September 16, 2pm

Dr Shuttleworth, Dr Kelly’s resource manager at Porton Down

Kate Wilson, chief press officer, Ministry of Defence

DR SHUTTLEWORTH called, examined by MR KNOX

LORD HUTTON: Dr Shuttleworth, I hope that you can hear Mr Knox and me clearly.

A. Yes. Thank you, Lord Hutton.

LORD HUTTON: Thank you.

MR KNOX: Good afternoon, Dr Shuttleworth. Your name is Dr Shuttleworth and you were Dr Kelly's

resource manager at DSTL Porton Down, is that right?

A. That is correct.

Q. I understand you would like to comment on three areas to this Inquiry: first of all, Dr Kelly's pay and

grading concerns; secondly, his secondment to PACS and issues relating to UNSCOM; and thirdly, Dr

Kelly's dealings with the press?

A. That is correct.

Q. Can I deal first, by way of background, with your knowledge of Dr Kelly. When did you come to

know Dr Kelly?

A. I first met David in 1985 when I went for an interview for a post at the chemical defence

establishment.

Q. And did you work with Dr Kelly after that?

A. I worked for Dr Kelly for a number of years.

Q. And when did you become his resource manager?

A. Some time in 1995.

Q. And at what point was that?

A. This was after the creation of DERA, and CBD moving into DERA, between October 1995 and April

1996 David's line management changed from a previous structure into the new structure.

Q. And as resource manager, what were your responsibilities?

A. My responsibilities normally would have been to set his annual targets, to review those targets at the

end of the year and to make the initial determination of possible pay rises; but in David's case the

situation was somewhat more complicated.

Q. Who was Dr Kelly's personnel manager?

A. As I say, the situation was fairly complicated. I was responsible, as his first reporting officer and

resource manager, but the pay elements for David were handled by a gentleman by the name of Ted

Payne, based at Farnborough.

Q. We have heard that Dr Kelly did have some concerns about pay and grading. Can you tell us when

you first became aware of his concerns about pay and grading within the Civil Service?

A. Probably in April 1999, when David came to me concerned that his pay had not increased over a

three year period. That seems rather strange, but you have to bear in mind that David had been

working overseas in Iraq and New York for some time, rarely returning to Porton. It was on one of these

occasions that I think he finally noticed that his pay had not increased.

Q. Did he show you any correspondence?

A. Yes. He showed me a letter, which appeared to have come from either the MoD personnel

department or possibly within DERA, which indicated that he was going to be offered a regrading from

his current position as an individual merit grade 5 to a substantive grade 5, and that he was going to be

considered for a membership of the Senior Civil Service which, at that point, was going to be

reorganised.

Q. You, I understand, have had the opportunity of seeing some of the correspondence from the MoD

exhibited on the web. Have you been able to see that letter at all exhibited on the web in relation to this

Inquiry?

A. I saw a letter which appeared in evidence, I think as letter 'A'.

Q. Was that the letter you are referring to?

A. No, it is not the letter I was referring to. David's letter was somewhat different in style and also

different in content. Letter 'A' suggests that individual merit grade 5s would be made substantive grade

5s but makes no mention that they are going to be made members of the Senior Civil Service. In fact, it

says specifically that they will not be.

Q. Can we call up MoD/3/95? Dr Shuttleworth, do you have a copy of that letter before you? This is the

letterhead letter 'A'.

A. Yes.

Q. Is this the letter that you are talking about?

A. This is not the letter I am talking about in respect of David Kelly. I had seen this letter in the context

of other individual merit scientists, I think in 96, I cannot be certain.

Q. So this is not the letter you think you saw Dr Kelly show you. He showed you a different letter

altogether?

A. He showed me a different letter altogether.

Q. Had Dr Kelly raised the issue of his pay and grading with personnel, do you know?

A. Yes, he told me that he had sent that letter to Farnborough with a question regarding both his pay

and his grading.

Q. Did you agree to help him at all?

A. Yes. Because he was going to travel back to Iraq very shortly afterwards, I agreed I would chase the

enquiry on his behalf.

Q. What did you do?

A. I initiated a series of telephone calls with the personnel people in Farnborough to try to find out

exactly what the situation was. That went on for some time, probably through the March, April and May

of 1999.

Q. What was the upshot?

A. The upshot was I was finally told that Farnborough regarded David not to be a substantive grade 5

and also that he was not eligible to join the Senior Civil Service.

Q. Was any contrary view taken at any time in your enquiries?

A. I am sorry, I do not understand your question.

Q. Sorry. Was anyone expressing any contrary view to that before the final decision was made?

A. There seemed to be some confusion in terms of Farnborough itself. I was being told, on the one

hand, his pay could not be dealt with because he was a member of the Senior Civil Service and the pay

was dealt with by a separate part of the system; and when I spoke to the officer who dealt with that, I

was told David was not a part of the Senior Civil Service. So there seemed to by quite a bit of

confusion within the element in Farnborough.

Q. We know eventually you wrote a letter we can see at MoD/3/150. Do you have that before you?

A. Yes, I do.

Q. This is a letter which you wrote to Heather Skelton, is that correct?

A. That is correct, yes.

Q. This letter sets out your understanding of the position as it was eventually resolved, is that correct?

A. It is my understanding of the position as it was in 1999 at the point I wrote the letter. I was not very

happy with the information I had had from Farnborough; and I passed the whole business over to my

then line manager.

