| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Adam Price (East Carmarthen and Dinefwr) (PC): My hon. Friend mentioned an e-mail from Matthew Rycroft, a Foreign Office adviser. Another e-mail from
him, produced in evidence to the Hutton inquiry, reveals that the right hon. Lady was the only person outside Government to be shown a draft of the document and asked to comment on it. That was at the specific request of the Prime Minister. Two further drafts were produced, no doubt using some of the "helpful comments"—in the words of John Scarlett—of the right hon. Lady.
Mr. Llwyd: I note what my hon. Friend says. At the heart of the process, however, is the fact that one person was given a draft to add to or amend. That is part of the remit of the forthcoming inquiry. The right hon. Lady must, in all conscience, feel that she is compromised in this matter.
Ms Stuart : On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Would it be appropriate to check whether the hon. Gentleman gave notice of the criticisms he was going to make of a fellow Member, to ensure that she would be in the Chamber?
Madam Deputy Speaker: I think that is a valid question. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman can answer it.
Mr. Llwyd: I did not write to the right hon. Lady, but she was well aware of my feelings about this. [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. May I hear the hon. Gentleman's reply?
Mr. Llwyd: The right hon. Lady was well aware of my feelings when I intervened on the Prime Minister earlier.
Mr. Salmond: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I have a ruling? The right hon. Lady was in the Chamber when the matter was discussed.
Madam Deputy Speaker: I was not present at that point, but I accept that the right hon. Lady has been in the Chamber for some considerable time this afternoon. That was not the question that was asked of the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd).
Mr. Kaufman: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a strict convention of the House that when a Member plans in advance—as the hon. Gentleman clearly did on this occasion—to refer to another, the former informs the latter, also in advance. That has been a convention of the House throughout the 34 years for which I have been an MP, and I do not believe it can be relaxed for the misbehaviour of that hon. Member. In fact, may I withdraw the word "honourable"?
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I will take a point of order from the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) first. I presume that it is on the same topic.
Huw Irranca-Davies: I do not have a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I merely wanted to intervene on the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd).
Peter Bottomley (Worthing, West) (Con): On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The right hon.
Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) will confirm that the convention is to allow a Member to be present in the Chamber in these circumstances. That is the purpose, and that is the convention.
Richard Ottaway: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. If the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton is correct, should he not have given me notice when he referred to me in his speech?
Mr. Kaufman: I did, several weeks ago.
Mr. Garnier : On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The right hon. Member for Dewsbury was in the Chamber when the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) intervened on the Prime Minister. She did not seek to intervene on the Prime Minister to correct any misapprehension that we might have gained. I rather suspect that the complaint is entirely bogus, and I suggest that the hon. Gentleman should be allowed to continue his speech.
Madam Deputy Speaker: I call Mr. Llwyd.
Mr. Llwyd: I am obliged, Madam Deputy Speaker.
At the heart of the process is a mysterious lack of logic. Lord Hutton spent weeks listening to evidence about the preparation of the Government's case against Saddam in the September dossier, but when it came to writing his report he rejected the need to address the issue of the dossier's truth, saying
- "A question of such wide import . . . . is not one which falls within my terms of reference."
Mr. Llwyd: I have referred to several lawyers—Michael Mansfield, Richard Parkes QC, and Anthony Scrivener—but I also mention the Labour supporter, Geoffrey Bindman, who said that he found Lord Hutton's version incredible. He believed that the argument for saying that the dossier was not sexed up runs contrary to the evidence—and so he goes on.
Several references have been made to the importance of restoring confidence in the Government. The imminent inquiry has the wrong remit and the wrong personnel. It has been described as being on the Franks model, but the Franks inquiry into the Falklands conflict exonerated the Government and severely criticised the intelligence service. Am I the only one to have a sense of déjà vu? For "dodgy dossier", read "dodgy inquiry".
4.50 pm
Mr. Nigel Beard (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Lab): I doubt whether my constituents, along with most people in this country, begin to understand the press and media reaction to Lord Hutton's report in the last week. For
weeks they had been told that Lord Hutton's findings would be the nemesis of the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Defence. They were told Andrew Gilligan's story—that the September 2002 dossier had been changed not by intelligence experts, but by the Government, to include a claim that Iraq's chemical and biological weapons could be deployed within 45 minutes. Furthermore, they were told that the Government knew that claim to be false, but included it to persuade people to support an invasion of Iraq.Except for a charge of war crimes, it is difficult to imagine a more serious charge against a Government. The charge had added weight by being broadcast by the BBC with its worldwide reputation for accuracy and independence. Now we have Lord Hutton's report, based on evidence presented in public and closely argued, which says that the whole of that allegation was false and that the Government did not falsify the September 2002 dossier.
Collective media judgment on the issue was woefully wrong. Rather than admit that, however, there has been a week of unsupported denunciation of the Hutton report in a press tantrum of petulance, malice, and self-indulgent irrationality. One aspect of the smokescreen is to pretend that Lord Hutton is a creature of the establishment who was bound to come down in favour of the Government—a sneering assertion, again unsupported by any evidence.
Lord Hutton has a record of judicial independence of which he and this country can be justly proud. In 1992, a republican prisoner, Patrick Nash, was accused of attempting to murder four of Lord Hutton's fellow judges in Northern Ireland. Lord Hutton acquitted him, making it clear he did not believe the police evidence against the prisoner. That is the man who has explicitly and by innuendo been dubbed an establishment stooge during the past week. No doubt the detractors would have discovered a man of entirely different character if he had come to the conclusion that they wanted.
Another distraction, attempted by Jeremy Paxman on "Newsnight", has been to say, "But we haven't discovered weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and Lord Hutton has said nothing about the reason for our going to war". Neither issue lay within the terms of the inquiry; neither related to the charge of falsification by the Government, nor to Dr. Kelly's death.
Both the chairman and the director-general of the BBC have justified themselves by saying that they were defending the independence of BBC reporting. I do not know what pressure was put on them during the Iraq war, but that was never the issue. The case was that a reporter walked in with a story from a single source, which defamed and was capable of wrecking the British Government and nobody bothered to check it before or after it was broadcast.
Knowing the significance of the controversy, the BBC governors did not examine any primary evidence. They reproduced the bunker mentality of the chairman and director-general in deciding that their prime responsibility was to defend the independence of the BBC, even at the risk of rallying round an odious lie. It is the BBC's corporate judgment that is at issue, not its right of independence from the Government.
Sadly, I believe that the reaction to Lord Hutton's inquiry, both before and after publication of his report, reflects a malaise in British journalism, and in the media generally. That malaise is the origin of the BBC's performance in this affair. It says that facts and evidence should not get in the way of a good story, and that it is perfectly all right to impugn the integrity of anyone—the Prime Minister, Lord Hutton, or people dragged into the tabloid limelight—if that promotes a good story.
The same malaise is also evident in the attitude of many journalists with ambitions to be the next Woodward or Bernstein. They are ready to expose the corruption and dishonesty that is assumed to prevail among politicians and officials in both national Government and local government. If lying and corruption are assumed to be endemic, there is no need to be too meticulous about evidence or fairness. The end exposure justifies the means.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |