Anybody who believed that the Hutton inquiry would prove a tired trot across familiar terrain will have found yesterday something of a surprise. Even those most expert in the mind-boggling minutiae of this affair will have learnt something both from the evidence of Andrew Gilligan and Susan Watts and from the documents released by the BBC.

The inquiry has only just begun and it is likely that all parties to the argument will face difficult questions and be forced to reveal things they would rather have kept to themselves. What Lord Hutton learnt yesterday, however, reinforces questions about the conduct of the BBC that the judge will doubtless wish to reflect upon.

Even seemingly trivial facts told an interesting story. David Kelly met Mr Gilligan at the journalist’s request and the two shared only an Appletise and a Coke at the Charing Cross Hotel. In other words, the exchange was a meeting to brief the journalist, not a convivial lunch at which information was exchanged. This makes it surprising that Mr Gilligan appeared not to have a notebook and recorded the meeting imperfectly on a PalmPilot. It is also unfortunate that he is now unable to locate the manuscript notes he made after the event.

The importance of this observation about unorthodox reporting practice is reinforced by the revelations made yesterday about the attitude of Mr Gilligan’s very capable editor at the Today programme, Kevin Marsh. The latter clearly has serious doubts both about Mr Gilligan’s general work and about the specific story at issue in the Hutton inquiry.

He believed the Today item was “marred by flawed reporting”, by “loose use of language”, and by “lack of judgment in some of his [Gilligan’s] phraseology”. He ascribed these mistakes to the reporter’s loose relationship with the programme’s management and proposed a raft of changes that suggest that Mr Marsh felt Mr Gilligan should be more closely supervised.

Mr Marsh’s reasonable doubts about Mr Gilligan and his report make the BBC’s decision to conduct a battle with the Government in defence of both of them highly questionable. The governors themselves shared at least part of the Today editor’s reservations. Lord Hutton and the BBC itself will surely be considering carefully whether it was wise to persist with this battle as a matter of supposed principle.

The BBC will doubtless have found some comfort in the evidence of Newsnight’s thoroughly professional Ms Watts. She confirms that Dr Kelly did indeed mention Alastair Campbell when talking of the way in which the “45-minute” claim had appeared in the Government’s intelligence dossier. Yet Ms Watt’s evidence is not as helpful to the BBC as it might hope. She chose to ignore the mentioning of Mr Campbell’s name because she had no reason to believe that Dr Kelly had enough access to be a reliable source for this information.

For this reason one other document may be regarded by Lord Hutton as extremely significant. It is an internal programme memo which may refer to the Kelly item and records that “Gilligan has v[ery] good story he hasn’t stood up yet”. This was dated a few days after the journalist’s meeting with Dr Kelly. At that time all involved appeared to know that Mr Gilligan’s source could not be used alone since it was not an adequate foundation for the allegation. There is no suggestion that he found any other corroboration of this single source. Yet the story was broadcast and even the element or two that Mr Gilligan now concedes were flawed had never been formally retracted.

At least Ms Watts provided evidence of the quality journalism the BBC Governors should rush to defend.

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