Q. Is there any particular part of this letter you would like to draw the Inquiry's attention to?

A. I think essentially the paragraph 2, I think, is rather important.

Q. That is the paragraph saying: "The situation seems to be as follows..."

A. That is correct.

Q. Why do you take the view this was important or so important?

A. It lays out a number of different things. First of all, it indicates the point at which David was

seconded or at least transferred to PACS. That is something I think you will be asking me about later. It

also says that the transfer was essentially a financial fix to deal with the new financial structures in

DERA.

Q. In paragraph 3 you mention: "... Dr Kelly's status might have caused his pay awards to fall into a

black hole ..." That presumably is the view you took about the matter?

A. Yes, indeed.

Q. How did Dr Kelly take all this? Did he seem to be unconcerned or was he concerned by it?

A. He was concerned but not bitter. In 1999 he was already thinking about retirement, and also

because of the collapse of UNSCOM in 1998 he was thinking of alternative employment.

Q. Did you say he was not bitter or he was?

A. He was not bitter, he was frustrated.

Q. Did you have any further involvement, after writing this letter, with Dr Kelly's pay matters?

A. Very little. At some point between 1999 and 2000, I think in July 1999, shortly after the letter was

written, my duties changed and responsibility for line management passed to Dr Rick Hall, the

technical director at Porton.

Q. Can I move on to questions relating to Dr Kelly's secondment to PACS?

A. Yes.

Q. Dr Kelly was an UNSCOM weapons inspector. Who was responsible for identifying Dr Kelly as an

UNSCOM weapons inspector?

A. I do not know who initially identified him as an inspector. That was before my time. That happened

some time in 1991. But there were structures in place. For instance, PACS, which has now become

CPAC, were responsible for identifying MoD scientists, on behalf of the Foreign Office, who could be

deployed to Iraq on behalf of UNSCOM.

Q. And who paid for Dr Kelly while he worked as an UNSCOM weapons inspector?

A. My understanding is that UNSCOM had some financial involvement in this, but largely, certainly

between 1991 and 1995, the funding came from the Porton end. Porton was still paying his salary. Of

course, when CBD moved into DERA the situation changed.

Q. In what respect did the situation change?

A. DERA began to hard charge customers. So essentially items like overhead charging, overhead

costs, which had previously been covered in the same way they are covered for all Civil Service activity,

would be passed directly on to the customer. In this case UNSCOM complained the costs were

becoming too great to employ David, and indeed others.

Q. So what solution was arrived at?

A. Initially thoughts were given to transferring David permanently to the Foreign Office, as they were the

final point of contact, if you like, between the UK and UNSCOM.

Q. Pausing there for a moment: would that have reduced the cost to UNSCOM?

A. That should have reduced the cost to UNSCOM, yes, because the Foreign Office would have

charged at cost rather than cost plus overhead plus profit element.

Q. So that was one idea that was put forward. What were the other ideas that were considered?

A. The other idea that was considered was transferring him permanently to PACS; and that also was

not possible. There were no vacancies in PACS and no funding, essentially, from the Foreign Office to

do that.

Q. So what was it eventually decided to do?

A. A very loose secondment to PACS. That had the benefits of getting rid of the overhead charge. I am

not a financier, so I do not really understand the ins and outs of this, but it lowered the cost to DERA's

bottom line, essentially.

Q. So Dr Kelly becomes seconded to PACS and therefore becomes seconded to the Ministry of

Defence. Was this arrangement ever formalised in any way?

A. Certainly not in my time. It may have been formalised since then.

Q. When people such as Dr Kelly are seconded to PACS or to the Ministry of Defence, what is the

usual length of time for which the secondment will last?

A. It is normally about three years. After that the individual would either return to his parent department

or would transfer permanently to the employing department.

Q. In the case of Dr Kelly, for how long was he seconded to the MoD?

A. I suppose you could start off in 1991 and certainly go through to 1998, if not to 2003.

Q. Would it be fair to say the secondment, therefore, was rather notional?

A. It was very notional, certainly in the early days.

Q. Can I move on to Dr Kelly's dealings with the press? When Dr Kelly visited Iraq, in what capacity did

he visit? Did he visit, for instance, as an MoD employee or a United Nations weapons inspector or in

some other capacity?

A. He visited as a United Nations weapons inspector on a United Nations passport.

Q. Do you know if he had a particular contract with UNSCOM?

A. Yes. Inspectors signed a contract of confidentiality before they were allowed to travel as part of a

team.

Q. Do you know what the broad terms of that contract involved?

A. The broad terms were that any information gained as a result of UNSCOM activity were the property

of the United Nations.

Q. So effectively information Dr Kelly obtained in that capacity belonged to the United Nations rather

than to the Government; is that correct?

A. Certainly under the terms of the contract that would be true.

Q. Do you know if Dr Kelly was encouraged to talk to the press at all?

A. He was actively encouraged to talk to the press. He had been doing it since 1991; and in 95/1996,

with the new change to DERA, we decided or I decided to formalise that and it became one of his

annual key results, a target, if you like.

