The Hutton Inquiry

LORD HUTTON: Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Yes Mr Gompertz. MR GOMPERTZ: May it please your Lordship. In the first part of my speech it is my intention to outline some of the personal views of the Kelly family of the failures which led to the tragedy of Dr Kelly's death. The second part of my address will be a very brief analysis of some of the evidence which has been given to the Inquiry. Constraints of time mean that a full oral review is simply not possible. It is proposed to tender written submissions which will amplify my oral remarks. The Kelly family accept that your Lordship may well find that various individuals were blameworthy, but unlike so many families caught up in a personal tragedy of this kind, the Kelly family are not seeking revenge or retribution against individual scapegoats. The principal aims of the family in this Inquiry are: (1) that the duplicity of the Government in their handling of Dr Kelly should be exposed; and (2) that the systemic failures at the Ministry of Defence should be identified and remedied so as to ensure, as far as is humanly possible, that no-one else should suffer the ordeal endured by Dr Kelly. If, however, in order to achieve their goal it is required that there should be some criticism of individuals then the family accept this as a necessary step towards their objective. Unfortunately, it would appear that there is still a long way to go before this objective is achieved judging by the interim written submissions of the Government, and by some of the evidence given to the Inquiry in phase 2. With the exception of the Walter Mitty slur, the Government and the MoD do not accept that any criticism should be made of any Government action or that any blame should attach to any individual involved in the events leading up to Dr Kelly's death. This should be contrasted with the approach of the BBC in being prepared to make admissions and accept criticism. Recently, Mrs Kelly and her daughters have been deeply hurt and angered by the evidence given last week by Mr Richard Hatfield, Ministry of Defence Director of Personnel. He said that Dr Kelly was responsible for a fundamental failing in meeting Mr Gilligan. Secondly, that with hindsight he, Mr Hatfield, might well have initiated formal disciplinary action against Dr Kelly and suspended him; and, thirdly, that the Ministry of Defence gave Dr Kelly outstanding support. The family perceive the first of these remarks as the arrogant dismissal of Dr Kelly as the author of his own misfortune. The second remark is particularly surprising since, in his minute to Sir Kevin Tebbit on 7th July of this year, Mr Hatfield reported, and I quote: "Apart from the very unwise comment, he [Dr Kelly that is] appears to have said no more than he or others working for the MoD might have said at a public seminar." Indeed, Mr Hatfield reached a decision in that first interview on 4th July, very quickly, that it was inappropriate to institute disciplinary proceedings against Dr Kelly. Thirdly, were the matter not so serious, the family would find the assessment of the support given to Dr Kelly as outstanding to be risible. The family consider that there was a huge failure in the Ministry of Defence in Dr Kelly's line management and in the manner in which his name was released into the public domain. His line management was so complex that it was very hard, if not impossible, for him to know to whom he should address an application for authority for a media contact. Never again should someone be put in such a position. Never again should a civil servant be publicly named if there is an alternative route to a legitimate objective which can be achieved without naming him. Never again should there be such feeble support for an employee in a time of crisis. A glaring example is that the press office failed to telephone Dr Kelly to warn him that his name was known to journalists, apparently because it was thought that it was appropriate for Dr Wells to break the news to him. Sadly, the press office had not even bothered to obtain Dr Wells' telephone number, even though it was anticipated by many in the Ministry of Defence that the public identification of Dr Kelly was imminent. The family also wish me to mention the contribution of the culture of the media to the tragedy of Dr Kelly's death. The style of the Today Programme in apparently making news as opposed to reporting it, the conduct and confrontational approach of some investigative and political journalists and the conduct of some of the photographers all played a part in the harassment of both Dr Kelly before his death and of the family after it. Dr and Mrs Kelly were forced to flee their home at 10 minutes' notice to escape the media pack. Dr Kelly's attendances before the FAC and the ISC were accompanied by intense media scrutiny including, of course, live television coverage of his evidence to the FAC. The effect of all this media attention upon an extremely private and retiring man should not be underestimated. The media frenzy continued after his death with reporters and photographers at the gate of the family home, and photographers lying in wait when the family visited the coroner. This treatment of a grieving family by the media is wholly unacceptable. As one member of the family puts it, and I quote, "We would like to see the media raise its game." I turn now to the evidence. Perhaps the first question to be asked is: was Dr Kelly guilty of a fundamental failing in meeting Andrew Gilligan on 22nd May, as characterised by Mr Hatfield? The answer to that question is undoubtedly: no. The starting point is that the procedures which purported to regulate contacts between Dr Kelly and the media were hopelessly confused. The Inquiry will note that the MoD has failed to point to a single unambiguous clearly expressed paragraph in any document which purports to regulate Dr Kelly's contact with the media. The witness called for the purpose of explaining the regulation of such contact was Mr Richard Hatfield. He relied on different documents at different stages of the Inquiry to justify his suggestion that Dr Kelly was guilty of a fundamental failing. When he first gave evidence, Mr Hatfield suggested that three documents regulated Dr Kelly's contact with the media, namely the MoD personnel manual, the DSTL procedure for conduct and the Civil Service code of conduct. Since Dr Kelly was employed by the DSTL, albeit he also worked for the MoD and the FCO, as well as for UNSCOM and UNMOVIC on behalf of the United Nations, it was, presumably, to the DSTL regulations that he should have turned for guidance. These require that an employee wishing to engage in media activities should seek the consent of his line manager, which must be given in writing. These conditions were never -- I repeat never -- applied to Dr Kelly's activities. No witness