Reporting on the workings of Britain's government

IN July 2004 the British Academy assembled a panel of distinguished public commentators--William Twining, Peter Hennessy and Onora O'Neill--to consider the outcome of Lord Hutton's inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly and also the report of a committee of Privy Counsellors, chaired by Lord Butler, reviewing the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Their reflections on these two reports have now been brought together in a book. Hutton and Butler: Lifting the Lid on the Workings of Power, edited and introduced by the Academy's President, W.G. Runciman, together with three discussions or interpretive 'glosses' on the main contributions, written by Michael Beloff, Richard Wilson and John Lloyd, with a concluding essay by Michael Quinlan.

Though the Blair Government's decision to commit British military forces to the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 remains a matter of pressing--and partisan--political disagreement in the present, especially in the election on 5 May, the issues which Lords Hutton and Butler addressed are already becoming matters of history. As William Twining comments, 'once they have performed a short-term political function, reports of this kind tend to survive mainly as fodder for academic specialists to pick over at leisure'. It is clear, in retrospect, how complementary both the Butler and Hutton reports are, the one informing and enlarging upon the other. Yet this was far from conscious design. Indeed, it is worth remembering that it took the tragic suicide of Britain's leading authority on WMD, Dr David Kelly, and the decision by President George W. Bush to institute an inquiry into the American intelligence about WMD (itself provoked by the public comments of David Kaye, a former US Chief Weapons Inspector) to stimulate the formation of both inquiries.

Lord Hutton's precise and possibly over-nice legal definition of his terms of reference disappointed a public (and media) hungry to uncover more about issues which he regarded as tangential to the inquiry's principal focus--the death of Dr Kelly. This demand was partly met by the Butler inquiry--yet only as an inevitable and essentially pragmatic response to President Bush's decision, rather than from a desire to sate the public's appetite for apportioning and attributing blame. Indeed, an intriguing under-current brought out by the book is the sense of disappointed expectations raised by both inquiries, with the prevailing perception being that whilst the public's erstwhile villains (in the Government and, to a lesser extent, intelligence community) were almost entirely exonerated, its champions (not least the BBC) stood implicated or condemned. Yet as Michael Quinlan comments, 'the more salient the "blame" theme is made within an inquiry, the stronger the pressures become for careful lawyerly process, with all its costs in time and money'.

Little wonder, perhaps, that the first part of the book considers the double-edged nature of inquiries of this kind. There is much relevant discussion in William Twining and Michael Beloff's essays about the 'peculiarly British practice of using senior judges to conduct quasi-judicial inquiries into politically significant events' and some marked difference of opinion between them about the wisdom of serving members of the judiciary being offered, and subsequently accepting, such invitations. Unlike William Twining, Mr Beloff firmly believes that judges should not perform tasks which are 'properly those of our elected representatives'. He fears that judges might lose 'that appearance of being above the fray, which is essential to public confidence in the independence and impartiality of the judiciary' and contrasts the British situation with the American system, in which the concept of the separation of powers between the political and the judicial is more deeply entrenched. In this context, however, some of Michael Beloff's concern may be vitiated by two important observations. In the first place, as Peter Hennessy notes in his essay, the 'detailed revelations and judgements' which emerged from these inquiries exposed a 'yawning gap between the [skill and professionalism of the] Hutton hearings and both the reach and the forensic powers of the [House of] Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee', which had published its own findings on the decision to go to war in Iraq in June 2003. This has led to new guidance in respect of select committees, including the suggestion that MPs improve their questioning and forensic training or consider the employment of counsel. Put simply, inquiries like those chaired by Lords Hutton and Butler enjoy a level of authority, respect and access (as well as government co-operation) which is beyond the current resources of Parliamentary inquiry. Whether this is democratically healthy is another matter.