Q. And what specifically did this mean he had to do?

A. To provide briefings to the press and to Government bodies, learned societies, as and when required

by the -- essentially the people employing him. This would be the United Nations, the Foreign Office

and PACS.

Q. Dr Kelly, it would seem, therefore had three masters, you might say; one was UNSCOM, one was

the MoD and the final master was DSTL. What were the consequences of having three masters when it

came to his dealings with the press?

A. It meant that in clearing his dealings, either his publications, his presentations or contacts, he would

have to consider which piece of information he was likely to be asked about and to, ideally, seek

clearance from the appropriate --

Q. I am sorry. Did you ever discuss this position with Dr Kelly?

A. We discussed it informally several times.

Q. What did Dr Kelly say to you was his view of what he should be doing?

A. His view was -- and it was a very pragmatic view -- that he should be targeting his requests for

clearance to the most appropriate authority. For instance, if it was UN work, he would try to clear this

with the UN. If it was treaty related work, he would clear it with the Foreign Office. If it related to his

other areas of expertise which had been gained whilst employed with the MoD, he would go to the

MoD.

LORD HUTTON: Dr Shuttleworth when you say that Dr Kelly was encouraged to provide briefings, can

you elaborate a little on what subjects the briefings would be? Would it be of a technical nature relating

to WMD?

A. During my time most of the interest was related to Iraq; and he was asked to give briefings on the

work of UNSCOM, which covered not only technical issues but also issues relating to the personalities

who had been involved on the Iraqi side, the scale of activity; essentially assessing and assessments of

the Iraqi programme.

LORD HUTTON: Yes. Thank you.

MR KNOX: Do you know if Dr Kelly sought advice from the MoD or from the Foreign Office as to how to

handle requests made to him by the press?

A. Yes, he did seek advice, initially on a regular basis. Obviously many of the requests for Iraq related

material were essentially for the same information over and over again. So him seeking advice for those

issues gradually fell off.

Q. Who would he seek that advice from?

A. If he was talking to the Foreign Office he would be talking to NPD, now CPD. If it was MoD he would

talk to PACS.

Q. Did you know what advice he was given, did he ever tell you?

A. Occasionally he was given rather conflicting advice. He also sought advice internally within Porton

and was also offered advice. It was usually if confusion arose as to who was the owner of the

information. There were situations that could arise, for instance dealing with Iraq, which might bring in

some of his more general knowledge.

Q. Can you think of any particular instances of which you are aware when there was a conflict as to the

advice he was getting?

A. Yes, I can. On one occasion, I guess this would be in 1997, as a general review of security at Porton,

David's involvement with the press came up, in general terms. It was suggested that David perhaps

ought to broaden the requests he made for permission to talk to journalists or permission to publish. It

was suggested that perhaps MoD ought to be brought in more often. David tried to comply with that.

The very first occasion he did so, the reaction from the security office was: well, this is really UNSCOM

business, none of ours.

Q. So they passed it on back to: well, you had better go and talk to UNSCOM?

A. They passed it back to the pragmatic approach that had been adopted several years before that.

Q. You say "the pragmatic approach"; that is the pragmatic approach adopted by Dr Kelly?

A. Yes.

Q. What, in summary, was that pragmatic approach that he adopted?

A. To try to target the requests for permission to the appropriate part of Government or to the United

Nations.

Q. What was the greatest press interest, or rather what was the field where the greatest press interest

was shown in Dr Kelly's work?

A. For all the time I was his resource manager it was Iraq.

Q. Any particular aspect of Iraq?

A. Well, the work of UNSCOM and the achievements UNSCOM were making.

Q. And on what type of occasions did the press make approaches to Dr Kelly in that connection?

A. Frequently in the margins of briefing sessions that he was giving on behalf of UNSCOM. These were

frequently held in New York and occasionally in Europe.

Q. Do you know if the Foreign Office made any objections to Dr Kelly's talking to the press on receipt

of such approaches?

A. I have never heard of any objections at all to him talking to the press. Inevitably, because of time

delays, he was not able to seek permission in advance of speaking to the press. But he was very, very

reliable in seeking permission afterwards or at least informing that he had had those contacts.

Q. Were you aware, at any stage, of Dr Kelly having got into trouble with the Foreign Office or with the

Ministry of Defence for having spoken to the press?

A. No; and as his first reporting officer I would have expected to have heard of any indication that that

was the case.

Q. Do you have any general observations that you would like to make about Dr Kelly and the

circumstances leading to his death?

A. No, I do not.

LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much indeed, Dr Shuttleworth.

A. Thank you very much.

MR DINGEMANS: My Lord, I am afraid you will need two minutes just to allow the disconnection.

LORD HUTTON: Of course. I will rise very briefly.

2.22pm short break

2.24pm MS KATE WILSON called, examined by MR DINGEMANS

Q. Can you tell his Lordship your full name?

A. It is Katherine Elizabeth Wilson.

Q. What is your occupation?

A. I am the chief press officer at the Ministry of Defence.

Q. You are in the slightly unusual position of coming to give evidence for the first time. I am going to

examine you neutrally. There will then be cross-examination by the family and the BBC, and you are

aware of that?

