The Hutton Inquiry

SIR KEVIN: What I think I said is I can understand that it might seem strange that the Director of News would have told any of the journalists that if they put the name to us we would confirm it, as opposed to being held solely within the press office itself for background information to the press officers. I now understand why she did that it way, which was to encourage journalists who seemed determined to try and find the name, I think she mentioned it to two, to actually come forward with the name to her rather than print it, in case it was either the wrong name or we had no control whatsoever of informing Dr Kelly what had happened. That was the point I was making.

SIR KEVIN: When I first heard of it, I assumed that that instruction, if they come forward with the right name you may confirm, I thought that instruction was only to be disseminated within the press office. I had not realised that that itself would be said to journalists. I now realise why it was; and I can understand that it was the right thing. I was simply taking you through the process of a professional Director of News on how they have to operate.

SIR KEVIN: Very briefly, yes.

SIR KEVIN: No, no, I was talking about this particular point.

SIR KEVIN: Yes.

SIR KEVIN: You mean the point if --

SIR KEVIN: It did not cross my mind that it would be. It subsequently was explained to me why it was. I realised that was a very proper way of proceeding.

SIR KEVIN: On that specific point.

SIR KEVIN: That is correct.

SIR KEVIN: You mean that Dr Kelly would know if the press came forward with the correct name it would be confirmed?

SIR KEVIN: Well, as I explained before, firstly, I think the key point was: did he expect his name to emerge, to come out in the public domain? I think it has been demonstrated that he must have done. There was a full discussion with him about that probability in various scenarios, various circumstances. We know, as a result of that, that he expected it to happen. He told people not just in the Department, he told Bryan Wells, but he also told Olivia Bosch that he expected his name to come out. The question, therefore, is: was it reasonable for the Department to have warned him of this, that we would confirm it if it did? My position, my own view, is that it is difficult to see how he would have assumed we would have behaved differently, of either denying or of not being prepared to confirm, because in that latter situation we would have run the risk of others in the Department being named and would certainly have not been able to control in any way the process of his name emerging; considerations which themselves did not depend entirely on Dr Kelly.

SIR KEVIN: Originally, yes.

SIR KEVIN: Those are both correct.

SIR KEVIN: Well, it would also have meant that there would have been less time to warn him of the approaching event, although I, myself, did not attach huge importance -- that is the wrong way round, but I did not think at that particular point in that way because that would have assumed there was a deadline, and we did not have a deadline. It was one of those issues that we were managing. But the main reason was that we had sufficient information to justify coming forward with the statement which we needed to make anyway, to avoid the cover-up or putting people in a difficult position before the ISC. It is true that we had not put the point to Dr Kelly.

SIR KEVIN: Well, I had not asked him specifically. I had said that was where I would, you know, aim to get to if we could.

SIR KEVIN: Yes, yes.

SIR KEVIN: Yes.

SIR KEVIN: Yes, that is correct. The reason I was quibbling slightly with you is because it said: "The PUS would like to consider in the light of this whether to recommend a public announcement. The key issues will be ..." In other words, he did not have a direct instruction to raise this, it was really letting him know my mind.

SIR KEVIN: He did not raise it because, as I have said earlier today, he still felt there were too many discrepancies between Dr Kelly's account and Gilligan's account to be sufficiently satisfied this was indeed the source.

SIR KEVIN: The Government I think, rather than the Ministry of Defence, felt the need to put out a statement.

SIR KEVIN: No, I said we associated ourselves with -- I am afraid we are recapping here, and I am a little tired, but do forgive me if I am repeating myself. But the decision to issue a statement, that a statement should be made, was one which was arrived at in No. 10 which, as it happened, the Ministry of Defence was not present at but which had it been it would, I know, at that point, be fully associated with that decision. The timing of the statement was dictated primarily by the concern to get it out before the ISC began taking testimony the following day, although there was concern about the allegations of cover-up the longer it went on after the FAC had reported.

SIR KEVIN: I think the words were put to me in that form.

SIR KEVIN: I think that there was a continuing process throughout this, as Ministers and officials were judging the situation. It just happened to be that that was the decisive meeting, yes.

SIR KEVIN: I would not say there was a change in stance quite. I would not particularly use those words.

SIR KEVIN: What changed was a decision to issue a statement.

SIR KEVIN: Yes. But as I keep insisting, the Q and A was simply the subordinate material supporting a statement, as it always does when you have a major statement on an issue of policy.

SIR KEVIN: Private.

SIR KEVIN: I said there were two reasons for making a statement. That was one of them. The other one was the Government believed --

SIR KEVIN: I do not think we can because the two considerations have to be taken together.