Similarly contrary to Michael Beloff's concerns is the fact that Lord Hutton retired immediately after his report was published, in much the same way that Lord Butler, when asked to chair the WMD inquiry, did so as a retired civil servant rather than an aspirant to further career opportunities. That said, Mr Beloff's wider point remains valid in a more important sense, also borne out by events leading up to the second Gulf war. As W.G. Runciman points out, Butler's report clearly suggested that the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee or JIC (who played a crucial role in the compilation of what popularly came to be known as the 'dodgy dossier' of WMD intelligence) should, in future, be someone '"who is demonstrably beyond influence, and thus probably in his last post"--an unmistakable hint that John Scarlett [Chairman of the JIC at the time] could have been all too consciously influenced by an awareness that compliance with the Prime Minister's known wishes might not be unhelpful to his subsequent career'. The fact that John Scarlett was subsequently (and in the controversial circumstances of the time, perhaps, overhastily) promoted to another high-ranking position--Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service--seems to bear out the wisdom of insulating, so far as anybody reasonably can, such politically sensitive positions.

Anyone who expects this book to be the establishment's defence of the establishment's defence of the Blair Government will, therefore, be pleasantly surprised at the penetration and candour of its contributors. Whilst all of them endeavour to be scrupulously non-partisan, they are far from being dispassionate. In an essay which, typically, owes some of its juicier tit-bits to un-sourced 'private information', Peter Hennessy notes that, for future generations of prime ministers and civil servants alike, the negative example of 'doing a Tony'--in terms of Mr Blair's strategic management during the period leading up to the war--may well prove as great a mental point of reference as the earlier example of not 'doing an Anthony' was after Sir Anthony Eden's handling of the Suez Crisis. Nevertheless, there are clear contrasts between Eden's essentially unsuccessful intervention in the Middle East, in the face of American opposition, and Blair's qualified success in Iraq (judged in crude political terms, his premiership has survived far longer than Eden's). Similarly, as Mr Runciman comments, 'to be accused, as Prime Minister, of having been economical with the truth in the run-up to a war is a great deal more damaging if the war has been lost than if it has been won'.

For the BBC, however, we should read 'doing an Andrew' in place of 'doing a Tony'. Andrew Gilligan's now much criticised report (on Radio Four's Today programme at 6.07 a.m. on 29 May 2003) suggested that, according to 'one of the senior officials in charge of drawing up [the WMD] dossier', the government 'probably knew that [the] forty five minute figure [stated to be the length of time within which Saddam Hussein could potentially deploy weapons against western targets] was wrong, even before it decided to put it in'. This was found to be unsubstantiated by Lord Hutton and resulted in the most public attribution of blame to emanate from his inquiry--leading to the immediate resignations of the Chairman and Director-General of the corporation. The subsequent negotiations attending the renewal of the BBC's royal charter have also been influenced by Lord Hutton's criticism of its quality assurance mechanisms and governing structures. This has lately resulted in the proposed abolition of the Board of Governors, the BBC's ultimate seat of authority for the past eighty years.

It was, appropriately enough, the Reith Lectures for 2002 ('A Question of Trust') which explored, even before the events leading up to the second Gulf war, the importance of such large philosophical issues as trust, accuracy and accountability in respect of the media's role in public life. Their author, Onora O'Neill, has returned to the subject in a though-provoking and elegant contribution to this book, which analyses Lord Hutton's findings in respect of the corporation and considers the BBC's defence that Andrew Gilligan was reporting an accusation rather than levelling one.

What emerges, from the layman's perspective, is the increasingly clear sense of bunker mentality which began to operate on both sides. The corporation interpreted Government attacks on Mr Gilligan's story as an implicit challenge to its independence at a time when it felt vulnerable about the impending renewal of its charter. The BBC gradually assumed, in the eyes of an assorted collection of Government critics and anti-war protestors (and perhaps itself), the mantle of unofficial opposition--to the extent that it found itself endorsed by the Daily Mail. In the process, however, the issue began to appear less and less about the accuracy and reliability of Andrew Gilligan's reporting (about which a number of internal BBC sources were already concerned) and more and more about perceived heavy-handedness on the part of the Government. This was, in other words, a classic case of accelerating an argument into a conflict--a conflict which received its tragic flashpoint in the death of David Kelly. There is particular poignancy, therefore, in the words of the BBC Radio Ulster reporter whom Onora O'Neill quotes at the conclusion of her essay: 'Over here we are taught to check our facts and check our facts--after all, somebody's life might depend on it'.