A. Yes.

Q. How long have you been at the Ministry of Defence?

A. Since July of last year, 2002. Although I did work there previously, between 1996 and 2000.

Q. What was your employment before that?

A. In the time in the middle I was at the Home Office press office.

Q. So how long have you been a press officer?

A. Since 1996.

Q. As a result of that, do you have regular dealings with the media?

A. Daily, yes.

Q. Were you on duty on 28th May?

A. No, I do not do duties because I am the chief press officer but I was in the office until about 20 to 8.

Q. Did you have any contact with Mr Gilligan on that day?

A. Yes. I spoke to him at about 7.30.

Q. Did you know Mr Gilligan beforehand?

A. Yes. I have known him since I first started doing press office work in 1996.

Q. At 7.30 what was said?

A. He called me to say that they were looking for an interview with Adam Ingram the next morning

which was about cluster bombs, which was quite a topical issue. We talked through various issues

around the subject of cluster bombs, things like the detonation rates of different weapon systems and

things like that. At the end of the conversation I asked him whether there was anything else running on

the programme and he said he had something he was working on on WMD and a dodgy dossier. He

said that was not a matter for the MoD, so I did not pursue it.

Q. How long do you think this conversation lasted?

A. I have heard since that it was about 7 minutes. That sounds about right.

Q. It accords with your recollection?

A. Yes.

Q. How many minutes, estimating, do you think you were talking about the cluster bombs for?

A. At a guess -- it was most of the conversation, 6 minutes or so. It was only when I asked him at the

end of the conversation whether he was working on anything else, which is standard practice, so that I

could brief the Minister if there was anything else he needed to know about, he mentioned the WMD

story.

Q. So far as you can recollect, what exactly did he say about the WMD story?

A. He said he had -- he was working on a story about WMD and the dodgy dossier, which I took at the

time to be the February dossier.

Q. Did you make any notes of that conversation?

A. I did not make any notes of the conversation. The reason I did not is because I was working from a

Q and A document on cluster bombs. I tend to make notes if I have something new or different that I

need to go away and look into or research. There was not anything new or different in what he was

talking about so I did not make any notes.

Q. If we look at MoD/18/15, we can see part of a log. Perhaps you can just help me with this: what is

this document?

A. Yes. That is the duty officer's log from the 28th which was written by Richard Whalley, who is the

duty press officer.

Q. We can see at the top an entry timed at o'clock.

A. Yes.

Q. And the caller is Ian Watson.

A. Yes.

Q. Was this his note or someone else's note?

A. No, all of this was written by the duty press officer. These were all calls he took.

Q. Who was the duty press officer that night?

A. It was Richard Whalley.

Q. After the discussion that Mr Gilligan had with you, it looks as if someone else has called in; is that

right?

A. Yes, that is standard practice though. You often find that Andrew Gilligan is working on something,

perhaps not from the office, and somebody else who is actually putting the programme together will

give you a call to confirm what time they want the Minister, how long they want him for. So that was Ian

Watson's call.

Q. If we look at the enquiry in the middle: "Bid for Minister to talk about clearance op for cluster bombs

etc." Is that the extent of the note on that aspect of it?

A. Yes, that is what he was talking about. I think it was Ian who was putting the package together.

Q. If we look at MoD/31/3, there is another log here, which is dated 29th May at the top.

A. I cannot see it at the moment.

Q. Sorry, MoD/31/3. You can see at the top it is 29th May. But if you go down to the bottom, you can

see 28th May. Is that the continuation of that log, is it?

A. Yes, all it is is a rolling database.

Q. Is there any relevant entry here in relation to the programme the next day?

A. I mean, what it reflects is that Chris Howard rang us later on to say did we want -- or be prepared,

rather, for the Minister to do a couple of minutes on WMD at the end of his interview on cluster bombs,

and then Martin Sheahan calling back to say: here are the WMD lines, which I think you have.

Q. The first entry is three up from the bottom. There is Chris Howard -- he works for the Today

Programme, does he?

A. Yes.

Q. -- calling Mr Whalley: "Discussed programme for morning. Be prepared to answer some questions

(2 mins at end) on WMD."

A. Yes.

Q. Then the response was: "Thank you. Will arrive at Millbank at 0800 ready for live at 0810-0815."

That is for the Minister; is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. Going up, Downing Street press office appear to have called?

A. Yes, that is right.

Q. He says: "Discussion over WMD lines for tomorrow's [Radio 4] interview. He will send fax. Are we

happy? If Rumsfeld issue arises remember to ensure that the full context is used. Confident that we will

uncover evidence of the WMD programme. Stick with the jigsaw argument [whatever that may be]."

But it appears, from that, that there had been contact with the Downing Street press office. Who had

initiated that contact?

A. I think it was probably me, because if Richard had called them he would have logged it. I cannot

remember. It is unusual but not sort of remarkable if the machinery of just putting together the briefing,

you would not necessarily log everything. The purpose of the log is so that various people around the

department can see what was happening overnight. So press officers do not always put every single

call on if it does not give them anything particularly new. Either Richard or I would have called Martin. It

is standard practice, if we are doing an interview on the Today Programme, to let No. 10 know and to

double-check there is not another Minister going on, because we would not put two Ministers on the

same programme. So when I -- I think it was me, I cannot remember -- spoke to Martin I would have

said that Adam Ingram was going on on cluster bombs and they are doing something on WMD, just so

that you are aware.