at the Inquiry has said that there was any expectation that Dr Kelly should seek consent from his line manager or that his consent should be given in writing. Detailed written submissions will be made on the relevance and applicability of the other documents. More recently, the Ministry of Defence, again through Mr Hatfield, when he returned to the witness box on 18th September, has placed reliance on the Defence Council Instructions of 1999 as being a document which regulated Dr Kelly's contacts with the media. This is remarkable because at the outset of the Inquiry the MoD provided the Inquiry with those documents which it believed regulated Dr Kelly's contact with the media. The MoD also provided the Inquiry with a note entitled "MoD background note on Dr Kelly", which was compiled after his death. There is no mention of the Defence Council Instructions in the conditions of employment set out in this note. It thus appears that by the start of the Inquiry the MoD had not managed to find the DCIs of 1999 which are now said to be relevant and of which Dr Kelly ought to have been aware. Indeed, the document did not surface until sent to the Inquiry by fax at about 11 o'clock in the morning on 17th September. It is submitted that this episode reflects poorly upon Mr Hatfield. The Inquiry is invited to disregard his evidence that these documents or a combination of them regulated Dr Kelly's contact with the media. The reality of the situation is that there was an ad hoc informal arrangement which had existed for many years and which reflected Dr Kelly's special position. When, on 9th August 2002, Dr Wells introduced himself to Dr Kelly as his line manager, Dr Kelly informed Dr Wells of the existing arrangements for his contact with the media. Neither then nor at any later stage did Dr Wells, or indeed anyone else, suggest any change in these arrangements which were that he should normally seek authority for a media contact from Mr Lamb and the FCO press office. In any event, it was, of course, part of Dr Kelly's job to communicate with the media. Indeed, Mr Lamb describes him as an accomplished media performer. To a substantial extent, Dr Kelly was left to use his discretion, we submit, as to the conduct of his contacts with journalists. Dr Kelly made this clear in his letter of 30th June and it is confirmed by Mr Patrick Lamb in a memorandum prepared after Dr Kelly's death in which he said, and I quote: "This system, which ultimately relied on self-discipline and judgment on all sides, worked well and provided the media with expert background briefing and led to no embarrassments for Her Majesty's Government over the period 2000 to 2002." The next question which falls for consideration is: what was the purpose of the meeting between Dr Kelly and Mr Gilligan? It is common ground between them that the intention was to have a general discussion about Iraq where Mr Gilligan had recently been covering the war and where Dr Kelly had not been for several years. There is no evidence that the dossier was mentioned before the meeting. Upon the basis that the purpose of the meeting was a general discussion of Mr Gilligan's experiences in Iraq, it is hard to determine from whom and for what purpose Dr Kelly ought to have sought authority. Indeed, the Inquiry might like to consider whether it was necessary for Dr Kelly to seek permission at all for such a meeting. Moreover, there is no reason whatever to suppose that authority would have been refused if requested. Further, Dr Kelly did report to Mr Lamb after the event that a meeting had taken place, albeit the report was no more than a mention at a time when Mr Lamb was extremely busy. The report clearly registered with Mr Lamb since he was the genesis of the investigation into the matter. Indeed, it could well be that had Mr Lamb not been so busy at the time, that Dr Kelly would have sat down in Mr Lamb's office, as was his custom, and given a full report of the meeting with Mr Gilligan. It is apparent that Dr Kelly made no attempt to conceal his contact with Mr Gilligan. This may indicate that he felt that he had nothing to hide. It is accepted, however, that he might have been more prudent to have gone further and sought out Mr Lamb when he was not so busy and informed him of the content of the discussion with Mr Gilligan. The next question is: what did Dr Kelly say at the meeting of 22nd May? There are a number of sources for Dr Kelly's account of the meeting. They are his letter of 30th June, his interviews on 4th and 7th July, his evidence to the FAC and the ISC and his accounts to his family and his friends. It is submitted that his account has been substantially consistent, accurate and truthful. By contrast, Mr Gilligan's accounts of the meeting in his evidence and elsewhere have been demonstrated to be unreliable, particularly with regard to the words spoken by Dr Kelly. There are four reasons why we submit that Mr Gilligan is unreliable and that no credence should be given to his evidence save where it is corroborated from an independent source. The first is this: Mr Gilligan's account of the chronology and progress of the meeting is irreconcilable with the physical evidence disclosed by expert examination of his Sharp organiser. Secondly, his account of the meeting, as given in evidence, is in many respects inconsistent, first, with the material generated by himself in preparation for the broadcasts on 29th May; secondly, it is inconsistent with the broadcasts themselves; and, thirdly, it is inconsistent with his article in The Mail on Sunday on 1st June. The next reason why we submit that Mr Gilligan's evidence is unreliable is that he has lost his manuscript note made after the meeting with Dr Kelly. This casts considerable doubt on the content of the conversation. The fourth reason is this: that Mr Gilligan has proved himself to be an unreliable historian in other respects. For example, the changes in his account of the number of meetings he had with Dr Kelly and when they took place. Worthwhile scrutiny of the evidence concerned with these topics, particularly with regard to the examination of the Sharp organiser, is a complex matter requiring detailed analysis of the material. This is best left to be dealt with in written submissions. I turn, now, to consider whether there was a Government strategy to use Dr Kelly for political purposes in its dispute with the BBC.

LORD HUTTON: Mr Gompertz, just before you turn to that subject, may I ask you: does the transcript of Miss Susan Watts' conversation with Dr Kelly on 30th May help to cast light on what Dr Kelly may have said to Mr Gilligan? MR GOMPERTZ: Yes it does, my Lord.

LORD HUTTON: If Dr Kelly had made a reference to the 45 minutes claim arising from a single source, would that have been an appropriate observation for him to have made to Mr Gilligan? MR GOMPERTZ: No, my Lord, it would not.

