Iraq inquiry 'should recall Campbell'

Tony Blair’s former spin chief should face a fresh grilling by the Iraq Inquiry after he issued a “clarification” of his previous evidence, a senior MP said today.

Alastair Campbell, who appeared before the panel on Tuesday, reacted after fearing his answer to one key question could have given “the wrong impression”.

He appeared, he said, to be suggesting that the then prime minister could have claimed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction “beyond doubt” even if intelligence chiefs disagreed.

“This is clearly not correct,” he said in a written memo to the inquiry which had grilled him about the Government’s controversial 2002 dossier which was used to justify the invasion.

He pointed out that elsewhere in his evidence he had made clear that Mr Blair would have “accepted without question” such advice from Joint Intelligence Committee chair John Scarlett.

Mr Campbell said that he thought he had been asked whether, if the phrase “beyond doubt” was not in the intelligence material itself, Mr Blair would have been misleading MPs in making the claim.

“The reason I said ’No, it wouldn’t’ is because, as I stated elsewhere in evidence, the PM would be entitled to make the judgment he did based on the assessments he saw and had had explained to him, and those words did not have to be in the assessments for him to make that statement.”

“Reading the bald words on the page gives the wrong impression of what I was saying in response to what I thought I was being asked in a question which contained a number of points in parentheses, and I would be grateful of the opportunity to make that clear to the committee.”

0But former Liberal Democrat leader Menzies Campbell said the note had done nothing to clear up the issue and called for Mr Campbell to be recalled.

“The efforts at clarifications have not been effective,” he said.

“In fairness to Mr Campbell and in the interest of the Inquiry itself, he should be recalled to give further evidence on these matters and to allow members of the Inquiry to question him again.

“These issues go right to the heart of the deliberations and the responsibilities of the committee, this is why clarification is key.”

On Tuesday Mr Campbell mounted a robust five-hour defence of the Government policy saying Britain should be “proud” of its role in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

The inquiry will reconvene tomorrow to hear from Mr Blair’s former chief of staff Jonathan Powell, with much-anticipated appearances due later in the week from Geoff Hoon and Jack Straw – the defence and foreign secretaries at the time of the war.

Mr Blair will give a full day of evidence to the inquiry into the war at some point in the fortnight between January 25 and February 5.