The Hutton Inquiry

DR WELLS: I was educated as a scientist, yes.

DR WELLS: No, sir. Once I left university in 1988 I joined the administrative Civil Service and since that stage I have had administrative jobs in the Civil Service.

DR WELLS: Yes, I have, sir, at a number of points throughout my career.

DR WELLS: No, sir, strictly speaking I became his line manager when I took up my responsibilities which I think was 5th August of that year. 9th August was when I first met Dr Kelly.

DR WELLS: I believe I did, yes, sir.

DR WELLS: Yes, we were close colleagues, I would put it that way.

DR WELLS: We were friendly at work. When we were in New York together we would normally go out for an evening meal or perhaps have breakfast together.

DR WELLS: Thank you, sir.

DR WELLS: That is correct.

DR WELLS: I understood it to be long-standing.

DR WELLS: Yes, he had a range of responsibilities across Government; and the media handling arrangements reflected his very wide talents and the fact that he was undertaking work for different agencies and departments.

DR WELLS: That is a fair reflection of my understanding of what he told me at his first meeting on the 9th August.

DR WELLS: Correct.

DR WELLS: Yes, I know Patrick from previous jobs, so when David explained to me that his policy contact in the Foreign Office was Patrick Lamb, I immediately knew the person to whom he was referring.

DR WELLS: Correct, sir.

DR WELLS: Yes, if there was anything major that he had undertaken, he would normally try to tell me. If time did not permit, if we were not in the office together over a relevant period, then he may not do.

DR WELLS: That is correct, particularly with the establishment of the Iraq Survey Group and UNMOVIC undertaking inspections in Iraq.

DR WELLS: I did not, sir. David's interactions with the press remained predominantly technical. They remained historic, largely to do with UNSCOM experiences. He had cleared those through the Foreign Office. That system worked and I did not ask him to change that.

DR WELLS: I have seen that memorandum, sir.

DR WELLS: (Nods).

DR WELLS: Yes, I would, sir.

DR WELLS: David had set those arrangements out very clearly, in my judgment, in his letter of 30th June which Mr Hatfield had read.

DR WELLS: That is right. We were dealing with a system that had worked well and that had broken down.

DR WELLS: I did not. I did not think I could add anything to the way in which David had very clearly set it out in his letter of 30th June.

DR WELLS: There was to be a meeting between Martin Howard, myself, Tim Dowse of the Foreign Office, who is Patrick Lamb's superior, and Martin Howard.

DR WELLS: To discuss with David his press contacts. This was in the light of continuing concerns about the Observer article which had mentioned a British BW expert and also that that was the point at which I had heard that David had spoken to Andrew Gilligan.

DR WELLS: (Pause). I do not believe he was, sir.

DR WELLS: I cannot remember exactly, but --

DR WELLS: I did, sir. It was left to me to tell David that there would be a meeting on the 24th and that this was going to discuss his contacts with the press.

DR WELLS: I said it was going to be contacts with the press, sir.

DR WELLS: Yes.

DR WELLS: At the time that the meeting was cancelled I was just told it was cancelled and not given any explanation.

DR WELLS: I quite simply told him that, that it had been cancelled. Dr Kelly was coming up to London on that day in any case so he had other business to deal with.

DR WELLS: I did not know the reason myself, sir. It was set up at Martin Howard's behest. Martin is an extremely busy man and it is not unusual for meetings to be cancelled in this way.

DR WELLS: I do not believe it did.

DR WELLS: No, as I say it is not unusual for meetings chaired by a busy person like Martin Howard to be cancelled without explanation.

DR WELLS: I subsequently learnt that, sir.

DR WELLS: 1st July.

DR WELLS: That was the next day. I was informed by MoD security personnel on 1st July, sir.

DR WELLS: The meeting with the police was on 2nd July. I had, by that stage, received David's letter dated 30th June; and when I saw the MoD security people they recognised that what David might be saying in his letter of 30th June may have relevance to the leak inquiry. Clearly, we could not make that decision until we saw the letter; and so that was why we had a subsequent meeting on 2nd July, to discuss the follow-on handling of that letter.

DR WELLS: That is what I subsequently learnt.

DR WELLS: I do not have details of that, sir.

DR WELLS: That is my understanding, but I did not know a lot of the details of that until after his death.

DR WELLS: I do not know, sir.

DR WELLS: Yes.

DR WELLS: I do not know when David was excluded from the leak inquiry, so I am not in a position to comment on that.

DR WELLS: Yes.

DR WELLS: That is correct.

DR WELLS: What we were trying to do here was to get a better understanding of David's account, in preparation for a possible statement which might lead to questions from the press, and in preparation for possible interest from the Foreign Affairs Committee.

DR WELLS: He was, sir. I did not see that press release myself, but I know he was shown a press release and he read it through.

DR WELLS: I would not, sir.

DR WELLS: Yes.

DR WELLS: (Pause). I believe I saw it the day after its release.

DR WELLS: I was not, sir.

DR WELLS: The press arrangements were being dealt with by other people. I was not involved in this.

DR WELLS: I had other business to attend to. We have a press office.

DR WELLS: We have other people who would doubtless be involved; and I was not involved.

DR WELLS: That is correct.

DR WELLS: I dictated them the following day.

DR WELLS: No, I did not, sir. The bulk of the meeting was concerned with getting a better understanding of David's account. That was actually quite technical and that is reflected in the earlier paragraphs. As I said earlier, I did not see the press statement that David was reading and consequently I was not really in a position to take any detailed handwritten notes; but the following day I thought it appropriate to record, to the best of my recollection, what transpired at that meeting in relation to the statement.

DR WELLS: No reason at all, sir. As I say, the principal -- the bulk of the meeting was concerned with getting a better understanding of David's account, and that is what I focused on.

DR WELLS: It was a very short part of the meeting. I retained sufficient memory to make a short summary paragraph of what transpired; and that is what I did.

