The task of judges is, as one American on the bench during a sensational case recently put it, to “follow their oaths and do their duty, heedless of edi- torials, letters, telegrams, threats, petitions, panellists and talk shows”. Lord Hutton has executed his unenviable task commendably. The manner in which he conducted proceedings, the balance he struck between respect for his witnesses and providing prompt information to the public and the fashion in which he presented his findings have been a model for future inquiries.
The sad saga surrounding the death of David Kelly involved, as this newspaper contended from the outset, institutional failure rather than individual wickedness. As Lord Hutton rightly observes, none of the other actors involved in these events either suspected that the secondary consequence of their deeds would be to prompt a suicide or had reason to conceive that this might be a possible result of what they had done. Institutional failure does not mean, however, that individuals exercising authority can be absolved of all responsibility.
Lord Hutton has recognised the complicated and unique conditions in which the contest between the BBC and the Government ultimately escalated. The “September dossier” was an unusual document and exercise. It was an attempt, and a perfectly reasonable one, to permit the country to look at the sort of evidence that prompted Tony Blair to assume that Saddam Hussein was a menace who could not be permitted to pursue his obvious intent to develop weapons of mass destruction. All sides in the discussion about the content of the dossier and its wording were working without precedent or guidelines. It was, inevitably, an experimental enterprise.
David Kelly was an extremely unusual civil servant. Although a distinguished government employee, he had spent much of his career on secondment to international bodies, including the United Nations, work which kept him at a distance from Whitehall. He had a contractual relationship with both the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In terms of procedure, his activities left him a bureaucratic anomaly. He was not supervised in a consistent or conventional way.
Finally, the manner in which he emerged as the probable source for the Andrew Gilligan broadcast was highly abnormal. Few civil servants volunteer themselves as a possible catalyst for a story. The norm in Whitehall is for leak inquiries to be initiated and to lead nowhere. What complicated his fate was that, even after he came forward, there remained doubt during interviews with the House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Intelligence and Security Committee over whether he was the BBC’s crucial source.
Lord Hutton considered these circumstances and decided that the influence exercised by Downing Street over the September dossier was not unreasonable. He believes that the decision taken to acknow-ledge publicly that a civil servant had admitted holding an unauthorised meeting with Mr Gilligan was not improper. He considers that the ruling that Dr Kelly should be named if the media identified him was valid and not part of any “underhand strategy” for the benefit of the Government. He rightly admonished the MoD for being “at fault” in its duty of care towards Dr Kelly but sets out a series of factors that should be placed in mitigation before damning the senior officials involved.
This does not mean that there are not lessons to be learnt within Whitehall. The relationship between Downing Street and the Joint Intelligence Committee should not have depended so much on cosy chats. The distinctions between ministers, officials and intelligence chiefs did become blurred. The informal manner in which the Prime Minister conducted business with his asso-ciates, with the primacy of the personal conversation over paperwork, has advantages but is unsatisfactory. Alastair Campbell, although wrongly accused, lost his cool at certain moments of this affair and became obsessive in his drive to extract an apology. The MoD should look at all its personnel procedures once again.
These points are, nevertheless, modest when placed against Lord Hutton’s searing criticism of the BBC. The editorial mechanism at the Today programme was damned as “defective”, the report by Mr Gilligan stands accused of being “un- founded”, and the senior management at the BBC, including Richard Sambrook, the head of news, Greg Dyke, the Director-General and Gavyn Davies, then the Chairman of the Governors, failed to take the Government ’s complaints with the seriousness that they warranted, declined to conduct a pro-per investigation of the controversial broadcast and did not serve the public as they should have throughout this affair.
The content and tone of the Hutton report should prompt resignations at the corporation. Mr Davies, clearly an honour-able man, has already decided that he can no longer remain in office. He should not be asked to assume responsibility alone. Unfortunately, his symbolic act was not necess- arily the appropriate response and suggests that the BBC is interested in ceremonial and not cultural change. Mr Dyke, as editor-in-chief, should have tendered his resignation. He is a brilliant and charming man, but these qualities do not excuse him from institutional responsibility. His statement yesterday was little short of disgraceful. He implied that Lord Hutton had uncovered minor mistakes and not endemic failure.
The broader institutional question, bru-tally exposed in this controversy, concerns the authority of the Board of Governors. The BBC wants to avoid, understandably, falling under the regulatory remit of the makework bureaucrats at Ofcom. If that fate is to be avoided, it will have to produce a radically different blueprint for how it may be administered. In the meantime, the governors must take a more active interest in the BBC’s running and better understand that their primary duty is to the public.
There are other matters that will need to be resolved. A full coroner’s inquest into Dr Kelly’s death should be held, not least to dismiss some of the ludicrous conspiracy theories that have been floated. If the eventual findings of the Iraq Survey Group do suggest that pre-war intelligence relating to weapons of mass destruction was seriously mistaken, then an investigation of what occurred would be merited. Much of the media should ask themselves whether coverage of Lord Hutton ’s hearings has been vindicated by his conclusions. Much of it was, in truth, shallow and partisan. A serious inquiry demands an appropriate response from those indicted. A single resignation would not be an appropriate response.