Q. Right. When would you have made that call?

A. It would probably have been just after I spoke to Andrew Gilligan.

Q. Right. Do you know what you said, so far as you can recall, to Downing Street about the WMD

issue?

A. I mean, all I could have said is that Andrew Gilligan is working on something on WMD and the dodgy

dossier, because I did not know any more than that.

Q. Can we turn to MoD/32/22? You said you were working from some Q and A material or material in

relation to cluster bombs.

A. Yes.

Q. Is this the material?

A. Yes.

Q. Was this something you had already prepared anyway?

A. Yes. We already had a briefing pack on cluster bombs because it was an issue that had come up

several times during Operation TELEC.

Q. So when Mr Gilligan calls, you pull out your briefing pack on cluster bombs and you run through it?

A. You do not run through it, you draw from it depending on what he is asking you.

Q. Whose notes are these on this document?

A. I think they are the notes Adam Ingram gave just before he gave the interview.

Q. If you go down to the bottom of the page, for example, you can see: "GH [which I take to be Mr

Hoon] not indiscriminate targeted on [something] area." This Q and A material was handed to the

Minister then?

A. Yes. What happened was before I left the office, and again this is standard practice, I asked Richard

Whalley to pull together all the information that we had on cluster bombs. He will then have gone

through and highlighted the bits he wanted the Minister to flag up, plus the material that we had on

WMD.

Q. So if we go to 23, we can see: "UXO clearance in Iraq."

A. Yes.

Q. And Q and

A. And 24, the document continues through and concludes on 25 with the issue of children playing

with UXO. If we then go to 26 there is another document which is headed "Current Issues": "Rumsfeld:

Iraq may have destroyed WMD prior to invasion?" What document was this?

A. This was an existing piece of information that we had had. I think the day previously Donald

Rumsfeld had been quoted as saying: we may never find WMD. That was the story that I thought

Andrew Gilligan was talking about because it was a huge story and lots of media were doing that story.

Q. Rather like you had the briefing pack on cluster bombs, you had already put together a briefing pack

on this issue on WMD?

A. That is all we had because it was not really MoD that were in the lead on that issue, it was more a

Foreign Office issue. I think that is a line that came from the Foreign Office. But again, it would be

routine for them to circulate that round to all the relevant Government departments.

Q. If one goes to 27, there is another document with some handwriting on it. Do you know what this is?

A. That is also notes that Adam Ingram made just before he went on to the programme.

Q. Do you know who supplied Mr Ingram with the Q and A material on cluster bombs? Your press

office?

A. Richard Whalley supplied the whole pack which he pulled together during the course of the evening

before. He then went over and briefed the Minister at about 7.30.

Q. So he pulled together the Q and A material on cluster bombs?

A. Correct.

Q. The current issues on Rumsfeld and WMD?

A. Yes.

Q. And then this little extract, is that right, looks like from Hansard?

A. Yes, it was faxed over from the No. 10 press office. I think it was from one of the Prime Minister's

press conferences.

Q. We can see some notes in the bottom right-hand corner. Do you know who made those notes?

A. Yes, they are Adam Ingram's notes.

Q. If we go to 28, what is this? This is continuing the point, is it? It is continuing the briefing note, is it?

A. I think it must be. I am not sure if I have seen this before or not. It does not look familiar. Yes, sorry,

yes, that is the continuation of the press conference, I think.

Q. It certainly relates to weapons of mass destruction and uncovering their weapons programmes et

cetera. Then if we go to 29, we come to some handwriting with "Ian Watson -- Cluster bombs" at the

top. Whose is this document?

A. That is a document that Richard Whalley wrote in the morning once he had heard the first piece on

cluster bombs. That was so he could tell the Minister, in addition to the briefing he had already given

him, exactly what the allegations were.

Q. What time had Mr Watson started work? Was he on duty that night then?

A. I do not know if he was on duty or not. It was him who was putting the package together, so he

would have been in the studio working on it.

Q. The studio?

A. Presumably, yes.

Q. At the Today Programme?

A. Yes.

Q. Accompanying the Minister?

A. No, sorry. Ian Watson is from the Today Programme. This is -- sorry, this is Richard Whalley's note of

exactly what Ian Watson had put in his package that went out -- was broadcast on the Today

Programme the next morning.

Q. Whose handwriting is this? This is Richard Whalley?

A. This is Richard's, yes.

Q. When did he make this note?

A. I have spoken to him. This is to the best of his recollection, he is in Iraq at the moment so he could

not look at it, he made these notes once he heard the first piece on cluster bombs in the morning. It is

possible he made it the night before when he spoke to Ian Watson, but he does not think so because

he would have put that in the log.

Q. So Richard Whalley was on duty all night then?

A. Yes.

Q. What time does the Today Programme start?

A. 6 o'clock.

Q. If you scroll down we can see there is a bit about cluster bombs, mine action, tragedies of war, et

cetera. "WMD. "None found: difficult task, 12 years". "Extensive searching...", reference to the jigsaw

again, "PM ... why Rumsfeld?"