DR WELLS: It is a short summary, sir.

DR WELLS: Correct, sir, sorry, yes.

DR WELLS: Yes.

DR WELLS: Yes. As I explained this morning, the word "may", the qualifier, there may have been a number of qualifiers used. There was an exchange at this point which I did not record. But to the best of my recollection that word was used at some point.

DR WELLS: I had no knowledge of that, sir.

DR WELLS: I did not know of that, sir.

DR WELLS: I was told at some point that there would be the policy that Dr Kelly's name would be confirmed if it was correctly put to the press office. I cannot remember quite when that was.

DR WELLS: He did.

DR WELLS: (Pause). It was, very briefly, sir -- in our interviews we were, of course, focusing on what transpired between David and Andrew Gilligan.

DR WELLS: I am sorry.

DR WELLS: Because we were concentrating on that at that time, on the meeting between David and Andrew Gilligan. At the meeting on 7th July, Martin Howard asked David about other journalist contacts and he said that he had spoken to Susan Watts and Martin Howard asked a similar question at the meeting on 14th July. That is the best of my recollection.

DR WELLS: At that stage, we were focusing on what transpired between David and Andrew Gilligan.

DR WELLS: We did not ask David what had transpired between him and Susan Watts.

DR WELLS: I could not say, sir. We were focusing on what transpired between David and Andrew Gilligan.

DR WELLS: I would not be in a position to comment on that, sir.

DR WELLS: These meetings, yes, sir.

DR WELLS: With the exception of the meeting on 14th July.

DR WELLS: Okay.

DR WELLS: Not at all, sir.

DR WELLS: In respect of what, sir, if I may?

DR WELLS: No, sir.

DR WELLS: I do not think I made a judgment one way or the other on that, sir.

DR WELLS: Certainly not, sir.

DR WELLS: He was asked -- I asked him on the morning of 11th July whether he was content, in principle, to appear before that Committee and he said that if he was asked he would do it.

DR WELLS: (Pause). He did not -- he did not articulate an unwillingness to do it. He said that he was nervous about the potential for the press and that he was uncertain about the procedures, but if he was asked formally, he would do it.

DR WELLS: Well, those were the words he used, sir. If he is asked to do it, he would do it.

DR WELLS: I am afraid I do not know, sir, I have not seen this before.

DR WELLS: I quite simply asked his views on the principle of appearing in front of both the ISC and the FAC; and, as I said, he said that if asked he would do it. I have not seen this record before, before now.

DR WELLS: That is correct, sir.

DR WELLS: He was advised to leave his house, sir, yes.

DR WELLS: The call that I made is 3 minutes past 7 and David called me at 9 minutes past 7.

DR WELLS: We were -- I was on a train. For understandable reasons I was limited in what I could say on the train.

DR WELLS: I said that the press office had confirmed his name and that he should be in touch with the press office.

DR WELLS: I said that his name had been confirmed.

DR WELLS: I believe he did, sir.

DR WELLS: That is right, sir.

DR WELLS: That was because, as I say, I was limited on what I could say on the train. I said I would try to phone him once I got off the train. That was that telephone conversation then.

DR WELLS: That is correct.

DR WELLS: That is right. I think the rest are probably my attempts to get hold of David. He had told me that mobile phone contact could be difficult.

DR WELLS: That would have been the conversation at 4 minutes to 6. I expect at that point I conveyed to him that he would be appearing before both Committees and suggested that he came back on Monday to prepare for those.

DR WELLS: Correct, and Heather Smith from personnel.

DR WELLS: The purpose of the meeting was to ensure that David understood the different constitution of the two Committees and to set out our view on the likely areas of questioning. It was also fair to say that at the beginning Martin said that there were no departmental lines to take on this.

DR WELLS: He was told what the likely areas of questioning were; and it was made clear to him, on a number of occasions, that he could -- he should feel free to give his own account.

DR WELLS: I am aware of the diaries from the press, sir; yes.

DR WELLS: I saw that entry in the press, sir. I have to say that the meeting on 14th July was not schooling Dr Kelly, it was making sure that he understood the nature of the two Committees and --

DR WELLS: And that he understood the sorts of questions that the Committees were likely to ask. We did not know what questions they would ask, of course.

DR WELLS: It was made clear to him that he should answer in the way that he wished.

DR WELLS: The tricky areas were tricky in the sense that, and Martin Howard was clear on this, that they were at the margins of legitimacy in terms of what the Committees could ask David, given the Defence Secretary's earlier letter.

DR WELLS: I have answered questions on this before sir, and I believe it was.

DR WELLS: Including mine.

DR WELLS: Because I expressed it as being at the margins of what was permissible within the bounds of the Defence Secretary's letter. I did not feel it necessary to use the verbatim words.

DR WELLS: It is a summary, sir -- yes, it is a summary of what transpired.

DR WELLS: All I was aware of, sir, was that David's name would be confirmed by the press office if it was put to them.

DR WELLS: I did not, sir. I knew that he was in touch with the press office, they are the experts in dealing with the press; and -- so I did not discuss that with David.

DR WELLS: Fairly well, sir, yes.

DR WELLS: I would describe him as a private man, a man who thought carefully, a man who was proud in the best sense of the word. He was a world renowned expert. That is how I would describe David.

DR WELLS: I have to say from my own perspective, sir, David knew that I wanted him out in Iraq as soon as we could. David knew that the theatre wanted him out in Iraq as soon as we could manage.

DR WELLS: So from my perspective, sir -- my perspective -- David's reputation as one of the world's foremost weapons inspectors had not been damaged.

DR WELLS: I heard that in evidence, sir.

DR WELLS: No, no, sir, I did not.

DR WELLS: Yes, I did, sir. When he left his home on 9th July the records show that I have phoned him very regularly to check how he was feeling.

DR WELLS: I was not aware of that record.

DR WELLS: I was in constant touch with David, as the record shows. David was back in my office on Monday morning. I was asking how he was and he was assuring me that he was tired but otherwise he was fine.

