Ex-BBC boss slams judge

2004-01-30 16:26

London - One day after he quit as BBC director general, Greg Dyke took aim on Friday at a judicial inquiry that severely criticised the public broadcaster while absolving the government of any blame in the suicide of a British arms expert.

Speaking on BBC radio and GMTV television, Dyke said he did not accept all of Lord Brian Hutton's report into the death of weapons expert David Kelly, saying it was lacking in balance and tainted with errors.

"I, others at the BBC, certainly our legal team, were certainly very surprised by the nature of the report," said Dyke on BBC radio's flagship "Today" news programme.

"It is remarkable how he has given the benefit of judgment to virtually everyone in the government and to no one at the BBC," he said.

On the commercial GMTV channel, Dyke - whose resignation on Thursday triggered spontaneous walkouts and demonstrations by hundreds of BBC staff around the country - said: "We were shocked that it was so black and white."

"We knew mistakes had been made by us but we didn't believe they were only by us," he said.

He went further, accusing Hutton - one of the most senior jurists in Britain - of making mistakes.

"I would be very interested in what a few other law lords on looking at Hutton thought of it," he said. "We have an opinion that there are points of law in there where he is quite clearly wrong."

On the blanket apology that BBC governors made to Prime Minister Tony Blair, he said: "I couldn't quite work out what they were apologising for."

Dyke's criticism, and his vow to speak out even more in the coming weeks, dashed any hopes entertained by Blair and the remaining BBC governors that a line could be drawn under the Kelly affair.

A YouGov poll in the right-wing Daily Telegraph newspaper on Friday found that 56% of Britons believed Hutton's report was a "whitewash", and that 67% trusted BBC journalists - compared with 31% who trusted Blair's government.

The National Union of Journalists is threatening "whatever action is necessary" if the BBC fires Andrew Gilligan, the "Today" reporter at the centre of the Kelly affair.

Kelly took his life just days after he was exposed by the government as the source of a unscripted report in May by Gilligan alleging that the government's September 2002 dossier on Iraq and its alleged weapons of mass destruction had been "sexed up".

The most sensational part of that dossier - a crucial part of Blair's effort to build public support for war - was the claim that Saddam Hussein's regime could deploy chemical or biological weapons in just 45 minutes.

Hutton concluded that the dossier had not been "sexed up" even though it emerged during his inquiry that the 45-minute claim referred to battlefield weapons only and that it came from just one source.

- AFP