MPs demands retraction from Liddle
More than two dozen MPs have signed a Commons early motion demanding an apology from the former editor of the Today programme, Rod Liddle.
Mr Liddle, who hired the BBC’s defence journalist Andrew Gilligan – the man heavily criticised for shoddy reporting over the Dr David Kelly affair – has described Lord Hutton’s conclusions as “surreal.”
The associate editor of the Spectator said: “Much of what Lord Hutton said today seems so divorced from the real world.
“I think he [Hutton] is blind if he believes that [the allegations were unfounded].”
Mr Liddle said it was always on the cards that the Blair administration would be exonerated.
‘You will never get a law lord to criticise the Government.
‘Lord Hutton’s inquiry has followed exactly the same route as every previous inquiry into government misdemeanour – it has exonerated the Government. This always happens, it happened with Lord Franks, it happened back in 1963 with Lord Denning and Profumo. It’s always the same.”
Quoting the report, he said of Lord Hutton: ‘Listen to this: ‘The desire of the prime minister to have a strong dossier may have subconsciously influenced John Scarlett and the Joint Intelligence Committee to produce a strongly worded document’. ‘Subconsciously’ – I don’t think the man is in the same world as the rest of us.”
MPs are demanding Mr Liddle retract the “slur” which had impugned the former law lord.
The motion was tabled by James Purnell and Andy Burnham and was signed by more than 30 MPs.
The motion read: said: “This House calls on Rod Liddle to apologise to Lord Hutton for impugning his reputation on Sky television today since had the report criticised the Government, we have no doubt Mr Liddle would have accepted its conclusions.”
Mr Liddle told Sky News: “Andrew Gilligan broke one of the most important political stories of the last ten years, which was fundamentally accurate.
“It is a golden rule that inquiries – particularly inquiries which are led by eminent lawyers – tend to clear and exonerate governments.”
Mr Liddle was also reprimanded for his double standards, as he was partly responsible for “creating the culture of the Today programme which was so strongly criticised by Lord Hutton.”
But BBC broadcaster and commentator Andrew Neil said the BBC had received the verdict of an ‘anti-journalist judge.”
“We’ve had a judge who gave the Government, officials, ministers, anybody in the establishment, the benefit of the doubt at every turn.
“Yet at every turn the BBC was given no benefit of the doubt at all.”
The ramifications for journalism would be harsh indeed and would propel the BBC into “dangerous territory,” Mr Neil said.
‘I think this will lead to a kind of anti-journalist climate and we will not be able to find things out that we should.
“Are we really to believe that the BBC did everything wrong and the Government did everything right?’
