THE BBC AT BAY

By Ray Fleming IT has not been a good week for the BBC at the Hutton inquiry. As a matter of fact, it hasn't been a good week for the Ministry of Defence, either, or for the various Intelligence chiefs on parade. The fact is that with the advantage of calm hindsight Lord Hutton is looking at a period of hectic crisis in Whitehall and at the BBC when even the most experienced of operators probably had difficulty in getting right the cliff-edge judgements that faced them. Andrew Gilligan clearly got a number of things wrong. His e-mails to members of the House of Commons Select Committee about Dr Kelly's role were way out of line and he was right to apologise unreservedly for them. His note-taking was not of a normal journalistic standard. He was certainly not a team-player. However, the fact remains that Mr Gilligan put his finger on the most misleading statement in Downing Street's dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction - the so-called 45 minutes claim - and brought it into the open. He may have said too much about Downing Street's involvement and motives but it must be remembered that this claim has since been criticised as misleading by the Defence and Security Select Committee and by Intelligence chiefs at the Hutton Inquiry. Mr Gilligan was on to something and, in the public interest, the BBC was right to give him his head. Whether it was also right to refuse to de-escalate the row with Downing Street when it had the chance to do so is another matter, but it has to be kept in mind that No 10 was operating on the principle that the BBC had ”an agenda against the war”, a ludicrous assertion that had to be confronted at every opportunity. Fascinating though the proceedings of the Hutton Inquiry may be, especially now that they have reached the cross-examination stage, it is hard to see how some of the issues under review relate to its single purpose - to look into the circumstances leading to David Kelly's death. Lord Hutton will have a difficult task in confining his findings to matters directly relevant to his terms of reference yet he will be conscious that the more narrowly he sticks to them the greater will be the pressure for a full judicial review to consider whether the government told the House of Commons and the public the truth about the reason for going to war against Iraq. THE appearance of Greg Dyke, the Director-General of the BBC, at the Inquiry on Monday was a sad affair. Mr Dyke was not the master of his facts and his memory failed him a few times. The revelation that he had not bothered to listen to the tape of Andrew Gilligan's controversial broadcast until some weeks after it had gone out was seized on by Lord Hutton for further questioning. When Greg Dyke emerged as a possible choice for the job of Director-General some four years ago I criticised his candidacy on various grounds but particularly that he did not have the experience necessary to carry out the duties of Editor-in-Chief which go with the director-generalship. In front of the Hutton Inquiry his limitations were only too embarrassingly apparent. Among the heads that should roll when Lord Hutton has finished his work is Greg Dyke's.