Hutton Inquiry: 'Ministers used Kelly as a pawn'

British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon was today labelled a liar and a hypocrite by the lawyer for the family of David Kelly as he launched a blistering attack on the Ministry of Defence.

In his closing submission to the Hutton Inquiry, Jeremy Gompertz QC accused the British government of treating the weapons expert as a “pawn” in its bitter battle with the BBC over the alleged “sexing up” of the Iraq weapons dossier.

He said Mr Hoon had been an “enthusiastic supporter” of naming Dr Kelly as the BBC’s source and charged him with a “cynical abuse of power” in the MoD’s treatment of him in the days leading up to his death.

However counsel for the Government, Jonathan Sumption QC, robustly defended the MoD’s actions insisting that Dr Kelly had had no right to anonymity and warning against “a hunt for other people to blame” for his death.

He risked further angering the family by backing the claim that Dr Kelly had received “outstanding” support from the MoD, despite Mr Gompertz saying his widow and daughters had been “deeply hurt and angered” by the remark.

Despite acknowledging mistakes in the BBC’s reporting, counsel for the Corporation Andrew Caldecott QC also attacked Mr Hoon, accusing him of “cynical indifference” in his failure to correct press reporting about the dossier.

Opening his attack, Mr Gompertz said Mr Hoon’s denials that he had been involved in a strategy to publicly name Dr Kelly as the BBC’s source had been exposed as “hypocrisy” by the diary entries of No 10 communications chief Alastair Campbell.

“They indicate with clarity, if accepted by the inquiry, that the Secretary of State’s denials of the Government’s strategy, put to him in cross-examination, were false,” Mr Gompertz said.

“Indeed they reveal he was an enthusiastic supporter of the proposal to put Dr Kelly’s name into the public domain. This is totally contrary to his previous stance.

“If, as the family submit, there was a strategy to out Dr Kelly, to use a witness to undermine Andrew Gilligan in furtherance of the Government’s dispute with the BBC, this was a cynical abuse of power and deserves the strongest possible condemnation.”

The inquiry is investigating how Dr Kelly apparently came to take his own life after being publicly identified as the source of the BBC’s report on the Iraq weapons dossier by journalist Andrew Gilligan.

Mr Gompertz said it was not the aim of the family to seek “revenge or individual scapegoats” for Dr Kelly’s treatment.

But he said they wanted to expose the “duplicity” of the Government and the “systematic failures” of the MoD in their handling of Dr Kelly after he came forward to say that he had spoken to Mr Gilligan.

He dismissed as “risible” a claim by MoD personnel director Richard Hatfield that the scientist had been given “outstanding” support and accused him of trying to portray Dr Kelly as the “author of his own misfortune”.

He said the MoD had not even had the “common decency” to inform Dr Kelly of its plan to confirm his identity to journalists who came up with the right name or offered counselling on how to deal with the pressures of the media spotlight.

After Dr Kelly’s name was made public, the MoD had not sought to ask his wife how he was coping with the strain and his one request – to be accompanied by a friend when he gave evidence to the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee – was turned down.

He said the effect had been to leave Dr Kelly – a world renowned expert in the field of biological weapons – a broken man.

“He had worked faithfully for the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office all his life,” he said.

“He served his country loyally and with distinction and yet all the while he remained a modest, retiring man who never sought the limelight.

“The Government and the nation have lost their greatest expert in biological weapons of mass destruction, yet he was characterised by his employers to suit their needs as a middle-ranking official and used as a pawn in their political battle with the BBC.

“The public exposure must have brought about a total loss of self-esteem, the feeling that people had lost trust in him.

“No wonder Dr Kelly felt betrayed after giving his life to the service of his country. No wonder he was broken-hearted and, as his wife put it, had shrunk into himself.”