ANDREW GILLIGAN, the journalist who reported that Downing Street had “sexed up” a dossier on Iraq’s weapons, was seemingly cast adrift by his employers yesterday for betraying David Kelly as a source.

Gavyn Davies, the BBC’s Chairman of Governors, said he “enormously regretted” Mr Gilligan’s planted question to an MP 48 hours before Dr Kelly disappeared to take his own life. In effect, Mr Davies disowned Mr Gilligan’s original unscripted early-morning report on Radio 4’s Today programme and said that such impromptu dispatches may be banned in future. He disclosed that the governors were studying whether the BBC had properly reported what he accepted was a powerful denial of Mr Gilligan’s story by the dossier’s author, John Scarlett.

Mr Davies was pressed about why the BBC refused to correct a story which, he had conceded in a private telephone conversation with Tony Blair, the governors could not say was “intrinsically true”.

Mr Davies said he regarded Alastair Campbell’s attack on the BBC in evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee as a “major escalation” of the story. It was “almost an unprecedented attack on the BBC to be mounted by the head of communications at 10 Downing Street”, accusing the corporation of lying and pursuing an anti-war agenda.

Mr Davies had gathered the governors on July 17. “It was absolutely impossible for the Board of Governors to determine whether the allegations made by Mr Gilligan’s source were intrinsically true,” he said, “without access to all of the intelligence dossiers, different drafts of them, and questioning the people who had put the dossiers together.”

James Dingemans, QC, counsel to the inquiry, said: “So if Mr Campbell had actually complained through the BBC route, and said: ‘This story; you might have been right to report it but it has done me a great deal of damage, it is untrue; what would have been the likely response? “We cannot decide because we cannot look at the dossiers?”

Mr Davies said: “The Programme Complaints Unit would have examined directly Mr Gilligan’s evidence for reporting the words that he reported; examine Mr Gilligan and the editor of Today’s reason for believing that this was a credible and reliable source; they would have examined other surrounding evidence . . . but still been unable, I suspect, to get to the intrinsic accuracy of the allegation.”

Mr Dingemans asked whether the denial of Mr Gilligan’s story by Mr Scarlett, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, had affected his view. “It added to the power of the (Government’s) denial,” Mr Davies said.

Mr Scarlett’s denunciation was one reason why Mr Davies had been eager, in a statement after the governors met, to assure the public that the BBC was not questioning Mr Blair’s integrity. Lord Hutton intervened to ask whether the question of editorial control of Mr Gilligan’s original report had been affected by the fact that it was an unscripted broadcast. “It does raise the issue in my mind about whether reports of this nature should be unscripted,” Mr Davies said, “and I think that’s something that we will ask the news division to consider.”

Mr Dingemans: “But in terms of Mr Campbell wanting to put the record straight . . . you said there were limitations on the BBC’s own analysis because they will not have seen the dossiers. Would going to the Broadcasting (Standards Commission) have helped to put the record straight?” Mr Davies: “If the Broadcasting Standards Commission had decided that there was unfairness to Mr Campbell they could have found in Mr Campbell’s favour. I do not think he could have complained to them on grounds of accuracy.”

Mr Dingemans: “So if you are seriously aggrieved by a story that you know to be wrong, you write to the governors; they are not going to look at the accuracy; you go to the Broadcasting Standards Commission; they are not going to look at the accuracy. How do you correct the record?” Mr Davies: “The BSC can look at unfairness to an individual.” And the decision on that would have come down to issues such as were the words of the source reported correctly, was the source credible and reliable, was there other evidence supporting the claim. (The process) frequently does come down with a judgment in favour of the complainant, and the BBC then either corrects the unfairness or apologies to the complainant.” Mr Davies said that the governors had been satisfied by the editorial process leading to Mr Gilligan’s broadcast. “One of the main complaints made by Mr Campbell and the Government was that the BBC was wrong to rely on a single uncorroborated source.

“A lot of our time was spent in determining whether the editor . . . had reassured himself properly about the matter of the source and whether proper editorial processes had occurred prior to the broadcast. That was something the director of news and Director-General were very happy with.”

But Mr Davies disclosed that he had not seen Mr Gilligan’s notes of his interview with the source until after Dr Kelly died. Nor had the governors looked at notes made by the editor and night editor.

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