Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, today denied any cover up over the advice given by the Attorney General to the Government over the legality of the Iraq war.

Addressing MPs this afternoon, Mr Straw did not go into detail to rebut claims that Lord Goldsmith appeared to twice change his mind before finally assuring the Cabinet that military action in Iraq was legally justified.

That allegation against Lord Goldsmith is contained in the resignation letter of Elizabeth Wilmshurst, a senior Foreign Office lawyer who resigned in March 2003.

Mr Straw said that the only thing that changed in March 2003 was the realisation that agreement on a second UN resolution on Iraq could not be reached.

The Attorney General had concluded that authority for the use of force in Iraq was contained within existing UN resolutions and that another was not needed, Mr Straw said in reply to an emergency question from the Opposition.

Dominic Grieve, the Shadow Attorney General, repeated his call for the Government to publish Lord Goldsmith's advice to "reassure the public the Attorney General was neither leant on to change his views for party political reasons, nor deceived by the Prime Minister on the facts on which war might be justified".

Ms Wilmshurst's letter document was released yesterday under the Freedom of Information Act, although key sentences were censored - fuelling accusations of a Government cover-up of its vacillating legal line on the war.

The two excised sentences, seen by The Times, indicate Ms Wilmshurst's view that Lord Goldsmith twice changed his mind over the legality of force. She claims that he had appeared to agree with the legal view that a second UN resolution was needed for military action, but then changed his mind.

"The view expressed in that letter (from the Attorney General on March 7) has of course changed again into what is now the official line," she wrote, as she quit her job in protest.

Mr Straw told MPs it was "entirely proper" that the letter was published with the paragraphs omitted as they were covered by exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act.

The paragraphs "concerned the provision of legal advice in relation to the use of force against Iraq", regardless of whether those references were correct or not, and publishing them would have "very grave" implications for good government.

Mr Grieve said that it was clear that Lord Goldsmith had changed his mind. "Initially the war was illegal without a further UN resolution," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"Then he seems to have taken an equivocal view where he said it might be legal but he was concerned there was a legal challenge.

"Then finally he appears to have told the Cabinet immediately before the war he was quite satisfied that the legal basis was established."

Mr Grieve said that Lord Goldsmith was entitled to change his mind, but that he could have been misled by the Prime Minister. Mr Grieve added: "Ultimately [the advice] is going to come out into the public domain drip after drip. It would be much better for the Government to come clean about it."

In the version of Ms Wilmshurst's March 18, 2003 letter published by the Foreign Office, she wrote: "I regret that I cannot agree that it is lawful to use force against Iraq without a second Security Council resolution to revive the authorisation given in SCR (Security Council Resolution) 678.

"I do not need to set out my reasoning; you are aware of it.

(Paragraph omitted)

"I cannot in conscience go along with advice - within the Office or to the public or Parliament - which asserts the legitimacy of military action without such a resolution, particularly since an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression; nor can I agree with such action in circumstances which are so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law."

The omitted paragraph reads: "My views accord with the advice that has been given consistently in this office before and after the adoption of SCR (Security Council Resolution) 1441 and with what the Attorney-General gave us to understand was his view prior to his letter of March 7. The view expressed in that letter has of course changed again into what is now the official line."

Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, refused in January to release copies of the Attorney-General's advice on the legality of the Iraq war, saying such information was not covered by the Freedom of Information Act.

The Government has however since published a one-page Cabinet briefing on the legality of the war. Lord Goldsmith said that it represented his personal opinion rather than his official legal advice. But legal experts including Lord Mackay of Clashfern, a former Tory Lord Chancellor, now believe that this document was probably the only legal opinion the Attorney General issued, and that there was no separate, formal legal advice.

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