LORD HUTTON: Yes. Thank you. MR GOMPERTZ: My Lord, I was turning to consider whether there was a Government strategy to use Dr Kelly for political purposes in its dispute with the BBC and whether the decision to confirm Dr Kelly's name was made for improper reasons. The family invite the Inquiry to find that the Government made a deliberate decision to use Dr Kelly as part of its strategy in its battle with the BBC. This strategy included putting Dr Kelly forward as a witness before the FAC and ISC in an attempt, which was successful, to undermine the evidence which Mr Gilligan had given and to show him to be unreliable. This strategy was suggested in cross-examination to a number of witnesses before the Inquiry. It was systematically denied. The hypocrisy of these denials has now been demonstrated by the disclosure of some passages from Mr Campbell's diary. This document is one of the few if not the only contemporaneous record of events which was uninhibited by the prospect of subsequent scrutiny. The family submit that it is a compelling document. On Monday morning this week, the Secretary of State for Defence denied that there was any Government strategy to name Dr Kelly without giving the appearance of doing so. Immediately he left the witness box the passages from the diary were disclosed by the Inquiry. Although we had no opportunity to cross-examine Mr Hoon upon them, they indicate, with clarity, if accepted by the Inquiry, that the Secretary of State's denials of the Government's strategy put to him in cross-examination were false. Indeed, they reveal that he was an enthusiastic supporter of the proposal to put Dr Kelly's name into the public domain. This is totally contrary to his previous stance, much repeated when he gave evidence in phase 1 of the Inquiry, that it would have been wrong to name Dr Kelly until it was clear that he was Mr Gilligan's single source and that that was never clear in Dr Kelly's lifetime. As late as yesterday morning we saw, for the first time, an e-mail which I would ask be put on the screen. The reference is MoD/44/15. It is dated 9th July and was sent by Mr Hoon's private secretary, Mr Peter Watkins, to Mrs Wilson in the Ministry of Defence press office. The relevant portion reads: "Jonathan Powell has separately suggested to SofS [stands for Secretary of State] that we should simply name our man, but left the decision to Mr Hoon who has not yet reached a final view." This document, which I highlight because of its late disclosure, shows that the Government had it in mind to name Dr Kelly on 9th July and that it was Mr Hoon who was to make the final decision as to how the identity of Dr Kelly should enter the public domain. This document demonstrates, once again, the hypocrisy of Mr Hoon's public stance on the matter in phase 1 of the Inquiry. Curiously, neither Mr Hoon nor Mr Powell saw fit to mention this e-mail during their evidence. We were unable to cross-examine upon it because we did not know about it. If, as the family submit, there was a strategy to out Dr Kelly so that he could be used as a witness to undermine Mr Gilligan in furtherance of the Government's dispute with the BBC, this was a cynical abuse of power which deserves the strongest possible condemnation. The evidence of this strategy and the decision to put Dr Kelly's name in the public domain for political advantage is derived from multiple witnesses and many documents. The principal documentary sources of this evidence are: first, the MoD press statement of 8th July; second, the deployment of the question and answer material on 9th July; third, the information given in the two Lobby briefings at 11 am and 3.45 pm on 9th July and, as indicated, fourthly, the entries in Mr Campbell's diary, principally those on the 8th, 9th and 15th July. There should also be added to this list the failure to provide any reasonable explanation of the abandonment of the original stance adopted in the Q and A material of 4th July, when it was stated that the name would not be disclosed and there was no benefit in revealing it. The content of the press statement, the Q and A material and the Lobby briefings has been well rehearsed during the evidence. I do not intend, therefore, to go through the information which was disclosed to the press by these means. It will feature in our written submissions. What is noteworthy is that it was quite sufficient to lead a number of journalists to identify Dr Kelly within a couple of hours of the afternoon Lobby briefing on 9th July. Mr Campbell's diary requires further comment. The entry for 4th July is illuminating. Part of the entry reads: "GH said his initial instinct was to throw the book at him but in fact there was a case for trying to get some kind of plea bargain." The bargain suggested by the family is that there would be no formal disciplinary proceedings and therefore no risk of loss of employment, pension rights or security status provided Dr Kelly gave evidence to the Select Committees in accordance with the directions or steers with which he would be provided. Even if the plea bargain strategy was never implemented, the fact that it was contemplated shows the direction of thinking of the Government in general and Mr Hoon in particular. Mr Hoon, formerly in practice at the bar, would undoubtedly know the distinction between a plea bargain and mitigation. The fact that Dr Kelly had come forward voluntarily in a spirit of honesty and openness would indeed be mitigation but could not be brought within the term "plea bargain". There is further support of the proposed deal which I have mentioned to be found in the entry for 15th July in Mr Campbell's diary, where there is reference to, and I quote, "MoD assurances ... he was well schooled", meaning that Dr Kelly had been instructed in how to answer questions before the FAC. The diary entry for 9th July reads: "We kept pressing on as best we could at the briefings. But the biggest thing needed was the source out. We agreed we should not do it ourselves, so didn't but later in the day the FT, Guardian [and] after a while Evans got the name." This entry was written after the MoD statement had been issued on 8th July, thus the fact of the existence of the source had already been revealed. It follows that on this occasion at least, the phrase, I quote, "needing the source out" must refer to the need for the identity of the source to be revealed. It is submitted that the entries on 6th and 7th July, where there is reference to "getting the source up", have similar meanings, namely that the identity of the source should be revealed. Information was also leaked to journalists. For example, Mr Tom Baldwin wrote two articles for The Times which were published on the 8th and 9th July. Obviously, they must have been written the night before publication, that is to say on the 7th and 8th July, yet they contained information not yet released into the public domain by the press statement and the Lobby briefing. Mr Baldwin told the Inquiry that the sources of both articles were, and I quote, "conversations with Whitehall contacts". It is relevant to consider whether Dr Kelly was informed of the proposal to reveal his identity. The strategy developed by the Government was even on its own case unprecedented. That is the term used in the final version of the Q and A material. The duty upon the Government to keep Dr Kelly informed was, therefore, heightened by the unprecedented circumstances. Yet Dr Kelly's consent was not sought to any of the steps taken by the Government with the exception of the approval of the press statement. The Government has yet to explain to the Inquiry why Dr Kelly was kept in the dark about the strategy that No. 10 and the MoD had developed to confirm his name to journalists if that name was put to the MoD press office. It is submitted that the plain and obvious reason was the risk that he might not consent to it and might cease to cooperate by not appearing before the FAC and the ISC, thus defeating the object of the exercise. A possible explanation was given by Mr Hatfield. He said, and I quote, "I did not believe and I do not believe I required his consent." This speaks volumes as to the attitude that the MoD adopted in the course of its decision-making, namely that Dr Kelly's views were irrelevant. It may also shed light on the true nature of Mr Hatfield's interactions with Dr Kelly. Whatever the position in strict law, common decency required that Dr Kelly be kept informed. He had not committed any disciplinary offence, he was not on trial and he was entitled to the same fair treatment as any other civil servant. There are three areas of the process about which Dr Kelly should have been