Lord Butler of Brockwell today branded the intelligence used to justify last year's invasion of Iraq as "seriously flawed" and "open to doubt".

But the former Cabinet Secretary found no evidence that there had been any "deliberate distortion" of the intelligence to bolster the case for war. He also stopped short of blaming any individual in the secret services or in Government for the intelligence failures.

The invasion of Iraq remains one of the most divisive issues in British politics in recent memory. The reaction to Lord Butler's 196-page report is listed below.

Tony Blair: "No one lied. No one made up the intelligence. No one inserted things into the dossier against the advice of the intelligence services … That issue of good faith should now be at an end.

"I have to accept: as the months have passed, it seems increasingly clear that at the time of the invasion Saddam did not have stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons ready to deploy...

"(But) I cannot honestly say I believe getting rid of Saddam was a mistake at all. Iraq, the region, the wider world is a better and safer place without Saddam."

MI6 (in Tony Blair's statement): "The Secret Intelligence Service accepts all the conclusions and recommendations of Lord Butler's report which concern the Service. SIS will fully address the recommendations which Lord Butler has made about their procedures and about the need for the Service properly to resource them."

Andrew Gilligan, the BBC reporter forced to quit over his report that the Government "sexed up" the September dossier: "Lord Butler’s report... supports much of what I already said - and what the Government has always denied.

"Although Lord Butler says he finds no evidence of deliberate embellishment or misleading, many of his findings of fact do exactly that...

"He finds that crucial caveats were dropped and he finds that the 45 minutes claim, the core of the dispute between the BBC and the Government, should never have been in the form it took leading to ‘suspicions that it had been included because of its eye-catching character’."

Greg Dyke, former BBC Director-General: "Butler appears to agree that the intelligence, as Dr (David) Kelly said, was ‘sexed up’. What the Butler report doesn’t tell us is who did the ‘sexing up’."

Michael Howard, the Conservative leader: "The issue is the Prime Minister's credibility. The question he must ask himself is, does he have any credibility left?"

Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader: "It's the political relationships which remain the unopened Pandora's box in the middle of all this, and that continues to underline the need for a proper public inquiry into the political judgments made about this war and how they were arrived at."

Sir John Walker, the former head of the Joint Intelligence Staff and a former member of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC): "You had policy driving intelligence and that is very dangerous."

Peter Hennessy, Professor of Contemporary History, Queen Mary University of London: "The Prime Minister's style of government is in the dock. The Cabinet didn't assert itself to make a decision on the great issue of peace and war."

Menzies Campbell, Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman: "I am pretty certain the Prime Minister would not have had a majority in the House of Commons for going to war in Iraq (if the Butler report had been available a year ago)."

Kenneth Clarke, the former Tory Chancellor, asked Mr Blair in the Commons: "Can you think of any explanation for the removal of all the caveats and doubts in producing this publication other than that John Scarlett had been persuaded by your press secretary, Alastair Campbell, and others to remove all the cautionary words and stiffen up the case?"

Rose Gentle, 40, the mother of a British soldier killed in Iraq last month: "It's time for that man (Mr Blair) to get out now. This proves my son went to war over a pack of damn lies. He has blood on his hands, he is a disgrace. He should take out the rest of the troops now before some other kid gets killed."

The Stop The War Coalition: "The terms of reference of this inquiry were too narrow to examine the political decision-making. There needs to be a much deeper, more extensive inquiry. There is still no evidence for going to war."

Jeremy Corbyn, the anti-war Labour MP: "According to Butler, nobody seems to be responsible for anything. The reality is the Prime Minister and Bush took us to war and as a result 15,000 people have died and the UN has been discredited and sidelined."

Reg Keys, 52, the father of one of six military policemen killed by a mob in Iraq in June last year: "My biggest concern is that the report does not appear to apportion blame to anyone, no one is accountable and no heads have rolled."

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