Howard to keep pushing on Hutton

Lord Hutton will report on 28 January

Conservative leader Michael Howard says he will continue to challenge the prime minister over his treatment of Dr David Kelly - whatever the Hutton inquiry says.

Lord Hutton's long-awaited report into the death of the government scientist will be published on 28 January.

Mr Howard told BBC Breakfast with Frost that the report would be "pretty well" final even if it cleared Tony Blair.

But the findings would have to be set against what Mr Blair had said outside the inquiry, he said.

Mr Howard said the prime minister had failed to give Lord Hutton the comments he had made to journalists flying with him in the Far East days after Dr Kelly's apparent suicide.

During the trip, Mr Blair denied authorising the leaking of the scientist's name as the suspected source for the BBC's controversial Iraq weapons story.

"We will have to look not only at the specific findings of Lord Hutton, we'll have to compare what he says with what the prime minister has said at other times, including what the prime minister said on the plane," he told BBC One's Breakfast with Frost.

This is the actions of a sort of tired old barrister, with a very questionable client and a questionable brief Health Secretary John Reid about Michael Howard Most Scottish MPs to vote on fees

"So we will have to look at the findings of the Hutton Inquiry in context."

Voters too would decide whether they thought Mr Blair had told the truth and whether they approved of his government's conduct, he argued.

'Distasteful'

But Health Secretary John Reid later criticised Mr Howard for "distasteful" attacks on Mr Blair ahead of the Hutton report

"Throughout this procedure we have been very, very careful not to try and second guess Lord Hutton's report which is precisely what Michael Howard has done in the House of Commons in, I think, a very distasteful way."

Dr Reid added: "I think the public will say this is the actions of a sort of tired old barrister, with a very questionable client and a questionable brief, seeking to question the prime minister's integrity before the report has been published."

Lord Hutton's report is published the day after a crunch Commons vote on the government's controversial plans for university top-up fees.

The government is facing scrutiny from the report on how it treated Dr Kelly and how it handled its dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

But the BBC has also come under fire for the story about claims Downing Street "sexed up" the dossier and the way it later defended the broadcast.