informed. First, the decision to make a press statement and the content of that press statement, together with the timing of its release. Second, the content of the question and answer material; and, third, the confirmation of his name to journalists. I deal first with the press statement. It is clear that Dr Kelly was informed of the existence of it. He was shown a copy of an early draft of a press statement in the course of the interview on 7th July and, it seems, took a copy of that statement away with him. There are two significant features about this press statement and the manner in which it was passed to Dr Kelly. First, it does not contain any information that would be likely to lead to Dr Kelly being identified. The third paragraph of the press statement that was eventually to be released had not yet been added to the draft seen by Dr Kelly. It was this paragraph which contained the crucial material which would assist identification. Dr Kelly was, therefore, left with the impression that a statement might be issued which did not identify him and which would not lead, even indirectly, to his identity being revealed. Indeed, according to Mr Hatfield's account of the meeting, Dr Kelly was expressly told quite the opposite: that it would not be necessary to reveal his name or say anything more than that his account did not match that of Andrew Gilligan. This is Mr Hatfield's record of this part of the meeting: "I said that I did not think that it would be necessary to reveal his name or to go into detail beyond indicating that the account given to us did not match Gilligan's FAC account, at least initially." According to Mr Hatfield's latest account, the press statement which was in fact issued by the MoD at 5.45 pm on 8th July was read to Dr Kelly over the telephone on 8th July at 5.10 pm. Two matters are striking about this. First, that it was only 35 minutes before the statement was issued; second, that Mr Hatfield's call lasted some three and a half minutes. We query whether this was sufficient time for Dr Kelly to reflect on the statement, to judge what additions had been made to it, to suggest drafting points of his own, to take advice and to advance arguments as to why matters should or should not be included. I turn to the Q and A material. No witness to the Inquiry has suggested that Dr Kelly was ever informed of the contents of this material. It is curious indeed why Mr Hatfield did not attempt to convey at least the sense of the Q and A material to Dr Kelly in the course of his conversations, particularly as, on his latest account of the events of 8th July, he had it in his possession at that time and had, indeed, suggested two changes to it. In his evidence yesterday, Mr Hatfield said that he required Dr Kelly's explicit consent to the terms of the press statement because his employer was proposing, in the statement, to release information about Dr Kelly's position and his work. Yet information of precisely that kind was to be released in the question and answer material in answer to journalists' questions. Why was it that it was not even mentioned to Dr Kelly? Now, the decision to confirm the correct name. No witness to the Inquiry has suggested that Dr Kelly was informed that the MoD proposed to confirm his name to journalists if it was put to the press office. No proper explanation has been given for this striking omission. Various witnesses have suggested that as Dr Kelly knew that his name was likely eventually to emerge, the omission is, therefore, nothing to the point. The difficulty facing the Government with this line is twofold. First, there is no evidence that Dr Kelly knew that his name would emerge. He acknowledged in interviews that this might occur. Second, an employee's recognition that his name might become public is no reason for an employer not to inform him of the employer's decision to confirm his name to a journalist if that journalist correctly put his name forward. The issue is perhaps best looked at differently. What good reason was for there for not informing Dr Kelly of this strategy? We submit there was none. According to Mr Hatfield, Dr Kelly was told that the statement was to be released at about 5.10 pm on 8th July, that is to say 35 minutes before the press statement was in fact released. Dr Kelly had not been given advice, guidance or assistance as to what the consequences of the press statement might be before it had been released. He had not been told, for example, whether to take calls from the press, whether to volunteer that he was the individual named in the press statement if a journalist asked him, nor whether to make comment or not on any questions which might be asked of him. There has been no explanation of why Dr Kelly was not given such assistance before the press statement was released, presumably none exists. The Ministry of Defence did contact Dr Kelly after the press statement to discuss such matters. Mrs Kate Wilson says that she called Dr Kelly twice in the evening of 8th July. Records indeed confirm that two such calls were made from Mrs Wilson's office. They were made at 26 minutes past 8 and 46 minutes past 8 and lasted respectively 51 seconds and 1 minute and 19 seconds. So less than 2 and a half minutes of time was the extent of the assistance the MoD could manage to give Dr Kelly at this stage, and that assistance came some two and a half hours after the press statement had been released. The MoD telephone records also reveal that no call was made to Dr Kelly on the evening of the 9th July after the press had identified Dr Kelly, at about 5.30 pm, until Dr Wells called Dr Kelly just after 7 o'clock. Mrs Wilson agreed that she never called Dr Kelly at all. She did not call him, she said, because she thought that his line manager should break the news. Despite the imminence of the media storm, no-one in the press office had troubled to get Dr Wells' number in advance or indeed to ensure that he was available to speak to Dr Kelly. As Mr Dingemans put it, during the course of the evidence, Dr Kelly was bumbling about in his garden when Mr Rufford arrived on his doorstep at about 7.30 pm. Whatever may have passed between Mr Rufford and Dr Kelly, it was apparent that Dr Kelly was wholly unprepared for what was to come. This exemplifies the total lack of care extended to Dr Kelly by the Ministry of Defence at this stage. It is right to point out that Dr Wells made a number of telephone calls to Dr Kelly on Friday 11th July, when Dr Kelly and his wife were in Cornwall. Only two of these calls exceeded 3 minutes, and most were no doubt concerned with arrangements for the Select Committee hearings and the schooling meeting the following week. What was the effect of these events upon Dr Kelly? In his article in the Sunday Times of 13th July, Mr Rufford described Dr Kelly as looking "pale and tired", and complaining that he had had a difficult time and that the matter had played heavily on his mind since it broke six weeks earlier. On 14th July a memorandum from Colin Smith of the FCO said that Dr Kelly was feeling the pressure and not handling it well. Mr Lamb made a telephone call of reassurance to Dr Kelly, but otherwise nothing seems to have been done in consequence of these comments. No counselling was arranged, no contact was made with Mrs Kelly to enquire as to her views of her husband's morale and well-being. The meeting of 14th July ought to have been used as an opportunity to assess the state of Dr Kelly's health and his state of mind to see how he was coping with the pressure, to ensure he was getting all the support he needed in readiness for the forthcoming Select Committee hearings and generally to provide assistance for him. His needs ought to have been the centre of attention. Instead, the Ministry of Defence used the meeting to tell Dr Kelly what he should and should not say at the FAC and the ISC. The focus of the meeting was not Dr Kelly's welfare but to ensure that Dr Kelly did not say anything that might embarrass the Government. The suggestion that the MoD were giving steers to Dr Kelly at the meeting has been denied by many witnesses. The evidence that this is exactly what occurred is to be found from three sources. First, when he gave evidence for the first time Mr Howard said that it was his intention before going to the meeting to identify first those areas of questioning that Dr Kelly could and should respond to; and, second, those areas of questioning where he could legitimately say: actually this is more a matter for the Ministry of Defence, for Ministers, rather than for me. Counsel to the Inquiry realised the importance of this answer. He immediately read it back to Mr Howard from the transcript and confirmed that this was Mr Howard's evidence. Mr Howard gave such confirmation. The importance of the answer is that it reveals that it was Mr Howard who was identifying, for the benefit of Dr Kelly, not only the tricky areas, which were recorded in the notes, but also the suggested answers, for example "that is a matter for Ministers". Second, when the note of the meeting came to be typed up by Dr Wells, curiously he decided to omit the phrase "tricky areas". This is strange since not only is there no doubt that the phrase was used, it is in all the records which were made of the meeting, but the phrase also appears in Dr Wells' own notes. Why should he not follow his own notes faithfully in the typed version? Thirdly, Mr Campbell's diary reveals that he had been given assurances by the Ministry of Defence that Dr Kelly was well schooled, that is his entry for 15th July. Schooling a witness who is to appear before a Parliamentary Committee is, we submit, an improper activity. Assisting the witness with his welfare needs, ensuring that he knows the constitutional position of the Committee and highlighting likely topics of discussion is legitimate; schooling a witness involves coaching and instructing him as to the evidence that it is desired he should give. This is wholly illegitimate. If that did not occur then why did Mr Campbell choose to record it in that way? So it was that the next day, Tuesday 15th July, that Dr Kelly appeared before the FAC. The arrangements for him to get there did not go smoothly. The atmosphere was oppressive, as was the tone of some of the questioning. In what seems to have been Dr Kelly's only request throughout this affair, he asked that Mr Patrick Lamb should accompany him to the Committee. That was denied him. Even Mr Campbell himself spoke of his appearance before the FAC as a "gruelling experience". How much more so must it have been for Dr Kelly? Your Lordship will have been moved by the evidence given by Mrs Kelly and her daughter Rachel about the last few days of Dr Kelly's life, about how tired and stressed he was, how unhappy he was, how he felt betrayed by the Ministry of Defence, no doubt in part because he had been led to believe that the whole matter could be dealt with confidentially. Instead, he found himself publicly exposed in the full glare of the media. He had worked faithfully for the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office all his life. He had achieved great eminence in his field both nationally and on behalf of the United Nations. He had led weapons inspection teams in Russia and in Iraq. He had been awarded the CMG and was being considered for further honours, perhaps a knighthood. He had served his country loyally and with distinction. Yet all the while he remained a modest, retiring man who never sought the limelight. The Government and the nation have lost their greatest expert in biological weapons of mass destruction, yet he was characterised by his employers to suit their needs of the hour as a middle ranking official and used as a pawn in their political battle with the BBC. His public exposure must have brought about a total loss of self esteem, a feeling that people had lost trust in him. No wonder Dr Kelly felt betrayed after giving his life to the service of his country. No wonder he was broken hearted and, as his wife put it, had shrunk into himself. In his despair he seems to have taken his own life. Thank you my Lord.

LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much Mr Gompertz. Mr Sumption.

LORD HUTTON: But what if the suggestions on presentation have the effect of strengthening the dossier when read by the public, Mr Sumption? MR SUMPTION: That depended entirely on whether Mr Scarlett, having considered the comment, thought that it was appropriate to strengthen it.

LORD HUTTON: Yes. MR SUMPTION: If he thought that it was appropriate, having regard to the underlying intelligence, to strengthen it then there is no reason why he should not do so and no reason why he should not be asked to consider the point. The essential question is whether Mr Scarlett was going to be felt to feel under pressure to strengthen it unjustifiably simply because a comment of that kind had been made by the Prime Minister's staff. It is moreover right to add not all of the comments were designed to strengthen it.

LORD HUTTON: Your point is that provided that the intelligence is there to support what is said, if the presentational suggestions strengthen the dossier in the eyes of the public, that is permissible. MR SUMPTION: In my submission it is. The essential question is: is there a clear distribution of responsibilities under which the difference between a comment and an instruction is very clearly understood by the recipient? If there is, there cannot possibly be a legitimate objection to a comment, even if its acceptance would lead to the strengthening of the dossier, bearing in mind that the whole object of this exercise was to present to Parliament a dossier which accurately reflected the underlying intelligence. For that reason I would submit that it was perfectly proper for the Prime Minister's staff to enquire, for example, what intelligence was available on particular points. It was perfectly proper for them to comment on the way that particular points were expressed. Some of the comments, at one end of the scale, not all of them of course, were little more than proofreading; and I would put into that category the classic example, namely Mr Campbell's comment about the 45 minutes point in his memorandum of 17th September. It simply pointed out that the emphasis in the executive summary was not the same as the emphasis in the main text and left Mr Scarlett to decide what, if anything, should be done about that. What I submit matters is that every one of Mr Campbell's and Mr Powell's comments was scrupulously considered by Mr Scarlett and the assessment staff against the available intelligence and was, in fact, accepted only insofar as it was appropriate to do that. In fact, as your Lordship has heard, many of these comments were rejected. Ironically the comment which comes closest to being a substantive suggestion is nothing to do with the 45 minutes point and did not come from Mr Campbell, it came from Mr Powell, the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff. He made a point based on his recollection of the intelligence that it was not right to describe Iraq's capacity to use weapons of mass destruction as being essentially defensive. Mr Scarlett then went back over the intelligence and concluded that the existing text could not be justified. As he told your Lordship, recent intelligence shows that the picture was in fact more complex than the text suggested. There were both offensive and defensive aspects to Iraq's policies on the use of weapons of mass destruction. So he took out the statements which were not a balanced reflection of the underlying intelligence. It is worth asking: can it seriously be suggested that the dossier would have been a better document or closer to the judgments of the JIC if Mr Scarlett had never been prompted to carry out that exercise? The answer is, quite obviously: no. What of the 45 minutes point itself, which Mr Gilligan's broadcast cited as the classic example of outside interference with intelligence judgments? That turns out to be supported by absolutely nothing apart from a suggestion from Mr Campbell that Mr Scarlett should look at the internal consistency of his language in different parts of the document. It is, in fact, one of the ironies of this story that the change which brought the two parts of the document into line had already been resolved upon by Julian Miller and the assessment staff before they were aware of Mr Campbell's comment. So that even that relatively footling point turns out to be immaterial. The allegation subsequently made by Mr Gilligan although not, as he accepted, by Dr Kelly that changes had been made on Downing Street's orders could hardly be further from the truth. I have made the main points that need to be made about the dossier but before I turn to Mr Gilligan's broadcasts I would like, if I may, just to deal briefly with two matters.

LORD HUTTON: Just before you do that, Mr Sumption, if you have the position that the dossier has been made stronger by reason of suggestions on presentational points, those suggestions being entirely consistent with the underlying intelligence, can that be described, to use an inexact term, as "sexing up" the document? MR SUMPTION: It could not I would suggest on any view be described as sexing up the dossier. I have made the broader point that it was in fact an entirely proper process.

