Hutton was farcical, feeble and amateurish... so we MUST be told the truth next week



Questioned: Tony Blair arriving to give evidence to the Hutton Inquiry in 2003. Sir John Chilcot's inquiry is expected to be more forensic

When Tony Blair finally appears before the Chilcot Inquiry on Friday, there will be many across the land who will be longing to see him at last brought before the bar of public opinion to account for his central role in launching the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Here is the man who planned it all well in advance, but told Parliament he was trying to avoid war.

The man who told us Saddam Hussein presented an increasing threat, when the Iraqi dictator possessed no weapons of mass destruction at all.



The man who said he put the British interest first, but who, eager and starry-eyed, followed George Bush wherever he wanted to go, even into the maddest corners.



On Friday, Sir John Chilcot and his colleagues will be polite, measured and calm. But, encouragingly, they will almost certainly be well-briefed and forensic as well, if previous sessions are anything to go by.



Don’t let us count chickens, but we may yet get the final report that people want to see, nailing Blair, Campbell, Hoon and the rest of the shameful shower.

Yet the fact that we, the British people, have had to wait seven long years for justice is a disgrace, and much of the blame can be firmly laid at the door of one man: Lord Brian Hutton.

In contrast to the probing Chilcot Inquiry, the 2003 equivalent that was led by Lord Hutton now looks an amateurish, feeble and farcical process for which the term ‘inquiry’ is frankly laughable.



Here, the most challenging question the then Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues were asked was whether they could confirm their names and if they wanted a cup of tea. All right, I exaggerate, but not by much.

But when Lord Hutton finally reported in January 2004, he astonished the nation by clearing the Government of everything - dodgy dossiers and all - and instead fastened blame firmly on the BBC. If in doubt, shoot the messenger.



Now we learn that evidence which was not presented at the inquiry has been locked away for 70 years - and this inquiry, remember, was to subject Dr David Kelly’s death to public scrutiny.



How could Lord Hutton have got it so wrong?

The reality is that his inquiry was fixed by Blair and his cohorts to produce the right result. If you put down the tracks, that’s the way the train goes.



Hutton was appointed, and his terms of reference agreed, within record time, just hours after Dr Kelly, the Government’s foremost weapons inspector, was found dead on Harrowdown Hill in Oxfordshire.

His task was to examine the circumstances surrounding the scientist’s death, including the political events that straddled the war, not least the claim that the Government’s case for war had been ‘sexed up’.

Lord Hutton was the ideal appointment for the Government. He had chaired only one inquiry before - into the diversion of a river in Northern Ireland.



Even more importantly, throughout his career he had shown himself to be sympathetic to the Government and critical of the media.



In 1973, he had represented the Ministry of Defence at the Bloody Sunday inquests. In 1991, he successfully led the campaign to overturn the decision to extradite the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.



In 2002, he blocked the attempt by renegade MI5 officer David Shayler to use a public-interest defence to justify his revelations about the actions of the organisation.



Nobody is suggesting that Lord Hutton was anything other than independent but, in the words of Sir Humphrey in Yes Minister, you don’t choose a judge whom you can lean on; you choose one who doesn’t have to be leant on.

Worse, Tony Blair and his close circle decided from the outset that Hutton’s should be a ‘non-statutory inquiry’.



Take away the jargon and what that means is no witness could be compelled to appear, nobody could be required to tell the truth or charged with perjury if they didn’t, and the normal safeguards associated with a court process, such as proper cross-examination of witnesses, were entirely absent.

If Lord Hutton’s conduct of his inquiry into the battle between the Government and the BBC was deeply unsatisfactory, his examination of the death of Dr Kelly was pathetic.



You might think that such a high-profile and controversial death would call for an especially rigorous examination.



Instead, it was investigated to a lower standard than normal.



So, incredibly, Lord Hutton did not, for example, call the police officer who was actually heading the investigation into Dr Kelly’s death, Chief Inspector Alan Young.

Nor did we hear from the scientist’s best friend, Mai Pedersen, who would have been able to tell Lord Hutton that Dr Kelly had damaged his right arm and was incapable of cutting steak, let alone cutting his left wrist.



She could also have told him that her friend, who we were invited to believe had swallowed 29 co-proxamol tablets, had an aversion to swallowing medication.



Lord Hutton did not even inquire as to whose fingerprints were on the knife allegedly used to slit Dr Kelly’s wrist. That was left for me to establish through a Freedom of Information request, which revealed there were no fingerprints on the knife, and Dr Kelly was not wearing gloves.

Lord Hutton was to confess that he had not bothered looking into the death very deeply.



Writing in the Inner Temple Yearbook 2004, he unashamedly observed: ‘I thought that there would be little serious dispute as to the background facts [about Dr Kelly’s death].



'I thought unnecessary time could be taken up by cross-examination on matters which were not directly relevant.’

So key questions went unasked, conflicting and contradictory evidence abounded, and no attempt was made to tie up the countless loose ends.



And now it seems that Lord Hutton has unilaterally decided that the records of his inquiry should be closed for 30 years and medical evidence for an incredible 70 years - evidence that is hotly disputed by a number of medical practitioners, who are looking to take court action to force a proper inquest to be held.

In an inquest, all the evidence is there for the public to see. What is Lord Hutton seeking to hide away until nearly all of us are dead?

The Chilcot Inquiry is also a non-statutory one, but looks like proving rather more robust in dealing with the politics of 2003. Yet Dr Kelly’s name has barely been mentioned.



If we are to draw a line under the events of 2003, Chilcot needs to acknowledge that Lord Hutton was as useless in dealing with Dr Kelly’s death as he was with weapons of mass destruction, if not more so.

He should accept Dr Kelly is entitled to the inquest he never had, and recommend that one should now take place.

* Norman Baker is the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes and the author of The Strange Death Of David Kelly.