Lord Hutton was today accused of producing a "whitewashed" report into the Kelly affair, as the backlash against his findings began to gather pace.

Sir Christopher Bland, the former chairman of the BBC, called into question the even-handedness of the report, which cleared the Government on almost every issue but "tarred and feathered the BBC".

Lord Hutton's much anticipated report into the circumstances surrounding the death of David Kelly, the government scientist, cleared the Government of "sexing up" its intelligence dossier to improve the case for going to war with Iraq.

Sir Christopher told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that he accepted Lord Hutton's central criticism that there were errors in the original story by Andrew Gilligan, the BBC Today reporter, and the BBC's subsequent investigation.

But he added: "It is legitimate to question whether Hutton was even-handed in the way he treated on the one hand politicians, civil servants and the security services, and on the other hand the standards of conduct he applied to journalists and broadcasters.

"There is a curious imbalance ... in that he whitewashed the Government, and maybe he was right to do that, but he tarred and feathered the BBC and there just seems to be a real imbalance in his treatment."

Gavyn Davies, Sir Christopher's successor as BBC chairman, resigned last night after the publication of the report, but Sir Christopher insisted that there was no need for further resignations. He said: "The idea that there is a systemic failure that requires mass execution at the BBC is just wrong."

Sir Christopher's views seem to be reflected in an NOP poll released today. Half of those questioned said that the law lord was wrong to clear the Government of any "underhand and duplicitous" naming strategy.

A clear majority, 56 per cent, said the peer was wrong to lay all the blame at the door of the BBC.

His inquiry was branded a whitewash by 49 per cent, with 40 per cent disagreeing, in the survey for London's Evening Standard.

And a full independent inquiry into the reason Britain went to war with Iraq was supported by an overwhelming 70 per cent. NOP questioned 521 people.

Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader, said that the time had now come to delve deeper into the more fundamental question of why Britain went to war at all.

Mr Kennedy said: "I certainly don’t detect any genuine appetite at the top of Government for a further inquiry, but I certainly think you will still find that there will be pleas coming from all quarters for such a discussion to take place."

Mr Kennedy said it was also time to take a hard look at the way the intelligence services function.

"I do take the view that there needs to be a reassessment of the intelligence services and the way that they operate ... essentially, we have an intelligence service, and I don’t call into question its veracity in any way whatsoever, but it is structured and functions in much the same way as it did during the Cold War, and yet of course that era has passed and the world has changed out of some recognition."

Air Marshal Sir John Walker, a former Chief of Defence Intelligence and former deputy chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, said the whole affair suggested that it had been a mistake to publish the Iraq dossier in the first place.

If Hutton’s conclusions were right, he added, there appeared to have been a major intelligence failure.

Sir John told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: "It is the first time in my experience that we have tried to use JIC as an organisation in a public relations exercise, publicly, with the Government, and it doesn’t look as though it has been a great success."

He went on: "If we take Hutton’s results as read, that is that there was no fault on the Government side, we are left with an intelligence failure.

"There is no doubt about it - we went to war on the basis that WMD capable of being used within 45 minutes were a threat to UK interests. We went to war on that basis, and they weren’t there."

David Kay, the outgoing weapons inspector, admitted last night that the intelligence agencies had got it "wrong" over the existence of WMD in Iraq.

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