LORD HUTTON: Yes. MR SUMPTION: But the manner in which it was described in Mr Gilligan's broadcast bore absolutely no relation to the process that actually occurred.

LORD HUTTON: Thank you. MR SUMPTION: The first of the two points I want to make before I leave this particular area concerns the evidence of Dr Jones. In describing this as a byway in the present Inquiry I mean no disrespect to your Lordship who has been examining him or to Dr Jones himself. Now that we know the facts, we can put the issue in some kind of context. Dr Jones was one of a number of officials in the Ministry of Defence who had an opportunity to comment on the dossier from their own specialised points of view. In this case it happened under the auspices of the Defence Intelligence Staff. Dr Jones in fact had no objection to the inclusion of the 45 minutes point. His view was that it was expressed too strongly for something that was based on a single source whose credentials were uncertain. Dr Jones' concerns were, in fact, taken into account among a large number of other comments presented by the DIS to the Cabinet Office but Dr Jones did not have access to the whole of the relevant material, as he recognised in his memorandum of complaint. The compartmented intelligence which was decisive on this issue was not shown to him. The reality is that whether or not the single source in this particular case justified the confidence placed in it was not a matter for Dr Jones, it was a matter for the originating agency, namely the Secret Intelligence Service, and then for the JIC itself. They judged that it did justify the statement. As for Mr A, we find it difficult to understand how his views can be relevant. He had no involvement in the preparation of the dossier. His misgivings did not even emerge from the machinery of the Defence Intelligence Staff. It can therefore hardly be said that they were improperly excluded or ignored by the draftsmen in the Cabinet Office. Your Lordship has heard a great deal from the BBC and other journalists about a persistent undercurrent of discontent about the contents of the dossier among people who were lower down the intelligence hierarchy. Without knowing who these people are, it is difficult to know whether one is dealing with one or two individuals speaking to a lot of different journalists very often or to a more widespread expression of discontent. Without knowing who they are, it is also impossible to discover what the real grounds of their concern were, whether they had been fairly reported in the press and whether they were actually in a position to know the facts. It is a matter of speculation, but it seems likely that any discontent of this kind comes from people like Dr Jones whose motives are entirely honourable but who were simply out of the loop so far as parts of the relevant intelligence are concerned. What does seem clear, from the evidence, is that it does not emanate from the agent handlers or assessment staff concerned with Iraq at the SIS or from members or staff of the JIC; and they are the people in a position to know. My Lord, the second matter I wanted to mention is related to the first. It concerns Dr Kelly's own role in the preparation of the dossier. Dr Kelly contributed to the historical section of the dossier which dealt largely with the work of UNSCOM in Iraq before 1998. He also answered a specific question which had arisen about growth media. In addition to those contributions, he would also, in all probability, have seen the drafts of the whole dossier, including the draft which was considered by the Defence Intelligence Staff on 19th September. It is possible that he contributed, along with others, to the DIS comments sent to the Cabinet Office assessment staff on the same day. However, by no stretch of the imagination could Dr Kelly be described as one of the senior officials in charge of drawing up the dossier. He was not. He was simply one of many people who were in a position to comment on areas within their own specialised expertise. Dr Kelly may well have shared the view of Dr Jones about the 45 minutes point. His conversations with Susan Watts suggest that he probably did. But he was, of course, under the same disadvantage as Dr Jones was; he did not have access to all of the underlying intelligence. It was not his responsibility to assess its credibility and he was not in a position to do so. My Lord, I therefore turn to Mr Gilligan's broadcasts and to the dispute with the BBC. I want to preface my remarks about this by saying that it is no part of my instructions to treat this Inquiry as a continuation of the dispute between the Government and the BBC. The Government is not and never has been engaged in a crusade against the BBC, nor are any of the Ministers or officials whom I represent. The Government has two main interests in this area. It has an interest in establishing what the true facts are about the preparation of the dossier -- I have addressed your Lordship about that. It also has an interest in explaining why it was that the Government felt as strongly as it did about Mr Gilligan's broadcasts, why it took up its complaints with the BBC; and why it persisted when the BBC stood its ground. There are clearly many aspects of the conduct of Mr Gilligan and the BBC which may be unsatisfactory but I am concerned with them only insofar as they help to understand the strength of feeling which this dispute generated within the Government and elsewhere. The essential point made in Mr Gilligan's two broadcasts on the Today Programme was that the Government had included material in the dossier contrary to the advice of the Intelligence Services. The 45 minutes point was said to be the prime example of that. It was said that the 45 minutes point was based on a single source whom the Intelligence Services believed had got it wrong. There are three points which need to be made about this allegation at the outset. First of all, it was quite plainly an allegation of conscious wrongdoing on the part of the Government. Now, that is so whether one looks at the 6.07 broadcast or at the 7.32 version. In the 6.07 broadcast the allegation of dishonesty was made more directly. It was said that the Government probably knew that the 45 minutes point was wrong when it put it into the dossier. At the end of the 6.07 broadcast, Mr Gilligan explicitly distinguished between an honest mistake and a deliberate falsehood. He made the point that the second was a great deal more serious than the first, the implication plainly being that that was the category to which the Government's conduct belonged. That, of course, was the version which echoed around the world. There may not be many people apart from Mr Davies who are awake and listening to the Today Programme at 6.07 but there is no doubt that it is very closely monitored by the world's media. The 7.32 version in fact made substantially the same point albeit not quite so much in your face. The word used on the second occasion was that the Government knew that the point was questionable rather than that it was wrong; but on this occasion, as on the earlier occasion, the point being made was that the Government had overridden the advice of the Intelligence Services. Since the dossier had claimed to reflect that advice, this had very serious implications. It meant, if it was true, that the Government had presented to Parliament a document said to represent the views of the Intelligence Services which they knew was actually contrary to those views in some significant respects. The second point that needs to be made at the outset is this: it is apparently the position of the BBC that there is a difference between an allegation made by the BBC itself and an allegation which it reports as coming from an outside source. Clearly, there is a difference, but it is a great deal less significant than the BBC has suggested. From the point of view of the reputation of the people involved, it is almost imperceptible. The allegations attributed to Mr Gilligan's source were only important because Mr Gilligan had broadcast them. If a news organisation broadcasts allegations as coming from an anonymous source, whose authority is, by definition, incapable of being assessed by listeners, the broadcaster, I would suggest, is necessarily adding a substantial endorsement of his own. The broadcaster may