BBC chairman ‘to resign’ over Hutton report
Chairman of the BBC governors Gavyn Davies is to resign as a result of the damning conclusions of Lord Hutton’s report into the death of Dr David Kelly.
The government scientist apparently committed suicide after he was named as the source for a BBC report that claimed the government “sexed up” a dossier on Iraqi weapons.
Mr Davies would soon be telling the corporation’s governors of his decision, BBC political editor Andrew Marr said today.
The BBC’s director general, Greg Dyke, issued a public apology for “certain key allegations” made by reporter Andrew Gilligan.
Mr Dyke said: “The BBC does accept that certain key allegations reported by Andrew Gilligan on the Today programme on May 29 last year were wrong and we apologise for them.”
In his report on the inquiry’s findings, Lord Hutton found fault with the BBC’s editorial policy, and criticised BBC defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan for reporting that Downing Street ‘probably knew’ the 45-minute claim in its Iraq dossier was wrong, calling it a ‘grave allegation’ that attacked the integrity of the government and the Joint Intelligence Committee’.
Lord Hutton described the BBC’s editorial process in light of the allegations made in Mr Gilligan’s report as ‘defective’, given the gravity of the accusations being levelled at the government.
He stated that the BBC ‘failed to make an examination of Mr Gilligan’s notes to see if they supported the allegations’.
Lord Hutton said Mr Gilligan’s allegation that the Government probably knew the 45-minute claim was not true before it included it in its dossier was ‘unfounded’.
He said the term ‘sexed up’ was a slang term that was difficult to attribute a definite meaning to. It could, he said, be interpreted in two ways. It could either mean that the document had been embellished with false intelligence or that the document had been presented in such a way that the case against Saddam Hussein appeared as strong as the facts would allow.
Prime Minister Tony Blair attacked the BBC in a speech to MPs today, in which he stated that the report showed “the allegation that I or anybody else lied to the House or deliberately misled the country by falsifying intelligence of weapons of mass destruction is itself the real lie”.
“I simply ask that those that have made it and repeated it over all these months now withdraw it fully, openly and clearly,” he said.
Mr Blair also pointed out that the BBC had yet to offer an apology or retraction of the statements made in Mr Gilligan’s report, broadcast on the Today programme.
Having been exonerated by Lord Hutton’s report, former Downing Street press chief Alastair Campbell said in a statement today: “If the government had faced the level of criticisms which Lord Hutton’s report has directed at the BBC, there would have been resignations by now, several resignations at several levels.”
In the House of Commons today, opposition leader Michael Howard hit out at the credence the government had given to its war of words with the BBC, adding: “Isn’t there the starkest contrast between Dr Kelly, who had done so much for our country, and the cabal of ministers and advisers, including the prime minister himself, who were so obsessed by the war with the BBC that they gave scant attention to his welfare?”
