Tony Blair has good reason to be pleased with the outcome of the Hutton report. Michael Howard lives to fight another day. But for the BBC the tidings are grim, and the lessons to be learned severe. The failure to exercise proper editorial control over Andrew Gilligan's report was, in part, a consequence of the way the BBC has evolved in recent years.
In its heyday, the corporation saw itself as a scrupulous upholder of objectivity and factual reporting. Gradually, however, it has followed the broadsheets so that now the headline is more important than the detail. The result is that the world's greatest broadcasting organisation is in danger of becoming just another bunch of penny scribblers; no better, even if no worse, than the run of popular journalism.
The proper response for the governors should be to see the Hutton report as an opportunity to reverse that trend; to accept that it is, and should be, different - not just from newspapers but also from other television channels. That is what public service broadcasting should be all about.
So much for the BBC, where Lord Hutton's analysis is faultless and of the highest order. I am not so certain about the rest of his report. On matters of fact, his conclusions deserve to be the last word because he has had unrivalled exposure to the evidence. But I am less impressed with some of the judgments he makes drawn from the facts. On the revealing of David Kelly's name to the press, he accepts that it is possible to infer from the facts that the government had a covert strategy to ensure that the press got hold of Dr Kelly's name. He concludes, however, that the government's behaviour was proper and was motivated solely by a desire to ensure that it was not accused of a cover up.
I disagree. It was, no doubt, always likely that the press would discover the identity of the official responsible, but that does not begin to justify the unprecedented and improper "nod and wink" strategy that was adopted by the Ministry of Defence - with or without the concurrence of the prime minister.
I served as defence secretary for three years. I know how that ministry works. It would have been entitled to issue a statement naming Dr Kelly, given that he had broken the rules by speaking to journalists. The ministry would have been equally entitled to "no comment", even if journalists had come up with the right name, if it considered it against the public interest to disclose his identity. What it actually did was the worst of both worlds by helping journalists ask the right questions and confirming the name when it was eventually put to the ministry.
I have assumed that the reasons for this unprecedented and improper procedure was that the MoD wanted to withhold the name, while Alastair Campbell and No 10 were determined it should come out. Lord Hutton is rather naive in concluding that the main actors were all honest searchers after truth and firm believers in open government. Rather, they had their political agenda and they were determined to stick to it.
There is at least one another unfortunate omission in the Hutton report. He refers to the notorious intelligence report that Saddam Hussein could activate his WMD in 45 minutes. We know now that this intelligence report made clear that the WMD in question were battlefield, not strategic, weapons.They had a range of only a few hundred yards, and in no conceivable way could they have been a direct threat to the UK.
Yet, not only was this not disclosed in the government's dossier but neither the prime minister nor his colleagues sought to correct the press when, not unreasonably, they assumed that Saddam's weapons could strike Britain. Indeed, the prime minister went out of his way in the House of Commons to refer to the substantial and current threat that Saddam, allegedly, was to these islands. Some reference to these matters would not have been out of place.
The prime minister will be relieved at the report's findings, but he knows - better than most - that he has received only a reprieve in the wider controversy over whether we should have gone to war at all. Nothing in the Hutton report has given that decision any greater credibility than it previously enjoyed. Indeed, Blair's decision to require the intelligence agencies to publish their views in order to bolster the government's case, was as shabby as it was unsuccessful. The Falklands war, which had the united support of the British people, nevertheless led to the Franks inquiry, which looked into its origins and apportioned responsibility. The Iraq war, which split the nation, deserves no less. A public inquiry would force the prime minister to explain why he had insisted on the need of a new security council resolution and then went to war without one. It would also enable the intelligence failings to be fully assessed.
Now that Lord Hutton has some time on his hands, perhaps he could be asked to chair such an inquiry. The prime minister can, at least, be confident in his impartiality.
· Malcolm Rifkind is a former defence secretary (1992-95) and foreign secretary (1995-97)