A. Hmm, hmm.

Q. Then we can see this halfway down: "Unnamed sources. "Single source (corroborative) -- no

expose. "45 minutes. "TB. Under threat. "Went 2 war. Evidence ...", et cetera. Do you know what that

relates to?

A. Yes. This one is certainly -- Richard wrote the note after he had heard the first two pieces on WMD

that had gone out on the programme the next morning. Also he has got in there the denial that No. 10

put out as soon as the piece had been broadcast.

Q. Where can we see the denial?

A. "No pressure [from] No. 10".

Q. No pressure; that is the No. 10 report?

A. Yes, I mean --

Q. This is Richard Whalley's handwriting again, is that?

A. Just to clarify, these are the notes he will have taken over to the Minister -- this one certainly is -- in

order to brief him before he went on to the programme.

Q. Then finally at 31 we can see another document headed "Directorate of news, Ministry of Defence.

"WMD. "No. 10. "Allegation untrue. "Not one word of dossier rewritten by No. . "No pressure applied."

Whose note is that?

A. The note was actually written by Richard, which was when No. 10 called him having heard the

allegation in the morning, to say that this is what they had already said to the Today Programme so that

Adam Ingram could reiterate what No. 10 had said. The capital letter bit in the middle is again Adam

Ingram's notes before he went onto the programme.

Q. If we scroll down a wee bit, you can see "Security Services doc" appeared, certainly on the

photocopy, to be different handwriting, is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. At the bottom it says "A Gilligan single source"; whose handwriting is that again?

A. It is Adam Ingram's.

Q. That was made in the morning?

A. Yes.

Q. Did you have any other dealings, apart from your telephone call with Mr Gilligan, you think at about

7.30, and you say you think you contacted Downing Street afterwards?

A. Well, either Richard or I did. I think it was probably me, as I say, because Richard would have logged

the call.

Q. Did you have any other dealing in relation to the broadcast that went out on the 29th May?

A. No. I left at about 7.45 and Richard followed it through because he was on duty.

Q. So what was the next dealing that you had in relation to this particular story?

A. I mean, I heard the piece, the Adam Ingram interview, at 8.10 the next morning. I rang No. 10 shortly

afterwards, I think, to say I thought the interview had been quite hostile, but they were already putting

in a letter of complaint so we did not bother to write one ourselves.

Q. Right. You would have complained that the questioning was hostile?

A. Yes.

Q. Right. After hearing the piece and hearing the Minister's performance and the questioning, did you

have anything further to do with this particular broadcast?

A. No, not until the next month when the Ben Bradshaw interview was broadcast.

Q. We have heard and seen a copy of the transcript. That appears to have been on Saturday 28th

June; is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. Were you contacted about that?

A. Yes. I did not hear the interview myself but I was called by No. 10 press office and then our own

press office shortly afterwards.

Q. What did the No. 10 press office ask you or say to you?

A. They said: did you hear the piece? I said no. So they explained what it was all about and the fact

that Andrew Gilligan said he had checked the story with me.

Q. Checked the?

A. The WMD story with me before it went out.

Q. What did you say to the No. 10 press office.

A. I was confused to start with because I had not heard the piece, so I was not sure what they were all

talking about. I said I would double-check but he certainly did not check it with me, but I wanted to be

clear that he had not checked it with Richard at some point later on in the evening. Our press office

then rang me about five minutes later I think, again on the Saturday morning. There were two press

officers there because it was a handover period, as the Saturday person arrives and the Friday person

leaves on Saturday morning.

Q. What time do you hand over at the press office?

A. Between 9 and 9.30. And it was Howard, I think -- there were two people there who said that the

other press officer there had just had a call from Andrew, which was quite bizarre.

Q. So what had happened on the Saturday morning?

A. The Ben Bradshaw interview had run. Andrew Gilligan had called our press officer immediately after

the interview had run to say he wanted to put on record that he had spoken to me and that is what he

said. But he hung up at that point and Ian did not know what he was talking about.

Q. So what was your reaction to all this?

A. Well, initially I was quite confused. I asked the duty press officer, which by this stage was Howard

because he had taken over.

Q. Howard?

A. Howard Rhodes. I asked him if he could go back and double-check the logs, again to check that

Andrew had not spoken to anyone else. He checked the logs. I spoke to Richard, who had been on

duty, to make sure that he had not spoken to him about it and then I went back to No. 10 and said it

was not right. Then I discussed with No. 10 whether we should put out a statement; my view was that

we should. Then I spoke to the Secretary of State's office and also to Pam Teare --

Q. Yes.

A. -- and put together a statement from home.

Q. And what was the gist of that statement?

A. I mean, it was as I have said: I did speak to Andrew Gilligan but the conversation was about cluster

bombs. He mentioned WMD when I asked him if there was anything else running on the programme

the next morning but he did not, you know, put the specific allegations to me. It was Andrew who said

several times that it was not a story for MoD, so to me that is not checking the story with MoD.

Q. Right. We have seen some correspondence that then ensued between the BBC and Mr Bradshaw

and others. Were you involved at all in that correspondence?

