LONDON The former head of MI6, who was responsible for providing the intelligence that led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, admitted that “too much weight” was given to the secret material that his service supplied.

Sir Richard Dearlove, who retired as chief of the Secret Intelligence Service more than three years ago, said he did not believe that such a situation would occur again, although there were parallels now with America’s warnings over Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. Sir Richard was speaking after giving a lecture at the London School of Economics.

Faced by a barrage of questions from the audience about MI6’s role in convincing the Government that Iraq had secret weapons of mass destruction, Sir Richard said: “The intelligence that was released was believed to be correct when it was released.” He added: “There were no human (intelligence) resources in Iraq who could have told us authoritatively that there were no weapons of mass destruction.”

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