The Government themselves were not, however, beyond allowing certain media perceptions relating to WMD to circulate unchallenged. W.G. Runciman draws particular attention to the 'wilful non-correction of the ambiguity about whether the 45-minute deployment referred to battlefield or strategic weapons'. He rightly concentrates upon the extraordinary testimony elicited from Geoffrey Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, under cross examination before Lord Hutton, on 22 September 2003. In this, Mr Hoon acknowledged that the media had given a false impression in its reporting of the WMD dossier; that is, that the 45-minute claim referred to the deployment of strategic weapons rather than battlefield munitions such as shells and mortars. However, he defended himself from any implication that he, his department or the Government should have done something to correct this impression largely because--as Mr Runciman puts it--'in his experience journalists are famously resistant to correcting their stories and he has not in the past had much success in getting them to do so'.

Though the reports of Lord Hutton and Lord Butler are now in, the jury is effectively still out on the Blair Government and the second Gulf war. For some commentators, such as William Twining, the war will always be regarded as 'illegal, immoral, and very imprudent'. Others might argue that this was the right war fought at the wrong time--either because action against Saddam Hussein's regime should have been pursued following the liberation of Kuwait in the spring of 1991 or else, if after 9/11, only with the full sanction, in international law, of the United Nations. The Government have, at the time of writing, accepted the majority of the criticisms levelled at them in Lord Butler's report; in this respect events have already overtaken some, though by no means all, of the particular issues discussed in this book. First, the Government have acknowledged the need to formalise decision-making through a return to what Peter Hennessy calls 'the traditional, char-lady function' of taking notes and writing minutes, 'which mop up after [important] discussions so that a proper record exists and subsequent, agreed actions are delineated'. Second, they have accepted the need to protect the position of Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee from influence based on potential future prospects. Third, they have agreed that, in future, there should be a stronger distinction between the assessment of intelligence information on the one hand and the advocacy of a specific political policy position on the other.

By contrast, the outcome of the Hutton inquiry was always likely to be perceived as unsatisfactory; largely because it was dealing with a personal tragedy for which no human recompense was going to be adequate. Matters were immeasurably worsened, however, by the look of self-satisfaction on the face of Alastair Campbell (the Director of Communications at No. 10 Downing Street during the relevant period) in the hours immediately following the publication of Lord Hutton's report. Nor has Mr Campbell, like Lords Butler and Hutton, subsequently retreated into a dignified or contemplative retirement. Nevertheless, the cumulative effect of the Hutton and Butler reports has been to give the Government stronger grounds of defence against some of the problems which they themselves have created than would have been the case had Lord Hutton's inquiry been the extent of official investigation into the events which preceded the conflict in the Gulf.

It is hard to believe that the collective faults of the Government in the period can be explained, as Michael Quinlan suggests in his concluding essay, by a lack of prior ministerial experience within the Blair administration. Whilst the Labour Cabinet which committed British military forces to Iraq in 2003 lacked a Crossman, Jenkins or Healey (amongst others) to temper its deliberations, it bore the combined weight of several PhDs in history and many years of expensive legal training. It is particularly disappointing to note, therefore--as does W.G. Runciman--that those at the centre of decision-making during this period, in No. 10, the JIC and the BBC, were not more discerning in their use, analysis and presentation of the sources. What seems to have been lacking was not experience or intelligence (in the sense of heightened mental capacity) but that elusive, indispensable and utterly 'un-sexy' concept of common sense with which to apply it--whether over the course of 45-minutes or longer. Hutton and Butler: Lifting the Lid on the Workings of Power offers important insights into fundamental issues of trust, governance, ethics, the law and accountability which should merit it, as it deserves, a wide and appreciative readership. Yet the moral of the book may be expressed within the compass of a single phrase--too much intelligence, and not enough brains.

Dr Richard A. Gaunt is Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Nottingham.

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