SIR KEVIN: Well, I mean, I am tempted to say after so many hours you might ask the Cabinet Office officials who made that judgment. It was not my judgment, but it was their clear feeling and clear sense that that is what their concern was. And that was my understanding of the meetings that took place on the Tuesday in the Cabinet Office and No. 10, which I fully understood and associated myself with.

SIR KEVIN: Because it was also felt by those officials and Ministers -- and I think this is other people's testimony, so forgive my recollection -- that in doing so it would be insupportable, unjustifiable, indefensible, not to also inform the FAC that this had happened; that it was disrespectful to Parliament -- remember, the ISC is a Prime Ministerial committee. It would be disrespectful to Parliament not to also inform the FAC at the same time that that information had come forward.

SIR KEVIN: He was certainly, in very strong terms. I mean, he said that the actual documents here are an understatement of the position and Dr Kelly understood it was inevitable that his name was going to come out.

SIR KEVIN: Yes. We also know that Mr Hatfield, at the end of his talk with Dr Kelly about the statement, told him to get some advice on press handling, which I regard as being tantamount to saying: this is coming out. Then Mrs Wilson came forward with more detailed advice. The fact that it was a short conversation reflected more, I think, Dr Kelly's wish than Mrs Wilson's, and she would have carried on for as long as it was necessary.

SIR KEVIN: Yes, yes.

SIR KEVIN: Sorry, I am getting there.

SIR KEVIN: Yes.

SIR KEVIN: Well, that was not quite how it was, knowing that your employer is going to confirm your name shortly. But remember, this was Dr Kelly's own letter to us. It was not just an e-mail from Olivia Bosch. His letter said: the reason I have come forward is because a friend of mine -- the whole thing, the reason I come forward with all this information is because a friend of mine told me I might be regarded as the source. Of course, he knew he was partly responsible for the issue anyway because he said: I hope this helps to clear up once more part of the whole dossier story. In other words, he acknowledged from his letter that there was more to it than you are suggesting from this particular e-mail. The discussions as recorded show at various stages the need possibly to have to defend his position before the Foreign Affairs Committee, which Dr Kelly would have known, having been there, is a committee which takes its evidence in public. So there is plenty of evidence to show he understood that his name -- Mr Hatfield has always talked to me in terms of "inevitable" that his name would come out. Furthermore, the conversations that Mr Hatfield had at the end of his telephone call clearing the statement, and the conversations with Mrs Wilson, would have left Dr Kelly in absolutely no doubt that we expected his name to come out, otherwise he would not need the press handling advice he was getting. The information that we had from that point was that he was relatively calm and content with that situation. Dr Wells said that he felt that, you know, this is going to happen and he did not seem unduly perturbed by it. Other people seem to have regarded him as taking it in a very straight way. Frankly, on the Wednesday, when we did speak to him, the report I had was that he did not seem at all surprised or unsettled. We were all very concerned when we heard from Mrs Kelly that he did feel it was -- he seemed apparently to have felt it was such a damaging blow to him. But nothing else that we were aware of suggested that would be the case.

SIR KEVIN: Yes.

SIR KEVIN: It may not be. Firstly, you did say his name was going to be confirmed. Again, with the benefit of hindsight. None of us knew whether his name was going to be put to us. I mean, it could have been that day, it could have been another day. I can only say, you are absolutely right, there is a mismatch between the understanding and the information from Mr Hatfield and from my own staff; and they had absolutely no reason for implying that they had pulled their punches or not been absolutely clear with Dr Kelly. And this -- I mean, I cannot explain why Dr Kelly should have written an e-mail of that kind. But I am quite satisfied that the point that he was likely to have to face press scrutiny had been made to him very clearly the previous day.

SIR KEVIN: I would not be as strong as to say a mismatch. He said himself, if anything the way he had recorded it was an understatement.

SIR KEVIN: Yes.

SIR KEVIN: Yes.

SIR KEVIN: No.

SIR KEVIN: Yes.

SIR KEVIN: I, myself, have no way of explaining that. All of the information I had from my staff was that he was handling it well.

SIR KEVIN: I cannot explain it. Again, I can only suggest that Colin Smith explains where he got it from, but I cannot enlighten you on that.

SIR KEVIN: Yes.

SIR KEVIN: That is correct.

SIR KEVIN: Yes, certainly.

SIR KEVIN: Well, Dr Kelly would have said: these are a matter for Ministers, these are policy issues on which I am not qualified to give an opinion.