DR WELLS: I was, sir, and I phoned David mid morning, I think Mrs Kelly said it was about 11.30, first of all to check how he was and also to discuss Sunday's coverage which actually was less than we had been expecting.

DR WELLS: And David said, at that time, that he was dismayed at Nick Rufford's article.

DR WELLS: That was in evidence, was it, sir?

DR WELLS: I do not recall that bit in the article, sir.

DR WELLS: I was doing a lot to help David, sir. I had cancelled an important trip to the US so that I could be with David on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

DR WELLS: I had arranged -- or had arranged hotel accommodation for David at MoD expense, should he need it. He actually wished to have other arrangements.

DR WELLS: I offered that to him when he arrived back in London on the 10th, my Lord. Sorry, on the 14th, my Lord, excuse me.

DR WELLS: That would have been initially for the nights of Monday and Tuesday, on the basis that David was giving evidence to two Committees on the Tuesday.

DR WELLS: That he was staying with one of his daughters in Oxford and he would prefer to do that. I said if that was what he wanted to do, that was fine by me.

DR WELLS: Other things I was doing for David at the time. I arranged a separate office for him if he wanted to be alone. We checked that he had lunch arrangements. I did all the necessary administrative arrangements so that David could concentrate on preparing himself for the Committee appearances.

DR WELLS: David was an experienced civil servant; he had experience of stressful situations as a UN weapons inspector. In answer to repeated questions, he said he was tired but otherwise fine. And I have to say when someone of that seniority and experience repeatedly assures me that he is fine, then I am bound to take him at his word.

DR WELLS: What comes back to my mind was that David denied the quotes that are in quotation marks.

DR WELLS: No, he put it to me, sir.

DR WELLS: The word he used, sir, if I may, is "bullshit".

DR WELLS: My recollection, my Lord, is he was referring to the passages in quotation marks. He did not draw me to any particular quote.

DR WELLS: No, sir. These were the quotations that David said were throughout this article.

DR WELLS: Thank you sir.

DR WELLS: Thank you my Lord.

MR HARRISON: James Harrison.

MR HARRISON: Deputy Director Counter Proliferation and Arms Control in the Ministry of Defence.

MR HARRISON: That is correct, yes.

MR HARRISON: Yes.

MR HARRISON: 9.28 am, my Lord, yes.

MR HARRISON: That was the covering e-mail, my Lord, and the four PQs were attached to it.

MR HARRISON: If you look at each of the four PQs there is a date for answer stamped on it. As I recall, the date was Monday 8th September. So the answers were not required to the House of Commons until that date.

MR HARRISON: Yes. They were received by Dr Wells' secretary by e-mail from the Parliamentary Branch on that morning, I think perhaps about half past 8. She herself was on leave that day but had left her e-mail such that any would be automatically forwarded to somebody else in the branch. They were so forwarded, in effect, to one of my staff who passed them on to me again by e-mail. I received them around 9.13 or so on that morning. I looked at them. Plainly he referred to Dr Kelly. If, on that particular day, he had been coming into the office, then I would have simply printed them off and handed them over to him for his information. He was, of course, not in the office that day. I knew that he was at home. John Clark, I knew, was speaking to him about the two Parliamentary Questions from Andrew Mackinlay and also the letter to the Foreign Affairs Committee. It seemed to me that David Kelly ought to be aware of these questions. They were matters of public record. There was in fact no reason to consider concealing them from him by not making them available to him. I had access to e-mail to be able to forward them to David, which John Clark did not. So it seemed to me that I should forward them to him, simply so that he was aware of them, as a matter of courtesy.

MR HARRISON: Yes, I looked at each of the questions before forwarding them to see just what they were.

MR HARRISON: Yes.

MR HARRISON: Not quite. CPAC-CB3 in fact is a member of my staff. He forwarded it to me, top of the page, CPAC-DD, you will see it is forwarded to me in the top entry and to two others.

MR HARRISON: That is right, 9.28, yes.

MR HARRISON: I do not recall any discussion, but I am quite certain since he also received them at the same time in that same covering e-mail -- sorry, Wing Commander Clark that is, and I think we will have -- I probably expressed my views which were these were not matters for us to reply on. They seemed to me primarily matters for Richard Hatfield, the personnel director, and his staff in terms of making formal replies; that nevertheless I thought that David should be aware of them and I proposed therefore to forward them to him.

MR HARRISON: I did not speak to him at all on that day.

MR HARRISON: (Pause). I do not know that he did.

MR HARRISON: My perception was that he had been under pressure, but that the peak of that had very much passed. I say that for a number of reasons. He had to leave his home to avoid the press over the weekend, he was now back at home on the Wednesday. He had had to appear before the Foreign Affairs Committee on the Tuesday, he had had some pressure obviously with that, but at the end of the hearing he had effectively been discharged as an honest witness, so that was behind him. There had obviously been a great deal of press reporting, some of which was clearly offensive. Descriptions of him as a mole, for example; comparisons with Harold Shipman seemed obviously likely to be hurtful. Again the peak of that was over. On the Wednesday the Intelligence and Security Committee hearing had, as I understood it, passed without incident. So that was behind him. All that seemed to me to remain was to answer these outstanding factual questions from Andrew Mackinlay and the Foreign Affairs Committee for which he was checking his records at home that day. That seemed to me a straightforward issue. Once that was out of the way, he was able to focus on deployment to Iraq. After the ISC hearing on Wednesday afternoon I had heard him speaking to John Clark about that and, as it seemed to me, as I say, the peak had passed, he had these administrative details in effect to attend to. Beyond that, he could focus on his deployment to Iraq.

MR HARRISON: My understanding was that there were no disciplinary proceedings outstanding or being considered, so it did not seem to me that that was a difficulty.

MR HARRISON: Again, he had had an interview, as I understood, with Richard Hatfield, the personnel director. That, I believed, concerned this interview with Andrew Gilligan, so it seemed to me that issue was a dead one.

