Day 11: Key points

Here are the key points from day 11 of the Hutton inquiry into Dr David Kelly's death.

Prime Minister Tony Blair's evidence

On the Iraq weapons dossier

Mr Blair said after 11 September, there was a new sense of urgency on the question of rogue states and weapons of mass destruction, and the link with terrorism.

Iraq was a special case in breach of UN resolutions and a history of using WMD against it own people.

Publication of document came after phone call with US President George Bush where decided they had to confront the issue and devise a strategy.

I am very careful in my statement to make it clear what we were and were not saying... the purpose of the dossier was to respond to the call to disclose intelligence that we knew, but at that stage, the strategy was not to use the dossier as the immediate reason for going to conflict Tony Blair on his foreword to the dossier

Mr Blair said he was in "no doubt" that Alastair Campbell would assist in the presentation of the dossier but it had to be owned by the Joint Intelligence Committee.

He saw the 10 September draft and commented on drafts of 16 and 19 September. He also saw the JIC assessment on 9 September.

Mr Blair said information in dossier should be as strong as possible but only with agreement from intelligence agencies and with "no improper weight" given to any aspect of it.

The dossier was not meant to be used as "the immediate reason for going to conflict"

Mr Blair said he was aware Mr Campbell would comment on the dossier, subject to approval from the JIC.

He said he was not aware of unhappiness from intelligence services about the way intelligence was used.

It was "absolutely wrong" for BBC witnesses to suggest he did not use the claim that Iraq could deploy WMD in 45 again after it appeared in the dossier, because the government had doubts about it. Mr Blair said "there was absolutely no reason for us to doubt the intelligence at all".

On Andrew Gilligan's reports

Mr Blair said he was in Basra [southern Iraq] when he was told about the Andrew Gilligan broadcast.

Any person listening to that would think that we had done something improper, not that we just got the facts mixed up... The whole thing since then has been not did the government get this wrong but did the government dupe us? On his impression of the Today programme broadcast

His reaction was that "it was an extraordinary allegation to make and an extremely serious one".

Had it been true, he would have quit.

Mr Blair said he asked for the allegation to be checked out with JIC chairman John Scarlett.

Mr Blair said "there was a raging storm going on".

He said the dispute was going to go away was if the BBC said "clearly and unequivocally" that the original story was wrong

Tony Blair said on 7 July, after David Kelly had come forward, he had a private conversation with BBC Chairman Gavyn Davies, to see if they could come to an agreement. But they were unable to do so.

Mr Blair said the real problem was that the original allegation had "booster rockets put on it by the Mail on Sunday article" [also by Mr Gilligan, naming Mr Campbell as being behind "sexing up" of dossier].

Mr Blair said he did not see an e-mail in which Number 10 press officer Tom Kelly referred to the government-BBC row as a "game of chicken".

On Dr Kelly

Tony Blair said he heard an individual had come forward as the source of the Gilligan story on 3 July, when he was phoned by Number 10 chief of staff Jonathan Powell.

He said they had to be able to say "we handled this by the book, in the sense of with the advice of senior civil servants, not as I say in order to pass responsibility to them but in order to make sure that this was not, as it were, the politicians driving the system."

My concern was to get that information not concealed but out there, so that no one could say afterwards that this was something that you people were trying to conceal or cover from a House of Commons committee. I take full responsibility for decisions. I stand by them. I believe they were the right decisions On why there was a need to make public the fact the source had come forward

Asked about developments over the weekend 5-6 July, Mr Blair said he thought an article in the Times newspaper made it more probable the individual who had come forward [David Kelly] was the source.

In his own judgement Mr Blair said that there was a "fair possibility it would leak in any event" (referring to the fact an individual had come forward).

Mr Blair said "his firm view" was they had to proceed in a way that Sir Kevin Tebbit, the MoD's top civil servant, and Sir David Omand, Cabinet Office intelligence chief, were entirely content with, consistent with the MoD's internal procedures.

He said in a discussion with Omand on 5 July that he asked to have as much information as possible, and he was told there would be a follow-up interview.