A. I was aware that Ben Bradshaw was going to write a letter.

Q. Who told you that?

A. I think No. 10 told me that. Then some time on Saturday afternoon there was a conference call

between No. 10, Ben Bradshaw and me. I cannot remember exactly who from No. 10 was involved.

Q. Would that have been Mr Kelly or Mr Smith?

A. It may well have been, I cannot remember. It would be unusual if either of them were not involved in

the conversation. And they basically read through what they thought Ben Bradshaw should say in his

letter to make sure that it was actually correct in terms of what I recalled the situation to be. I said it

was and the letter went.

Q. So Mr Bradshaw wrote. There was a response to that letter?

A. Yes.

Q. And were you involved at all in dealing with the response?

A. I got a copy of the response from No. ; and because the times that the Today Programme said they

had called were all wrong so far as our log showed, our Secretary of State, Geoff Hoon, wrote back to

point out that the calls did not sort of tally up, really.

Q. We have heard that there was, in fact, a meeting between Mr Hoon and Mr Sambrook on 8th July.

Were you a party to that meeting?

A. Yes, I attended the meeting.

Q. What was said in relation to the giving of notice point?

A. I mean, I attended so I could tell Richard Sambrook myself exactly what I had said. As I remember,

Richard Sambrook said he thought it was unusual that Andrew Gilligan would call on somebody else's

story because it was Ian Watson who was putting the package together. What I said was I did not know

whether it was unusual or not, but cluster bombs was a story that Andrew Gilligan had certainly

followed in the past and when he was on the Sunday Telegraph he did a lot of stuff on the land mines

and the Ottawa treaty. It would seem odd to me we did not have a conversation about it because we

had so many conversations about it in the past.

Q. You must have numerous conversations with journalists. How many conversations a day do you

have with journalists?

A. It depends on what I am doing really, you know, or how busy it is.

Q. On a busy day?

A. On a busy day, 20/30.

Q. You have not, for the reasons you have given, kept a note of the conversation you had with Mr

Gilligan. How clear is your recollection of the conversation with Mr Gilligan?

A. It is very clear. I mean, I went back and checked all of my records, and the thing that reassured me

about it the most is if I had known at the time what the allegation was when Richard spoke to No. , we

would have flagged it up to them but we did not do that. The only reason we cannot have done that is

because we did not know about it.

Q. What had you flagged up to No. 10?

A. The main reason for ringing them was to let them know that Adam Ingram was going on to the

programme and to tell them what he was talking about, but I also mentioned that Andrew Gilligan was

working on something on WMD and the dodgy dossier because that was a story for them, not for MoD.

Q. Can I then turn to your dealings with Dr Kelly? When did you first become aware of Dr Kelly's name?

A. On Friday 4th July I was called over to a meeting at the Permanent Secretary's office and shown a

copy of the letter that Dr Kelly had written to Bryan Wells.

Q. I think if we look at MoD/1/19 that is it; is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. We can scroll down. So you were called over to the office. Who else was there?

A. Initially the Permanent Secretary and his private secretary, and then a bit later on Martin Howard and

Richard Hatfield arrived.

Q. So that is Sir Kevin Tebbit; and who is the private secretary?

A. Dominic Wilson.

Q. I think that is in fact your husband as well, is that right?

A. It is, yes.

Q. Who else was there?

A. Initially it was -- I was called over because Pam was not around to have a look at the letter and there

was nobody else there to start with.

Q. Is Pam Teare more senior than you?

A. Yes she is, she is my boss.

Q. She is your line manager and boss?

A. Yes.

Q. What was discussed on 4th July?

A. Initially I was just told to have a read of the letter.

Q. So you read the letter?

A. I read the letter a couple of times. Then I had a brief discussion with Sir Kevin and Dominic about

what we thought it meant in terms of whether this meant he was the source or he was not the source.

Of course, at that point nobody really knew; and then, as I say, Martin Howard and Richard Hatfield

arrived. Richard had just conducted an interview with Dr Kelly so we had a meeting around the table

about, you know, how the interview had gone.

Q. And what was reported?

A. Richard said that on the basis of the interview he was not at all convinced that he was the source. In

fact, he thought he probably was not. We had a discussion about whether we all agreed with that. My

view, and Martin's view at the time, was that if that were the case then it did not explain why in his FAC

evidence Andrew Gilligan had said he only had one source.

Q. Right. So it was your reading of Dr Kelly's letter that there had been a meeting, put together with

what you knew Mr Gilligan had said to the Foreign Affairs Committee?

A. Yes.

Q. Had you followed what Mr Gilligan had said to the Foreign Affairs Committee?

A. No, not particularly. I was aware he was giving evidence but no more than that. But when I was

shown the letter I was also given a copy of the transcript to have a look at.

Q. Somebody had already downloaded or got a copy of Mr Gilligan's transcript?

A. Yes.

Q. Do you know who had done that?

A. I do not know where it had come from but it was in the Permanent Secretary's office.

Q. That is in Sir Kevin Tebbit's office?

A. In his outer office.

Q. In the area that he occupies. Was any view taken on this Friday night -- this is Friday 4th July, is it

not?

