Official cause of David Kelly's death is 'extremely unlikely', say group of legal and medical experts

A group of prominent legal and medical experts today called for a full inquest into the death of the government scientist David Kelly in 2003.

An inquest was suspended by Lord Falconer, then lord chancellor, before the Hutton inquiry into the circumstances of the scientist's death. It was not resumed after Hutton's report in 2004 concluded that Kelly killed himself by cutting an artery in his wrist.

Nine experts including Michael Powers, a QC and former coroner, and Julian Blon, a professor of intensive care medicine, said in a letter to the Times that the official cause of death – haemorrhage from the severed artery – was "extremely unlikely".

"Insufficient blood would have been lost to threaten life," they said. "Absent a quantitative assessment of the blood lost and of the blood remaining in the great vessels, the conclusion that death occurred as a consequence of haemorrhage is unsafe."

Kelly's body was found in woods close to his Oxfordshire home in 2003, shortly after it was revealed that he was the source of a BBC report casting doubt on the government's claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction which could be fired within 45 minutes.

Lord Hutton concluded that "the principal cause of death was bleeding from incised wounds to his left wrist which Dr Kelly had inflicted on himself with the knife found beside his body".

In January, five doctors who made an application to the Oxford coroner to have the inquest reopened, were told that Hutton made a ruling in 2003 to keep medical reports and photographs closed for 70 years. Hutton responded by saying the documents could be revealed to doctors and that he had made the gagging order to spare Kelly's family "unnecessary distress".

Hopes for a new inquest have been raised by the change in government. Dominic Grieve, the attorney general, said in April, when he was shadow justice secretary, that the Tories would consider a new inquest into Kelly's death. He also called for a review of the government's decision not to release related medical records and postmortem documents.

Grieve is looking at the matter with the justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke. Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP and a junior minister in the coalition government, supports resumption of the inquest. He resigned from the front bench while in opposition to write a book, The Strange Death of David Kelly, which argued that the scientist's life had been "deliberately taken by others".

The Hutton inquiry applied a less stringent test than would have been used in an inquest, where a coroner has to be sure "beyond reasonable doubt" that a person intended to kill themselves.