MR HARRISON: I printed out copies just of the Parliamentary Questions at the time; and I did keep them with other papers for some period after that, yes.

MR HARRISON: I do not. I was due to be on leave from 21st August for a period of 10 days. In the middle of that I had to return to give evidence on the 27th, so on the day before I went on leave, I organised any relevant papers that I had relating to my appearance on the 27th. I found these PQs amongst those papers, they did not seem to me to be relevant. There was no action that I was required to do with them so I destroyed them on that day.

MR HARRISON: As I understand it, yes, indeed the questions were dealt with by the personnel branches within the Ministry of Defence who had received copies of them at the same time. They were the people who were primarily responsible -- whose area of responsibility the questions fell into and I know, having -- when I was asked by the Inquiry about the questions, I checked with them subsequently and also with the Parliamentary Clerk and I am aware that those questions were subsequently answered in time, I think, for that 8th September deadline, but I think the answers, as I understand it, were in the terms of: this is a matter for Lord Hutton's Inquiry and no further information was given.

MR HARRISON: I have not done. They certainly can be, yes.

MR HARRISON: Thank you my Lord.

WING COMMANDER CLARK: My name is Wing Commander John Clark.

WING COMMANDER CLARK: I work in the Proliferation and Arms Control Secretariat and my appointment is CONAC 1 which is conventional arm control and the appointment is just identified as number 1 of a series.

WING COMMANDER CLARK: No, I made no reference at all.

WING COMMANDER CLARK: No, I have no recollection of that at all, I am afraid.

WING COMMANDER CLARK: I am saying I believe he did not.

WING COMMANDER CLARK: No, I was not actually. My priority at the time was clearly to facilitate the two outstanding Parliamentary Questions and the response to the Foreign Affairs Committee. So that was my priority. So when the four PQs arrived, my initial reaction was to look at the deadline, saw that it was September, had a large sigh of relief and then ignored them.

WING COMMANDER CLARK: No, none at all. My relationship with David Kelly was founded on loyalty and integrity. He was a very senior individual within the Department and to be honest it would have been unfair if elements of the investigation or the PQs were kept from him. It was important he knew what was going on.

WING COMMANDER CLARK: No, I was not aware of that.

WING COMMANDER CLARK: No, I did see the four Parliamentary Questions and, as I said, I checked the deadline and then ignored them.

WING COMMANDER CLARK: Yes, they were forwarded to myself some time after 9 o'clock on the morning of the 17th.

WING COMMANDER CLARK: No, I did not.

WING COMMANDER CLARK: No, I cannot, and the Thames Valley Police drew my attention to this and I have thought long and hard about that telephone call. I have no recollection of that call, unfortunately. I surmised at the time that I traditionally pop out for a sandwich somewhere between 1 o'clock and 2 o'clock and perhaps he had left a message on my answerphone. When I returned from leave, I checked -- I have a notebook which if there are any actions outstanding from answerphone messages, I will note those down. I have no notes whatsoever, so I am afraid I have no recollection of that at all.

WING COMMANDER CLARK: I have no evidence to suggest that there was.

WING COMMANDER CLARK: No, I did not. That was one of the elements I had to pass on when I was trying to contact him after 3 o'clock. So that was one of the elements that James Harrison had raised but no, I had not discussed it with him.

WING COMMANDER CLARK: Thank you my Lord.

MR RUFFORD: Nicholas Rufford.

MR RUFFORD: I am a journalist.

MR RUFFORD: I did not know.

MR RUFFORD: I suspected he might be the person who had spoken to Andrew Gilligan but I did not know for sure.

MR RUFFORD: Yes, I discussed it with the news editor, Charles Hymas.

MR RUFFORD: I had said to him that I suspected that Dr Kelly may be the person who had spoken to Andrew Gilligan, but I did not know for sure. I also told him that I had been trying to contact Dr Kelly during the day by telephone and had been unsuccessful; and we agreed that the best strategy would be for me to go and call on Dr Kelly.

MR RUFFORD: Yes. His first words were that he had been contacted by the Ministry of Defence and told that he would be named in national newspapers the following day.

MR RUFFORD: Yes, I did. I phoned him almost immediately I left Dr Kelly's house; and I told him that Dr Kelly had confirmed that he was the person who had spoken to Andrew Gilligan and I also told Mr Hymas that Dr Kelly had told me that his name would be in the papers the next day.

MR RUFFORD: Yes, he told me he felt he had been misrepresented in the way that the BBC had reported their contacts with an intelligence source; and I asked him whether he would like to put his point of view in an article for the Sunday Times.

MR RUFFORD: No, I did not. They were made at separate ends of the conversation. The offer of hotel accommodation was made in the context of any help he may need and which the newspaper may be able to give and it was right at the end of the conversation.

MR RUFFORD: No, not at that stage.

MR RUFFORD: He said he would be happy to do it with the agreement of the MoD press office.

MR RUFFORD: Yes, very soon after I left his house I phoned Pam Teare on her mobile phone and asked whether Dr Kelly might be able to write an article for the Sunday Times to put his version of events.

MR RUFFORD: She at first said "no", then she said in the unlikely event that Dr Kelly was allowed to write an article, she would remember that I was the first journalist to submit such a request.

MR RUFFORD: Yes. It was 20.17.

MR RUFFORD: I left his house at round about quarter to 8, so it was roughly half an hour later.

MR RUFFORD: It was roughly 7.30 that I crossed the road to his driveway.

MR RUFFORD: That is correct.

MR RUFFORD: Before I crossed the road, Dr Kelly saw me in the car park of the Wagon and Horses. I waved to him and he acknowledged me. It took some time to cross the road because of the traffic and he stood at the end of his drive and waited. So I do not believe that it was an unwelcome visit.

MR RUFFORD: That is not correct.