not be saying: we think that this is certainly true -- that I would accept; but a reputable broadcaster is saying: we think that these allegations are worthy of belief by you, the listeners. In the end I do not think that any of the BBC's witnesses really disputed that. The BBC is undoubtedly a reputable broadcaster, arguably the most reputable or one of the most reputable in the world. It also has a worldwide reach. The BBC must expect that serious and anonymous allegations it chooses to broadcast will be taken extremely seriously not just by those against whom they are directed but by everybody else. In fact, one of the more unfortunate aspects of Mr Gilligan's broadcasts is that it did not even fairly report what Dr Kelly had said to him. I am not going to explore, at length, what exactly Dr Kelly did say to Mr Gilligan. It may well have been more than Dr Kelly admitted to saying in July when he was interviewed by the Ministry of Defence and when he was giving evidence to the two Parliamentary Committees. It was certainly less than Mr Gilligan attributed to him. To take only the more abrasive examples, Dr Kelly did not actually say that the Government put the 45 minutes point into the dossier probably knowing that it was wrong. Mr Gilligan accepts that. Nor did Dr Kelly say that Downing Street had ordered the dossier to be sexed up; in fact he did not use the word "sexed up" at all, that was Mr Gilligan's sound bite. Thirdly, it is right that I should say something about the nature of Mr Gilligan's source, so far as he described it in his broadcasts. In his two Today Programmes Mr Gilligan described his source as "one of the senior officials in charge of drawing up the dossier". Although Mr Gilligan does not admit this, it must be most improbable that Dr Kelly in fact described himself in that way. If Dr Kelly said that he or others were unhappy with the 45 minutes point, if Dr Kelly said that, it might fairly be described as a matter of opinion. It was an opinion which might have been held by someone who did not have access to all of the underlying intelligence or the other surrounding information on which the JIC assessment is based. That is quite different from Dr Kelly saying that he was one of the senior officials in charge of drawing up the dossier. If Dr Kelly said that, then he was telling a deliberate untruth in order to boost his own significance; and there is absolutely no reason to suppose that Dr Kelly was that kind of man. It is much more likely that he said nothing of the kind. One's confidence in Mr Gilligan's evidence on this point is not exactly increased by the way in which he says that it came out. Dr Kelly never volunteered this description of his own functions, and Mr Gilligan never asked him to explain it. Mr Gilligan told your Lordship that the description was proposed out of the blue at the very end of the interview by Mr Gilligan himself. It happened, he said, after he had agreed what quotes he could use and after he had put his personal organiser away. He said that Dr Kelly accepted it from him together with an alternative description of his functions, which was different. That has all the hallmarks of a self-serving invention designed partly to explain why the critical point does not appear in Mr Gilligan's notes and partly to accommodate the awkward evidence about the two versions of his file which were found on his personal organiser. Whatever may be the truth about that, Mr Gilligan acknowledges that Dr Kelly never did describe himself as a member of the Intelligence Services, let alone a senior one. Nonetheless he was described as "my intelligence source" by Mr Gilligan himself on Radio 5 Live slightly later on the same day. That description, which Mr Gilligan always knew to be wrong, was taken up by other BBC personnel on a number of occasions: by John Humphrys on the Today Programme on 29th May itself, by the World at One later in the same day, and in a number of broadcasts over the following weeks by Richard Sambrook among others. Mr Gilligan never sought to correct it. Perhaps even more remarkable, since he is a very senior executive of the BBC, Mr Sambrook realised by 27th June that the source was not a member of the Intelligence Services and nevertheless allowed the impression that he was to persist, even among the Governors of the BBC. This point about the source's alleged membership of the Intelligence Services cannot, I suggest, just be brushed aside. The essential point broadcast by Mr Gilligan was that No. 10 had overruled the advice of the Intelligence Services. That meant that the fact that his source was said to be a senior member of the Intelligence Services was an extremely important factor in making his reported allegations appear credible. I am not going to retrace, day by day, the history of the subsequent dispute between the Government and the BBC. What does seem clear is that the main problem always was that the BBC never acknowledged how serious the allegations which they had broadcast really were. All of the BBC witnesses acknowledged, when they were asked about this, that they were very serious allegations, yet all of them said that, for one reason or another, they did not focus on that aspect of the broadcasts at the time. They did not, apparently, focus on the allegation overtly made in the 6.07 broadcast. They never focused on the implications of saying that the Government had overruled their intelligence advisers on the contents of a document that was laid before Parliament as reflecting the advice of their intelligence advisers. The BBC seem to have regarded this as a routine piece of political mud slinging, chatter in the air. It seems to have been thought that the BBC could shoot off its fireworks and then steal away. The dogs would bark, the caravan would move on, nobody would pay any more attention. The BBC's evidence suggests that they may have been genuinely surprised that the Government took a different view of matters and their surprise lasted throughout June and July. It was at least partly because of this fundamental difference in perceptions that the BBC could never bring itself to address directly the Government's real concerns. Was the Government right to take a more serious view of the position? I say to your Lordship that they were. It was simply not possible for a democratic Government to dismiss charges like these as part of the ordinary currency of political debate. It is important to emphasise that in spite of the tendency of the press to personalise this issue that the dispute about the broadcast was never a personal campaign by Alastair Campbell. The original BBC broadcasts had not mentioned Mr Campbell. That was something that Mr Gilligan added to the allegations when he came to sell his intemperate and inaccurate article to The Mail on Sunday. Of course Mr Campbell put the points forcefully and articulately on behalf of the Government and in the kind of direct language that was calculated to make people listen. That is what Mr Campbell is there for. But the Government would have been just as concerned about the matter if Mr Campbell had been on sabbatical at the other end of the world and it is important, I would suggest, to pause for a moment in order to consider why that was. In the first place, the people against whom these allegations were made had direct knowledge of the true facts. The Prime Minister, the staff at No. 10 and in the Cabinet Office, the JIC and its Chairman and the people at SIS who had originated the 45 minutes point, they all knew how the dossier had actually been prepared and how the 45 minutes point had come to be included in it. They all knew that the allegations broadcast by Mr Gilligan were, in fact, a travesty; either that Mr Gilligan's source was laying claim to knowledge which he could not have and Mr Gilligan had failed, properly, to check out his status, or else Mr Gilligan had greatly exaggerated what he had been told. The real problem was that the anonymity of the BBC's source made it impossible for the Government to challenge the story more effectively unless the BBC themselves were prepared to re-examine it. Only they knew what the status of the source was. They never were prepared to re-examine it; and that is one of the basic injustices arising from the use by a broadcaster of the stature of the BBC of anonymous sources. It might