 3.45 briefing. You have this in the very last line of that page: "Put to him that the person did not work for the MoD, the PMOS said that the person was a technical expert who had worked for a variety of Government Departments, including the MoD with whom he was currently working." I will just pause there. The phrase "technical expert" was not one, I think, which had been used before, save at the 11 am Lobby; is that right?	MR KELLY: That is right.
MR GOMPERTZ: I do not take any quarrel with you over that because in the statement which had been issued the night before, Dr Kelly had been described as "the individual is an expert on WMD"; right?	MR KELLY: Correct.
MR GOMPERTZ: Let us look at the rest of that sentence: "... who had worked for a variety of Government Departments..." That was new, was it not?	MR KELLY: That was new, yes.
MR GOMPERTZ: Why was it necessary to say that?	MR KELLY: To explain the discrepancy between the MoD statement and the BBC statement. It was put to me in the morning and the afternoon I think a total of seven times that the BBC statement and the discrepancy it had highlighted over who Dr Kelly worked for meant that the official who had come forward could not possibly be Andrew Gilligan's source. The only way in which to correct that misleading information was to explain that, as I say, this individual had worked for a variety of Government Departments including the MoD with whom he was currently working. If I had not provided an explanation, I think the MoD statement would have been discredited.