MR RUFFORD: It took place amicably. I had been talking to him for about 15 minutes, he had not invited me into the garden or into the house so I felt that I did not want to stay any longer.

MR RUFFORD: It is possible that the name Murdoch did come up in the conversation but not in the context of a deal as has been suggested.

MR RUFFORD: It was in a light hearted context. Dr Kelly, when we met for a drink or a meal, would always want to ensure that I did not pay personally and he would say: is this on Mr Murdoch? And it became something of a catch-phrase after our meetings. So when I suggested at the end of the conversation hotel accommodation, he said: is that on Mr Murdoch?

MR RUFFORD: It is.

MR RUFFORD: There were parts of the conversation that were off the record and I honoured that and kept those parts of the conversation off the record until after he died. But the rest of the conversation was not off the record.

MR RUFFORD: By implication, because he had asked for certain parts to be off the record, the rest was on the record. That is the convention when journalists interview somebody and I think Dr Kelly was well aware of that.

MR RUFFORD: That is not true. I do not write for the daily Times, I write only for the Sunday Times.

MR RUFFORD: Dr Kelly -- we had a lot of discussions afterwards and Dr Kelly never said to me that he objected to having been quoted. It was a one line quotation and it was after an interview in which he had described this Iraqi general and his meetings. He had had about 20 meetings with this particular individual.

MR RUFFORD: I would say about nine or ten.

MR RUFFORD: They were almost entirely -- no, they were entirely on the telephone.

MR RUFFORD: Only that I called Dr Kelly and he said he was unable to speak at the time and asked me to call him back two hours later, which I did. So I believe that the conversation which Wing Commander Clark overheard was the first of two conversations.

MR RUFFORD: No, there is not.

MR RUFFORD: I beg your pardon.

MR RUFFORD: No, he did not say that but I did ask him whether he had been advised or counselled by the Ministry of Defence on how to handle press calls, whether they were sending anybody to chaperone him or whether he had suggested hotel accommodation or staying with friends and he said they had not.

MR RUFFORD: I beg your pardon?

MR RUFFORD: Yes, he said "I have just had a call". That was at about 7.30.

MR RUFFORD: Thank you.

PROFESSOR HAWTON: Keith Edward Hawton.

PROFESSOR HAWTON: Doctor of Science, Doctor of Medicine, Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Diploma of Psychological Medicine, Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery.

PROFESSOR HAWTON: I had.

PROFESSOR HAWTON: Yes, she did.

PROFESSOR HAWTON: I think the relevance of that fact was extremely uncertain and would have been speculation to have put forward.

PROFESSOR HAWTON: I have.

PROFESSOR HAWTON: I have received three items of information. One is a copy of a letter that was sent by Martin Hemming, legal adviser to the Ministry of Defence, to the solicitor for the Inquiry on 22nd September. Another piece of information was a copy of the register of Dr Kelly's mother's death, the register entry I should say, and the third was a copy of an entry by a general practitioner in Leeds on Dr Kelly when he was a -- presumably a student at Leeds University in 1964.

PROFESSOR HAWTON: I will read what it says. It says: "I enclose two extracts from Dr Kelly's vetting file which were prepared based on a report prepared by the investigating officer handling his initial positive vetting clearance in 1985. The first records an interview on 20th November 1985 with Dr Kelly in which he referred to his mother's death." The relevant passage, quoting from the letter, reads: "'Dr Kelly said his mother died by her own hand in 1964, never having remarried. For many years prior to her death she suffered from depression and he has little doubt that the verdict of the coroner at the inquest into her death that the balance of her mind was disturbed was correct.'"

PROFESSOR HAWTON: Yes, there is a -- as follows: "The second extract --

PROFESSOR HAWTON: I understand. The second extract reports an interview on 28th November with a friend of Dr Kelly who had known him for many years, who he had nominated as one of his character referees. I am quoting here. The relevant passage seems to be as follows: "The main incident in their lives that had brought them ..." Sorry: "He thought that the main incident in their lives that had brought them closer friendship was that their mothers each took their own life within a short period of each other. They were in many ways able to give each other encouragement and help following these tragedies, which helped them to develop a closer bond of friendship between them." Then another following extract: "He recalls the death of his mother [here one assumes he is referring to Dr Kelly, Dr Kelly's mother], which occurred at a time during his student days at the University of Leeds and was known to be engrossed in his studies and whilst the tragedy distressed him, he appeared to ride the period well and at no time when [they] were together did he display any mental reaction to this unfortunate matter. In fact, the referee said 'he can be considered a well balanced person'."

PROFESSOR HAWTON: This concerns, as I said earlier, Margaret Kelly's death, that is Dr Kelly's mother's death, on 13th May 1964, and the cause of death is stated as bronchopneumonia, that is a chest infection due to barbiturate poison, and an open verdict was given.

PROFESSOR HAWTON: Yes.

PROFESSOR HAWTON: Yes, there is a GP record just dated May 1964, the specific date is not given. I think one can deduce it was following Dr Kelly's mother's death. It reads as follows: "Insomnia following death of mother". Then there is an indication that a tranquilliser was prescribed.

PROFESSOR HAWTON: I think it is uncertain whether this adds anything further to the information that I had already had at the time of my previous appearance at the Inquiry.

PROFESSOR HAWTON: Yes, indeed. The first way is fairly clear, and that is through transmission through generations, in other words from parents to children, of severe mental illnesses which are known to be associated with risk of suicide, and the evidence suggests this is largely a genetic transmission. The sorts of illnesses one is referring to here are manic depressive illness, for example, severe depression, alcoholism and so on.

PROFESSOR HAWTON: No, I do not think this applies. There is certainly no evidence that he had significant mental illness, either at the time of his death or previously.

PROFESSOR HAWTON: Well, the second way -- and we get on to slightly less certain ground here -- is through transmission of -- through generations of certain personality characteristics which might increase the risk of suicide.

PROFESSOR HAWTON: Hmm.

