Hutton report date set

13 April 2012

Lord Hutton's report into the circumstances surrounding the death of Government weapons expert Dr David Kelly is to be published on January 28, it was announced today.

The decision means that Lord Hutton's long-awaited conclusions will emerge the day after the crucial House of Commons vote on Tony Blair's plans for university tuition fees on January 27, bringing the Prime Minister's two biggest headaches together in a dramatic way.

On the day of publication, the law lord Lord Hutton will make a televised statement at the High Court summarising his findings, said a spokesman for the inquiry.

All parties represented at the inquiry - including the Government, the BBC and Dr Kelly's family - will be given 24 hours' notice of the report.

The Liberal Democrats said the report, together with the top-up fees vote, could seal the fate of the Government.

The party's foreign affairs spokesman Sir Menzies Campbell said: "In spite of Lord Hutton's apparent thoroughness, there is still the possibility that he will confine himself to the narrow issue of the circumstances that led to the death of Dr Kelly.

"But there is still a central and so far unanswered question which is did we go to war against Iraq on a flawed prospectus either because of inadequate intelligence or the mishandling of that intelligence once it was obtained."

The saga leading to Lord Hutton's report began on May 29, when BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan broadcast a report on Radio 4's Today programme alleging that a senior source had told him the Government's dossier on Iraqi WMD was "sexed up" to make a more convincing case for war.

A furious row broke out between the Government and the BBC - stoked higher when Mr Gilligan used a newspaper article to claim Mr Blair's director of communications Alastair Campbell was responsible for the exaggeration of evidence in the report.

Dr Kelly was eventually named on July 9 as Mr Gilligan's source and gave evidence to two House of Commons committees in the days before his death on July 17.

Lord Hutton's inquiry sat at the High Court for 24 days and took evidence from more than 70 witnesses.

His report is expected to look closely at the question of how Dr Kelly's
identity became public.

Speaking to reporters within hours of the discovery of the scientist's body, Mr Blair insisted he had "emphatically not" authorised the leaking of his name.

But the Ministry of Defence's permanent secretary Sir Kevin Tebbit later told the inquiry that Mr Blair had chaired a decisive meeting at which it was agreed
Kelly's name would be confirmed to any reporter who came up with it independently.

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