Day 18: Key points

Here are the key points from evidence of witnesses on Day 18 of the Hutton inquiry into the death of government scientist Dr David Kelly.

Richard Hatfield

The MoD personnel director insisted that the support provided to Dr David Kelly while he was being quizzed over his press contacts was "outstanding".

He said he had told Dr Kelly that his name might come out.

Dr Kelly's pension was never mentioned as it was not at risk, he said.

Richard Sambrook

The BBC director of news agreed that the corporation would have to learn lessons from the Kelly affair.

Mr Sambrook said he believed the allegations raised in Andrew Gilligan's report should have been put to Downing Street.

He also accepted the BBC's reply to the complaint from Alastair Campbell contained inaccuracies.

"I think if I had been able to go through Andrew Gilligan's notes in some detail ... we might have got to a point where we realised those were not comments that were directly attributable to Dr Kelly and clearly I regret that," he said.

Mr Sambrook said Mr Gilligan had consented to the letter being sent in that form.

He said the e-mail sent by the Today defence correspondent to MPs involved in the inquiry into the Iraq war was "improper".

Mr Sambrook - under examination from government QC Jonathan Sumption - agreed it was usual to run a story like Mr Gilligan's on the basis of one anonymous source.

Mr Gilligan was in some respects a great journalist in terms of gathering information but he lacked "nuance and subtlety" in the way the information was presented, said Mr Sambrook.

Mr Sambrook agreed there had been a general perception that Mr Gilligan's source had been in the intelligence community when it subsequently emerged he had not.

He said he took great comfort after learning the source was in fact a government adviser that Dr Kelly turned out to be a world renowned expert.

Mr Sambrook said he now thinks the BBC should have paused and "looked at great length" at the allegations being levelled at the corporation.

Andrew Gilligan

The BBC Radio 4 Today programme's defence correspondent said he could not now find the longer manuscript note of his conversation with Dr Kelly.

Apologised to inquiry for sending email to Lib Dem MP

Mr Gilligan said Dr Kelly did not say the government knew the intelligence was wrong or unreliable.

But Dr Kelly did say the statement that weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were ready for use in 45 minutes was "unreliable, that it was wrong, and that it was included against our wishes, and it was a logical conclusion to draw from this that those wishes had been made known, as we now indeed know to have been the case".

Mr Gilligan said: "The error I made here was in expressing the understanding I had that the views had been conveyed to the government as something which Dr Kelly had told me directly. It was not intentional, it was the kind of slip of the tongue that does happen often during live broadcasts. It is an occupational hazard which is why it would have been better to have scripted this one."

Mr Gilligan said Dr Kelly clearly stated the transformation of the dossier was the responsibility of Alastair Campbell, the government's outgoing director of communications.

Mr Gilligan said he spoke to the MoD chief press officer, Kate Wilson, on 29 May.

He said he originally rang her to give the MoD the "gist of the allegations" that the dossier had been exaggerated and there was concern in the intelligence services about the 45 minute claim.

Mr Gilligan apologised to the inquiry for sending an e-mail to a Liberal Democrat MP revealing Dr David Kelly as the source for another story reported on Newsnight.

I was under an enormous amount of pressure at the time, I simply was not thinking straight so I really want to apologise for that Andrew Gilligan on email sent to Lib Dem MP

Mr Gilligan said the allegation he intended to make was of "spin", not dishonesty, adding that he regarded his words in one broadcast as "imperfect" and that he "should not have said them".

He said he did try to correct that impression on subsequent broadcasts.

Government QC Jonathan Sumption asked Mr Gilligan about his description of the source for his story as being "one of the senior officials in charge of drawing up the dossier", to which the reporter said this had been agreed with Dr Kelly.

Mr Gilligan was asked why he had not included Dr Kelly's prominent role in the dossier in his notes to the Today programme, to which he replied that he had reported it to them orally.

He accepted that Dr Kelly never described himself as a member of the intelligence services. It was a mistake to have described him as "my intelligence service source" on Radio 5 Live. It was his only time he described Dr Kelly that way in 19 broadcasts, he said, adding it was "simply a slip of the tongue".

He was not aware that BBC Radio 4's World at One on 29 May and Richard Sambrook, the BBC's director of news, on 26 June, had also described the source that way. He did not know if it was corrected, but did not think so.

The governors of the BBC described the source as an intelligence source on the 6 July, but while Mr Gilligan said he had read the press release "there was not very much I could do about it... the BBC - and other media organisations - don't work in a way were the reporters can tell the governors what to say."

On the BBC's response to the MoD statement announcing an MoD official had come forward to say he had spoken to Mr Gilligan, the reporter said the BBC statement was correct that Dr Kelly did not work IN the MoD.

Mr Sumption asked if it was a distinction that would be grasped by anyone reading the statement - Mr Gilligan said perhaps the BBC should have kept quiet but if they had they could have been seen as agreeing to the MoD statement.

Dr Kelly was not a man into whose mouth you could put words Andrew Gilligan

Mr Gilligan said he did not believe the BBC's response had been the reason more details about Dr Kelly had had to be released at a lobby briefing.

Jeremy Gompertz QC, counsel for the Kelly family, said he hoped to be brief because the ground had been well covered and most importantly "the Kelly family do not want you or anybody else to be subjected at their hands to an ordeal comparable to that endured by Dr Kelly".

Mr Gilligan insisted Alastair Campbell's name was brought up by Dr Kelly at their meeting, not him.

Mr Gompertz suggested it was the other way around. Gilligan denied that "it was him", adding "there was no name game" as one witness had said.

Mr Gilligan said Dr Kelly corrected one or two things at the end of the meeting, but these do not appear in any notes of the meeting.

He told Lord Hutton his main concern during his later broadcast on the morning of 29 May to make it clear the intelligence was "real" intelligence, and that he was not accusing the government of lying.

When it was suggested to him that saying the claim was "questionable" was not much of a retraction, Mr Gilligan it was a reasonable construction bearing in mind what Dr Kelly had told him.

Mr Gilligan said it was not the lead item on the programme, it seemed not "strikingly new". The report was seen as a contribution to the debate. He said politics is an area where allegations of exaggeration are seen as stock in trade.

Mr Gilligan agreed the headline on his Mail on Sunday article about the dossier claim was not supported by the article but said he was not in a position to correct it.

Mr Gilligan ended by saying he would have named Dr Kelly if he could, and also said that it was possible to be a source about intelligence without being a member of the intelligence services.