Hutton Inquiry cost millions

2004-05-07 20:25

London - The judicial probe into the suicide of a weapons expert at the centre of a row over how Britain went to war against Iraq cost more than £2.5m, the government said on Thursday.

Constitutional affairs minister Lord David Filkin said in a statement the estimated cost of the inquiry, which ran for weeks and saw Prime Minister Tony Blair and senior government figures giving evidence, was £2.54m.

In a long-awaited report in January, senior judge Lord Brian Hutton exonerated Blair and his government of serious blame for their actions in the run up to the death of David Kelly in July last year.

Kelly, an internationally respected former UN arms expert, killed himself after being named as the source of a controversial BBC report which accused the government of exaggerating the case for the war on Iraq launched in March 2003.

The BBC's popular chief executive, Greg Dyke, and its chairperson, Gavyn Davies, resigned immediately after the publication of the Hutton report, while the government extracted an unconditional apology from the public broadcaster.

Much of the press slammed Hutton's findings as being a "whitewash" of Blair's government. - Sapa-AFP

- SAPA