PROFESSOR HAWTON: Absolutely not, and indeed the reverse I would say.

PROFESSOR HAWTON: Well, this gets into a much more uncertain area and this is whether having a suicide in a family can affect an individual within that family's attitude towards suicide. There is virtually no research on this somewhat for obvious reasons, in that it is difficult to ascertain attitudes particularly in people who have died by suicide themselves. But one can speculate that this could have an effect on an individual but it might work in one of two possible ways.

PROFESSOR HAWTON: Well, the first might be that if a person is in a situation in which they are faced by apparently insurmountable problems and are feeling hopeless and suicidal, having had a family member commit suicide might possibly make them somewhat more comfortable with the idea of suicide. On the other hand, such a person is likely to have intimate knowledge of the terrible impact that suicide very often and usually has on families, which may indeed actually serve to decrease the likelihood of suicide in that individual.

PROFESSOR HAWTON: Well, I stick with the conclusions that I presented when I appeared before. Firstly, that I think one major factor was the severe loss of self esteem that he had from feeling that people had lost trust in him and from his "dismay" was the word I used before, maybe that was an understatement, at being exposed in the media. And I think the fact, as I think has now been generally acknowledged, that he was a very private person made his being in the media all the more stressful for him. The second factor, I believe, was that he probably was coming to fear that the prospects for continuing his previous work were diminishing and it is possible that he feared he would lose his job altogether, perhaps particularly when he saw some of the communications that he had received on the morning of his death. And thirdly I think the effect of this on him would have been to have filled him with a profound sense of hopelessness. I think another very relevant factor, as I said when I appeared before, was his private nature, his dislike of sharing personal problems and feelings with other people; and according to several accounts, he had become increasingly withdrawn during the -- into himself during the period shortly before his death which meant that I think he became even less accessible or less able to discuss his problems with other people.

PROFESSOR HAWTON: They do.

MR HATFIELD: It is.

MR HATFIELD: I am.

MR HATFIELD: Yes, it is.

MR HATFIELD: I did.

MR HATFIELD: Yes, I was.

MR HATFIELD: Yes, I was able to produce a more complete and detailed picture of that afternoon.

MR HATFIELD: I did.

MR HATFIELD: It was.

MR HATFIELD: I was on a tour of one of my directorates in the building in which I work.

MR HATFIELD: Yes, I had spoken to him on my mobile -- he had called me on his mobile to my mobile at 8.30 that morning from RAF Honnington.

MR HATFIELD: That was following up the conversation we had at the end of the meeting the previous afternoon, and we had agreed he should go and complete his training but before he started it on the morning of the 8th he should check that there is no reason why he should not go ahead, that I did not need to recall him to London for a meeting or something like that.

MR HATFIELD: I was called back by my secretary from this tour at some time just after 3.30 in the afternoon.

MR HATFIELD: I had been summoned back by the Permanent Secretary's office and the first thing I did was to ring that office and talk to Dominic Wilson who explained to me it was expected that MoD would need to make a statement about Dr Kelly, although unnamed at that stage, that evening and I was going to be asked to clear the text with Dr Kelly when it was available.

MR HATFIELD: No, I did not see the text at that point although Dominic read over to me what I think was probably the text as it had come back from a meeting in No. 10, although it was not the final draft.

MR HATFIELD: I did.

MR HATFIELD: The MoD records tell me it was precisely 15.58. I rang him hoping to catch him before he left RAF Honnington, since it would be easier to talk to him if he was not on the road. In fact I got his mobile voicemail at 15.58 and left a message on it.

MR HATFIELD: Well, the message was, in substance, that I wanted to talk to him as soon as possible about the possible release of a statement and talk to him about the text of that statement.

MR HATFIELD: Yes, the mobile phone record that was disclosed to me yesterday shows he called his voicemail at 16.12 and then called me back at 16.14 again on my mobile, although I was in my office.

MR HATFIELD: Dr Kelly first of all told me that he had been driving down a fast road, I think he said a dual carriageway, it might have been a motorway, when his mobile had gone off 15 minutes earlier and he had to get to somewhere where he could stop in order to return my call.

MR HATFIELD: I then essentially repeated the basic message I had given him on the voicemail and told him that although I did not have the text at the moment, the statement was likely to be slightly longer than the one we had discussed as a contingency text the day before because, in particular, I had noted that it was going to say a little bit more about what he had told us he had said to Andrew Gilligan, and that was what I wanted to talk to him about in particular.

MR HATFIELD: I said that I was expecting it to be issued that evening. At this stage I did not know anything more precise than that.

MR HATFIELD: No, I did not have a draft at that stage.

MR HATFIELD: I said that we would need to talk again in half an hour or so; and he suggested that by then he ought to be getting to somewhere where it would be much more convenient for him to talk, and we agreed to make contact again in half an hour or so.

MR HATFIELD: At the time of that telephone conversation I had not seen any Q and A document. Immediately after that conversation I saw a draft, which I think the Inquiry has had for a long time, which had been circulated earlier that afternoon, amongst other people to me, that had been sitting on my computer while I was out of my office, and I passed two comments on minor questions in that back but as it happens they were not taken into the final Q and A.

MR HATFIELD: Yes, I do. That was 16.35.

MR HATFIELD: I now know that I received it at 16.57.

MR HATFIELD: Well, as a result of Pam Teare's evidence last Friday we realised that it was sent by e-mail and eventually found it on a terminal in my office and in the PUS's office.

MR HATFIELD: It was not sent to me for amendment but I did in fact propose an amendment to it.

MR HATFIELD: I proposed the amendment initially to Dominic Wilson in the PUS's office and he took it back into the PUS. I suggested reinserting a reference which had been in the draft which I had used the previous day, saying that the meeting with Andrew Gilligan was unauthorised; and that had been omitted in the draft that had been worked up by the PUS.

MR HATFIELD: It was not in my typed copy, no. I wrote it in in manuscript.