SIR KEVIN: They could have answered if they had been there in a policy capacity. But I mean, our purpose in this -- by the way -- was not to offer, I repeat, Dr Kelly to the Foreign Affairs Committee. It was their insistence and their request that we were responding to. But we were responding to this in the context of enabling the public record to be clarified by Dr Kelly explaining, in his own words, what he had explained to us about his meeting with Andrew Gilligan, rather than act as an authority on policy, which he was not. I have to say, the critical issue here about whether he should be accompanied or not was Dr Kelly's own decision and satisfaction that he did not need to be accompanied by anybody, because he was given an assurance. And he was given an assurance that he was to use his own words and give his own views about these meetings. If he wished to say he did not believe he was the source, then he had to say it according to his conscience rather than saying: the Ministry think I am so I must say so.

SIR KEVIN: That is why he said he was content to appear without anybody with him.

SIR KEVIN: Indeed I have.

SIR KEVIN: They can be even worse than this hearing. The Public Accounts Committee can be quite difficult.

SIR KEVIN: I usually find it better to do it myself.

SIR KEVIN: Yes. I would not make a comparison with me. Often it is better to do it by oneself because in Dr Kelly's case, you know, you are damned if you do and damned if you do not. If we had somebody sitting there with him, they are likely to say he had a minder with him to make sure he did not say the wrong thing. Whereas being there by himself Dr Kelly was free to explain the context in exactly his own words.

SIR KEVIN: Yes, yes, it did not exactly stop the questioning. No, well, we could not completely control the questioning.

SIR KEVIN: The critical questioning was in a different area, actually.

SIR KEVIN: I think that the proposition that we should have had somebody there as well is one that can be argued on both sides. My sense -- and I did take an interest in this, a very close interest against the background I would rather it had not have happened at all; my sense was that Dr Kelly felt reassured by the conversation he had had in the preparatory meeting with Mr Howard and felt that it was the best way forward. And it was on that basis that it occurred. As I say, again, if Dr Kelly had said: I still feel it is absolutely essential for me to have somebody there, we would have thought about it again.

SIR KEVIN: I have no idea what it was or the basis for that. I cannot help you there at all, I am afraid.

SIR KEVIN: No, I was not.

SIR KEVIN: Yes, I would. I mean, I was completely unaware of -- again, the context suggests there must have been some master strategy here. There was no master strategy. We were managing a difficult situation as we went along.

SIR KEVIN: I was entirely unaware of that.

SIR KEVIN: No, I did not and would not.

SIR KEVIN: Thank you, my Lord, I do take the point; and it is puzzling.

SIR KEVIN: My understanding was that the press office did indeed have somebody standing by to go and help, but did not, as it were, put that to him fully at the time.

SIR KEVIN: I am sure that Mrs Wilson acted with absolutely the best and fullest motives. I think she found it quite difficult to make progress with the discussion. I am sure when she says that she advised him about the need to now handle himself carefully in relation to the press, there was going to be a lot of interest, that calls could be put forward to the Ministry of Defence rather than him having to take them himself, that he should think about alternative accommodation. That was a pretty full piece of advice. It may not have taken very long to make it. I think all that was reasonable to have done was done. I mean, we were dealing here with a man who had 10 years' experience of dealing with the press himself. He was very experienced in handling press matters. Who was talking to Mr Rufford, you know: this is on the record, this is off the record. This was not somebody naively in the hands of a press machine that he was unaware of or did not have a sophisticated understanding of. Even without knowing what we now know, you know he had a lot of experience in handling the press. He had had a lot of experience in difficult circumstances in Iraq. We had no reason to think he was other than a very experienced and robust individual. So, this is a puzzling aspect. All I can say is I have no doubt that my own staff were doing all they felt they could at the time.

SIR KEVIN: My Lord, I think one or two points here. Again, I have puzzled over this. I think firstly, of course, we had no intention of releasing his name or his name having to come out just at the time people were leaving the office to go home.

SIR KEVIN: Therefore the line manager would be on a train at the time; that was unpredictable. I think the second consideration is that even when it was clear that journalists had got the name, there was no immediate expectation on the part of the press office -- I mean, I have discussed this with them since, for the same reasons as you are asking me, my Lord. There was no expectation that the press would suddenly descend on his house. Usually it takes quite a lot of time for journalists to first work out the name and then find the address of the individual concerned. They go to electoral registers, you know, it takes quite a while. I do not think the press office were aware of just how close Dr Kelly's relations were to a number of members of the press that he actually saw them at home and therefore they knew where he lived. So to our press office they still thought: there is still plenty of time before Dr Kelly, you know, is inconvenienced at home.

SIR KEVIN: Thank you.