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The new material came mostly from two sources. The first, who was new and untried, reported that Iraq had restarted chemical agent production. The second, who had never previously provided details on WMD, was the source of the claim that Iraq was able to deploy WMD within 45 minutes.

When Dearlove briefed Blair on the first source, only days before he presented his dossier to parliament, the MI6 chief told him “the case is developmental and the source remains unproven”. Nonetheless, Blair told MPs two weeks later on September 24, 2002: “The intelligence picture they paint is one accumulated over the past four years. It is extensive, detailed and authoritative.”

The evidence was vital in reducing parliamentary opposition to the decision to go to war. Only much later, after the fall of Saddam and the dawning realisation that Iraq possessed no WMD, was it revealed that the intelligence from both agents had been withdrawn.

However, Blair’s immediate problem of justifying the war against Iraq had been solved. He went on a diplomatic offensive to swing the United Nations behind a vote for war.

Panorama interviewed Adolfo Zinser, former Mexican ambassador to the UN, who recalls a briefing with MI6 as Britain was trying to shore up support in the security council for the second resolution on Iraq.

Zinser says: “I asked them, ‘Do you have full proof of the existence of these weapons, at any one of these particular sites that you are referring to?’ The MI6 officers told me, ‘No, we don’t’.”

The programme says Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, was not convinced the invasion would be lawful without a second UN resolution. It was not until two days before the war that Goldsmith told the cabinet that this, after all, was not absolutely necessary. This was after Britain had failed to secure a second resolution.

“We stretched the legal argument to breaking point and the fact that we didn’t have that authority does set a dangerous precedent,” says Sir Stephen Wall, Blair’s former European affairs adviser.

The programme also reveals Blair deliberately misrepresented the views of Jacques Chirac, the French president, to strengthen support in parliament. When Chirac said on the eve of war in March 2003 that France would veto a second UN resolution, Blair seized on it. He claimed Chirac was planning a veto “no matter what” and failed to make clear that France would in fact back an invasion if Iraq impeded the efforts of UN weapons inspectors.

Senior civil servants became alarmed by Blair’s rhetoric. Carne Ross, the diplomat responsible for Iraq policy at the British mission to the UN from 1998 to 2002, tells the programme he can no longer trust Blair: “I’m afraid that the government did not tell the whole truth about the alleged threat that Iraq posed, that’s why I think it’s a tawdry story.”

The programme will be seen as an attempt by the BBC to reassert its editorial independence after it was criticised by the Hutton report into Kelly’s death. The BBC row with ministers was ignited by a report by Andrew Gilligan claiming the government dossier on Iraq’s weapons had been “sexed up”.

Kelly was revealed as the source for the story and committed suicide two years ago. oThousands of protesters marched in London yesterday on the second anniversary of the start of the war. Police put the number on the Bring the Troops Home march at 45,000, organisers put it at nearer 100,000.

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