MR HATFIELD: I now know that actually I rang him back. I think by this stage there was a certain degree of anxiety that I should make contact. So I rang him to see whether he was now available. The MoD records show that I got through at 17.10.

MR HATFIELD: On this occasion I essentially picked up where I left off, said I now have the text. I read it through to him, paragraph by paragraph. He said very little at all, but each paragraph he indicated he had not got a problem. When I finished running through the text, he confirmed that he was content with it. I said to him that --

MR HATFIELD: Yes, I did, my Lord, I included my manuscript amendment.

MR HATFIELD: Yes, it had.

MR HATFIELD: I did talk about another one but we never made it.

MR HATFIELD: That was to the Q and A brief.

MR HATFIELD: In fact I did discuss with Dominic Wilson another possible change to the statement but we agreed it was not worth making. I do not think he even put it to the PUS. So that just dropped out of the reckoning.

MR HATFIELD: That is right.

MR HATFIELD: Correct.

MR HATFIELD: To Dr Kelly.

MR HATFIELD: Yes. Yes, I did. Now that I am clear on the timing, I can say that I did not make a general sort of observation that I thought it would come out quite soon. At 17.10 I knew that as soon as I reported a statement had been agreed with no suggested amendments, the process would begin absolutely immediately. So I told him that it would go out very fast and I said to him that I was certain it would be out by 7 o'clock. I guessed, I think probably wrongly in the event, that it would not make the 6 o'clock news.

MR HATFIELD: I cannot remember anything else specific in that conversation, although either in that one or in the one at 16.15 I told him that when we put the statement out, he should talk to the press office and to Bryan Wells about support which, as I have mentioned in previous evidence, I could not actually say which of the two conversations I actually did that in.

MR HATFIELD: I reported straight back to the Permanent Secretary's office within minutes and I have been told that the text that I agreed with Dr Kelly was sent out from the Permanent Secretary's office to the press office not necessarily for release -- I am not sure about that, but it was e-mailed to them at 17.18. And that was the end of my involvement.

MR HATFIELD: That was my strong memory that we had completed the process just before 5 o'clock. I had, effectively, conflated the call at 10 past 5 with the one at quarter past 4; and until we discovered when the text arrived I did not realise that I had done that.

MR HATFIELD: Yes.

MR HATFIELD: Yes.

MR HATFIELD: No, they are not personnel files, they are security files.

MR HATFIELD: They are held very separately, and under almost no circumstances are they released to personnel organisations because the information that is disclosed in a positive vetting, or in modern parlance develop vetting interviews, is meant to be on a very confidential basis, for reasons that I think are fairly obvious given the example this afternoon.

MR HATFIELD: Under normal circumstances, no. As my job also includes overall responsibility for security and one of my subordinates is the Director General of Security and safety and the Defence Vetting Agency works for me using my security line, I could, under exceptional circumstances, have access to the files but I have not ever had access to a file in this job.

MR HATFIELD: The first information I had, and I do not have all the information referred to this afternoon, was on 15th September in the early evening when --

MR HATFIELD: I understand that the file, which is normally held in York at the Defence Vetting Agency, had been brought to London to be held by the London based security organisation working for me in case it was required or information was required for this Inquiry. I believe the Inquiry had separately directly approached the agency to confirm that Dr Kelly's vetting status was still extant at the time of his death. That is why they brought it to London, just in case it was required. The individual holding the file in London naturally wanted to familiarise himself with the file in case information was required, and also to familiarise himself with the procedures if we needed to disclose information from such a sensitive personal file. In doing so, he came across the information that Professor Hawton referred to this afternoon.

MR HATFIELD: No, I have not read the file.

MR HATFIELD: In July I was completely unaware of it.

MR HATFIELD: I do not believe so.

MR HATFIELD: It does not equate to any existing grade. There are three -- the modern MoD has two grades at band B, B1 and B2. Between them I think they cover DSTL 9, 8 and 7. Obviously because they are three to two, they do not match exactly.

MR HATFIELD: I am.

MR HATFIELD: I am aware from Dr Shuttleworth's evidence of that, yes.

MR HATFIELD: Not quite, but it is close. The timings were much vaguer than that and, as you may remember, one of the problems I was having was placing the only time of which I had precision, the 16.35 Q and A in relation to my telephone call.

MR HATFIELD: I had my own telephone record last week, which is why the 17.10 call appears. If you look at my original evidence, it is not mentioned at all.

MR HATFIELD: Yes.

MR HATFIELD: My problem, last week, was I had been trying to obtain the records of the matching phone calls for some time without success. Therefore I was unable to give you the complete sequence.

MR HATFIELD: I did.

MR HATFIELD: Yes.

MR HATFIELD: Yes.

MR HATFIELD: Correct.

MR HATFIELD: It is a combination of getting the e-mail and finding out the details of the intervening phone calls which I had had a problem with. If you actually refer to my original evidence, and on the very first day of the Inquiry you will find that I was having some difficulty in placing that middle call between 16.15 and 16.45.

MR HATFIELD: I have.

MR HATFIELD: Indeed.

MR HATFIELD: No. As I explained, I do not think it is dramatic at all. My problem is I did not know when I had received the text. When I found the text, it was actually rather later in my memory on an exceptionally busy afternoon, it was quite clear that I could not have read it to him before I got it, if you see what I mean.

MR HATFIELD: No.

MR HATFIELD: It is clear, yes.

MR HATFIELD: No, there were actually three telephone calls. There is one in which I leave a message, a quite substantial message on his voicemail; there is a conversation at 16.14 in which I tell him that we are going to have a statement and the gist of what has changed, and then there is a conversation lasting almost 4 minutes in which I read through a short statement to him, which add up in total to not far short of 10 minutes. As I say, I conflated the two.

MR HATFIELD: If I had not been given Dr Kelly's records I would not have been able to complete the record. I have been trying to get them for some time.

MR HATFIELD: Yes.

