IDS calls for Blair resignation over Kelly affair
Iain Duncan Smith has called for Tony Blair to resign over the way in which late scientist David Kelly was treated during the controversy over the September security dossier.
The Tory leader described the Prime Minister’s treatment of the late Dr Kelly as an ‘utter disgrace’ and said that Tony Blair bears ‘full responsibility’ for Dr Kelly’s apparent suicide.
Mr Duncan Smith said that the Prime Minister had failed to stop the public search for the identity of the BBC source on reports that last September’s controversial security dossier had been “sexed up.”
The Tory leader told Channel Four: ‘Throughout that process; the outing of him, the naming of him, and then the way in which he was treated, he could at any stage have said “we must stop this.” He chose not to.’
The Shadow Home Secretary echoed his leader’s words, saying that the evidence given to the Hutton inquiry was enough to show that the Prime Minister had failed to keep control of the Kelly affair.
‘There wasn’t the will either to correct at the very best serious misapprehensions in public about what the Government was suggesting about the facts leading to war, or the will to put a halt when in growing panic they moved towards destruction of Dr Kelly’, Oliver Letwin said.
The Hutton inquiry today heard its last statements from solicitors for the BBC, the Kelly family and the Government.