have mattered less if the allegations had related to something less sensitive. It might have mattered less if they had not been repeated across the world. In fact the allegations related to one of the main factors in the developing crisis over Iraq, a matter of intense public concern both in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. It would be hard to point to a single area in which the existence of trust between a government and the public was so important. The public has no direct access to secret intelligence. It has to rely on the integrity not just of Ministers but of the officials in the services which gather intelligence and assess it and advise Ministers. The fact that Iraq was an issue on which the public and the world at large were deeply divided made honesty in the presentation of intelligence advice even more fundamental. Many witnesses have expressed to your Lordship their views on these points. If I single out one of them it is because he is a diplomat of considerable experience whose evidence was given in particularly measured and cautious terms, namely Sir David Manning. His view is, I suggest, also valuable because he was not directly involved in the dispute with the BBC and cannot be accused of getting carried away by its momentum. What Sir David told you was that the allegations were, as he put it: "... seen as a pretty direct attack on the integrity of the Prime Minister and officials at No. 10, in the sense that they would try to persuade the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee to massage or to revise his conclusions, his recommendations, for political convenience, I saw it personally as also an unjustified attack on John Scarlett personally, the Chairman of the JIC, because implicit in this is the assumption that he is willing to do this ... I felt it was a very serious attack, not only, however, upon the integrity of individuals but a very serious attack on the integrity of the processes of Government." These allegations, as we know, were recycled not only by the United Kingdom media but worldwide. Inevitably with each recycling the volume is amplified. This process was not all of the BBC's making or of Mr Gilligan's but a substantial part of it was. It is also fair to say that it was an entirely predictable consequence of the sensational nature of the original allegation. In political terms perhaps the most important single factor was that the issue was taken up by both the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Intelligence and Security Committee in the House of Commons. The fact that these two investigations were undertaken is, perhaps, the strongest evidence of the real significance of the issue, not just in the minds of the Government. The FAC Chairman, Mr Anderson, summarised the allegation at the outset of Mr Campbell's evidence as being, as he put it: "In Mr Campbell's zeal to make the case he embellished the evidence to the point of misleading Parliament and the public at a vital time relating to peace and war." Mr Maples, an Opposition member of the Committee, commented that it was, as he put it: "... terribly important for us all that that allegation is laid to rest. I agree that it is incredibly serious." Of course, the inquiries being undertaken by these two Committees made it inevitable that the Government was going to have to defend itself publicly against the allegations during June and July when the investigations were in progress. The FAC inquiry, in particular, was always going to keep the issue in the public eye because of the publicity of the FAC's hearings and the pugnacity of a number of its members. That was always going to be a noisy process. I would accept as Mr Campbell himself has accepted that he should have restrained his anger better during the Channel 4 interview with Jon Snow on 27th June. He had however been provoked by the BBC's particularly tendentious response to his letter of 26th June. That letter as your Lordship saw attempted to meet some of Mr Campbell's concerns by redefining the allegations which the BBC had actually made in very different terms. It also contained some round assertions, particularly about the 6.07 broadcast which the BBC have not felt able to support in their evidence to this Inquiry. There is, I would suggest, a world of difference between fairly retracting a public allegation of conscious wrongdoing and pretending that you have never really made one. There is also a world of difference between the question whether it was in the public interest for the BBC to broadcast the allegations in the first place and the question whether it was right to stand by them after the JIC Chairman had publicly associated himself with the PM's denials and with no further substantial investigation on the part of the BBC at all. If the broadcast allegations really had been as inoffensive as the BBC tried to suggest in that letter then Mr Campbell could be fairly accused of having overblown the issue. But Mr Campbell's public statements of the Government's position were, I suggest, commensurate with the gravity of the charges which the BBC had actually broadcast. In retrospect, it is a great pity that the BBC's Governors were put in a position on 6th July where they had no proper means of making their own assessment of the line to which their staff were committed. One has some sympathy with the Governors. They were brought under heavy pressure by the Chairman to back the executives' line. They were not provided with the information that might have enabled them to take their own line, even though Mr Sambrook was sitting there at the meeting with most of that information in his head. It was perhaps the last occasion on which somebody within the BBC who was independent of the executives could have brought a fresh eye to the dispute. They could have had a report on Mr Gilligan's notes, they could have considered what he had really been told by his source, they could have been told what was known about the status of his source; and they could have been told the views of Mr Kevin Marsh, the editor of the Today Programme itself. A report on these points would surely have been a revealing document.

LORD HUTTON: What do you say as to Mr Davies' point that it is not for the Governors to concern themselves in the details of the programme and -- I am paraphrasing what he said -- to some extent the Governors have to rely on what they are told by the management? MR SUMPTION: To some extent that is so. One accepts that if the Governors are to form a view about the facts they need assistance from the executives. But in circumstances where the Governors are considering whether a complaint against those very executives is justified or may be justified or not, it cannot be right simply to take the executives' account of matters without any underlying investigation from them. And that is, as it appears from the records that we have, precisely what happened. If the Governors had had a report, for example, from Mr Sambrook on the respects in which the notes did in fact back up what Mr Gilligan had broadcast, and all the BBC witnesses have accepted that it was essential that there should be proper support for the broadcast, if the Governors had had a note from him on that or if they had had a redacted version of the notes themselves, it is at least possible that the Governors would have appreciated what the BBC's witnesses have now accepted before your Lordship, namely that Mr Gilligan in fact went too far in his broadcasts on 29th May. That might, in turn, have led to the kind of honourable draw which the Prime Minister proposed to Mr Davies on the following day. The suggestion, as your Lordship will recall from the evidence, was that the Government should accept the BBC's good faith in broadcasting the allegations while the BBC would acknowledge that it could no longer support them. The problem was that by the time this proposal was made it was too late. The Governors had stood up to be counted just as Mr Davies had asked them to. My Lord, I am coming to the position which arose when Dr Kelly came forward on 30th June. It is 5 to 12 and I would like to suggest to your Lordship that it is probably more sensible I should take that in one bite at 1.15 when your Lordship resumes.

LORD HUTTON: That is certainly so, Mr Sumption. I will rise now and sit again at 1.15 pm.