MR HATFIELD: That is one of the secretaries in Sir Kevin Tebbit's office.

MR HATFIELD: It is actually to -- addressed to my private secretary.

MR HATFIELD: One of the reasons why we took so long to discover it is he was on leave that day so we were not looking in the right place, if you like. It was sent -- it was read by my personal secretary and brought in to me although I think not the covering sheet, just the attachment, and therefore we were looking in the wrong place when we were looking for e-mails earlier.

MR HATFIELD: Well, that is not conclusive. That was one of our problems because until it was drawn to my attention that it might have arrived by e-mail, I thought it might well have arrived by fax in which case it could have arrived considerably earlier. But we do not think it did arrive by fax.

MR HATFIELD: No, it would have been just before I called Dr Kelly at 4 o'clock, between 3.30 and 4 o'clock.

MR HATFIELD: I did.

MR HATFIELD: The telephone records show it was I think 1 minute 16 seconds.

MR HATFIELD: I said who I was, that I was trying to contact him because the MoD -- I had been told that the MoD needed to make a statement that evening and that I wanted to talk to him about the content of that statement.

MR HATFIELD: I do not think I did in the voicemail.

MR HATFIELD: Yes.

MR HATFIELD: No, because on 7th July it was against any sort of range of reasons.

MR HATFIELD: Yes.

MR HATFIELD: Correct.

MR HATFIELD: That is how I read it too although my copy was very indistinct.

MR HATFIELD: First of all, as I explained, Dr Kelly told me why he had not been able to speak to me 15 minutes earlier. I repeated, though no doubt more briefly since he had already heard it, the general message of why I was calling and I told him that the statement would be -- looked as if it would be slightly different and slightly longer than the one we had discussed the day before. And my memory, because this is something I discussed with Dominic Wilson when he read it to me, was I had been struck in particular by the fact that we wanted to give more of his account of what he had told us about his meeting with Andrew Gilligan.

MR HATFIELD: No, because I am not even sure that I am entirely clear of the reason myself. I mean, I was, as it were, clearing the statement.

MR HATFIELD: Not precisely.

MR HATFIELD: My understanding was that it was linked to the need to say something before particularly ISC hearings -- not involving Dr Kelly, but because the ISC was going to hear matters the following day and it was felt the Government had to say something before that. But since I was not involved in the ISC business, it was not entirely clear to me.

MR HATFIELD: I may have offered him the explanation I just gave you but it would have been my assumption, not what I had been specifically told.

MR HATFIELD: Correct.

MR HATFIELD: No, my recollection of this whole sequence of conversations was essentially, if you like, reluctant acceptance of the inevitable starting to happen, but we never discussed exactly why because Dr Kelly never asked me, to be honest.

MR HATFIELD: That is how I read it over a telephone call, yes.

MR HATFIELD: Yes.

MR HATFIELD: That is what struck me when I had not seen the text, but I had it read to me.

MR HATFIELD: Yes.

MR HATFIELD: Correct.

MR HATFIELD: That one appears to last, from the record, for 3 minutes and 49 seconds.

MR HATFIELD: When he read it to me I am not sure exactly what it looked like because that was the draft, I think, before they had finished working on it in the office.

MR HATFIELD: The general shape was very much the same. If this is the published statement, it is exactly the same as the text that was sent to me except for the insertion of the words "it was an unauthorised meeting" and the change of grammar that follows at the beginning of the next sentence.

MR HATFIELD: The honest answer --

MR HATFIELD: I have of course tried. The honest answer is if I was reading it normally I would do it in probably under 2 minutes, because I speak very fast. I slowed down on this occasion, and I am sure that I would be well within 3 minutes and 49 seconds.

MR HATFIELD: That was the most obvious thing that struck me.

MR HATFIELD: Yes.

MR HATFIELD: He might well have done. Indeed -- I think whether or not it is the main difference, I think it probably is the most important difference.

MR HATFIELD: Sorry, I was going to say in relation to clearing the statement I think that is the most important, because we would be attributing to Dr Kelly words that he had said to us and that is one thing that I do think we require his explicit consent for. That is why I said it is the most important. So I would have very specifically wanted Dr Kelly to be content that we described him in the way that he found -- described what he said to us in a way that was acceptable.

MR HATFIELD: Yes.

MR HATFIELD: That was the single most important thing because that was -- as it is essentially reported speech of Dr Kelly and therefore he has an absolute right to agree to that.

MR HATFIELD: No, I did not say that to him although I did draw his attention to it because since I am not or was not then an expert on Dr Kelly's career, I wanted to make sure that it was accurate. So he did have his attention drawn to it but not, I admit, in the sense that you suggest, but it was specifically drawn to his attention.

MR HATFIELD: Yes.

MR HATFIELD: Yes.

MR HATFIELD: That is not quite, I think, what I said in my previous evidence. I think you are quite right to say that he had a view that a statement might or might not be made and it might or might not be made in various circumstances. However, I have said previously that I am confident that he thought that it was very likely, possibly even more than that by the end of that interview, that in some form or other his name would come out not least because it was becoming increasingly likely he would appear before a Select Committee; but I agree it was not necessarily going to come out in the form of a statement.

MR HATFIELD: Well, all those were possibilities, but it depended on what actually happened on the Monday afternoon. On the Tuesday afternoon I was telling him that things had moved on; and that was the purpose of the call.

MR HATFIELD: Yes.

MR HATFIELD: I cannot be absolutely sure, but I do not think that I did.

MR HATFIELD: Yes, that is one of the secretaries in the Secretary of State's office.

MR HATFIELD: That -- I should just emphasise these are actually going to terminals, it does not necessarily mean that certain people are there. D News CPO, I think would be Kate Wilson.

MR HATFIELD: Ah, yes.

MR HATFIELD: Yes, that is.

MR HATFIELD: Yes.

MR HATFIELD: No, I have never seen it before.

MR HATFIELD: Thank you, my Lord.