Mr Blair said he understood that Dr Kelly's involvement was to be on the basis of his co-operation.

On a meeting on 7 July he said: "The very clear view of all of us... was that if it became clear that in all probability he was the source, the information could not remain undisclosed."

Mr Blair said also on 7 July, Alastair Campbell called him to say that the fact that an individual had come forward should be disclosed ahead of Mr Blair's appearance at the Liaison Committee. Mr Blair said they should continue dealing with it through Tebbit and Omand.

At a meeting at 1145 on 8 July, with Omand present but not Tebbit, they were fairly clear that Dr Kelly was the source, and therefore they had to decide what to do.

Mr Blair said the first question was if they simply concealed the information on the source, this might be improper as it was relevant to the FAC and the ISC.

Mr Blair said the consensus was Omand should write to the chair of the ISC and copy it to the FAC for courtesy, and then make public the fact the source had come forward.

On Kelly, the MoD and the media

Mr Blair said he was aware of assistance given by No 10 in drafting the MoD press statement that revealed a source had come forward, without giving a name.

But he said he was not aware of the existence of the MOD's plans for a defensive Q&A for dealing with the media, but "I would have thought it perfectly natural that the MoD had to prepare to field enquiries".

He added: "You know in fairness to the MoD press people I think it was difficult for them. It was difficult for them."

Mr Blair said about the meeting about Dr Kelly: "There was nothing in the discussion that we had that would have alerted us to him being anything other than someone of a certain robustness who was used to dealing with the interchange between politics and the media."

He also said the general view was that they could not give people wrong information or mislead them, but on the other hand, "we had not volunteered the name".

Mr Blair said he took full responsibility for events.

Evidence from Gavyn Davies, chairman of the BBC governors

Mr Davies defended the BBC's right to broadcast Andrew Gilligan's story.

It was impossible for governors to check whether it was "intrinsically true" but they could check if correct procedures had been followed.

I certainly believe that it was wrong for any journalist to divulge the source of another journalist Gavyn Davies

He acknowledged that Mr Gilligan may have increased the pressure on David Kelly by briefing MPs on how to question the weapons specialist at a committee hearing

He said Mr Gilligan had been wrong to send members of the Foreign Affairs Committee an email revealing that Dr Kelly had been the source for a second BBC story, by the Newsnight journalist Susan Watts.

He said: "I think this is something the director general may wish to look at and come to the board of governors on."

Mr Gilligan was "under enormous pressure", he said.

He said a lesson learned from the row was the danger of unscripted "two-way" broadcasts such as that used by Mr Gilligan in his first report on the alleged "sexing up" of the dossier.

He said there were "similarities" between Mr Gilligan's report and that of Ms Watts

He attacked Mr Campbell's "all-encompassing" attack on the BBC's impartiality and integrity by Alastair Campbell

He regarded Mr Gilligan's report as "routine"

But Mr Campbell's "unprecedented" attack on the BBC before the foreign affairs committee led to a "major escalation" of the row between the government and the BBC.

He said he and Mr Blair agreed to cool the row in their phone conversation on 7 July.

He said: "In particular, I explained to the Prime Minister that conspicuously the governors had not said that Gilligan's source's allegations were intrinsically true and we had conspicuously said that we did not question the integrity of the Prime Minister himself."

He said the BBC did not have the grounds to retract the story.

Mr Blair told him an MoD official had come forward who may be Mr Gilligan's source. Mr Davies said he did not know who the source was.

He said he found a letter from Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, raising the possibility of whether the BBC would be prepared to disclose the name of its source in confidence "puzzling".

A second letter from Mr Hoon named Dr Kelly, said Mr Davies.

"On this one, my suspicion that something was up was raised when I found out that the letter from Mr Hoon had been released to the press...I felt that if this was a genuine approach to (address) management differences between the two organisations, it would not have been released to the press."

He said he did not feel the BBC management "should be prevailed upon by me to confirm or deny whether this gentleman was the source."

Mr Davies expressed his "enormous regret" on behalf of the BBC at the death of Dr Kelly.