A. Yes.

Q. Was any view taken about what to do?

A. I mean, the view taken at the end of the meeting was that we did not know -- we could not know

whether or not he was the source or not at that stage and, therefore, we should alert David Omand,

and a letter was drafted in the course of the meeting, but there was not anything we could or should do

publicly. We were also quite concerned that because the letter said that Dr Kelly had himself realised

that it was possible he was the source because it had been flagged up by somebody outside the

department, and also that the letter mentioned the recent and varied contact he had had with

journalists, that there was quite a strong possibility that somebody would put two and two together at

some point, potentially quite quickly. So in the meeting Richard and Martin had already put together a

draft reactive statement.

Q. Can I take you a document, which is CAB/1/49? This is a document that is sent over on 7th July. If

we go back to CAB/1/48 we can see that it is sent over by fax on the Monday saying: "Two draft

statements attached. One based on the defensive lines prepared on Friday, the other reflects further

discussions today." If I go back to 49, which is headed "version ", this appears to be the more

defensive lines that have been prepared. Do you recollect that?

A. Yes. It looks like the original version which Martin and Richard put together, I think.

Q. Right. That original version --

LORD HUTTON: May I just ask you: in what circumstances did you envisage that that statement might

be issued, Ms Wilson?

A. The only occasion on which we would issue it is if journalists got the story from somewhere else and

had come to us asking for a response.

LORD HUTTON: Did you use the word "reactive" or "defensive"?

A. Reactive.

LORD HUTTON: Reactive. Yes.

MR DINGEMANS: This statement does not give any details of the official who has come forward. It just

says "an individual working ..."; is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. And there is added in: "He is not a member of the Intelligence Services or Defence Intelligence

Staff." That, we have heard from Mr Howard, got added in on the Monday. Did you also work on some

Q and A material?

A. Yes. While I was in the Permanent Secretary's office -- one of the reasons I was called over was to

start thinking about a Q and A pack, which is just a standard bit of paper we have for anything that is

newsworthy in the press office really.

Q. What is the purpose of Q and A material?

A. We have hundreds of them at any one time. All it is is a supplementary briefing, if an issue comes

up, to try to predict the sort of questions that journalists might ask us.

Q. Rather like you had the cluster bomb material you could pull out. Also I think you had something on

WMD which someone had prepared.

A. Exactly.

LORD HUTTON: Was this question and answer material, at this stage, related to this reactive statement

that you prepared?

A. Yes. It was all -- because if the story had got out then even if we put the statement out to people in

response to specific enquiries, we would still have had follow up questions from journalists quite

quickly. So this was just the first draft at trying to predict what those questions might have been.

LORD HUTTON: Would that question and answer material have been used if the reactive statement

had not been issued?

A. No, it would only be issued in support of a statement. That is not always the case. Occasionally you

would not have a statement. But in this case we thought we would need both because it would be a

big story if it did happen.

LORD HUTTON: Yes. Thank you.

MR DINGEMANS: Can I take you to CAB/21/3? Someone has written in the top right-hand corner of

this, but it is very cut off "Produced on the evening of .7.03". Your version is probably as cut off as

mine. The Q and A material produced that evening says this: "Who is the official? "We are not prepared

to name the individual involved. "Why not? "We have released all the relevant details. There is nothing

to gain by revealing the name of the individual who has come forward voluntarily. "Can we interview the

individual? No. "Is it a senior figure? "It is not a member of the Senior Civil Service (steer -- a middle

ranking official)." First of all, can I just deal with the first two questions? At that stage, it looks as if no-

one was going to give Dr Kelly's name; is that right?

A. My view certainly at the time was we were never going to volunteer the name unless at some point

perhaps we could have been sure it was definitely the source. But the position from the very beginning

was we were not in a position to prevent the name getting out.

Q. There does not appear to be on this Q and A material, prepared on 4th July, anything about: is the

name Dr Kelly?

A. No. A Q and A evolves -- this was just an early draft that was not shown to anybody else. It was our

first stab at trying to put down on a bit of paper what the Q and A was. If the story had broken over the

weekend we would have had to have spoken to a lot of people about it before we could have used any

of it. But it just reflects the fact that, you know, we were asking ourselves questions but we had not

dwelt on it long enough at that stage to get to the end of where we would need to be and what

questions we would be asked.

Q. Who was party to the preparation of this material on 4th July?

A. Myself and Pam Teare.

Q. Had you left Sir Kevin Tebbit's outer office at this stage?

A. Sorry, yes. I e-mailed it to Pam's machine from Sir Kevin's office and then went back to Pam's office

and worked on it with her there.

Q. So before you left Sir Kevin's office you were working on it?

A. I was putting the questions together, yes, and a couple of the answers I think.

Q. Who else was contributing at Sir Kevin's office?

A. Nobody.

Q. It was just you while the others were chatting in the background?

A. It was before Richard and Martin arrived, after I had read the statement and had a look at the FAC

evidence. I was just sitting down trying to think what the questions might be that we would get asked.

Q. If one goes down the page, you pick up at the fourth paragraph, as I said: "Is it a senior figure? "It is

not a member of the Senior Civil Service (steer -- a middle ranking official)." Who was responsible for

that proposed steer?

A. Sorry, I do not understand the question.

Q. Do you see the fourth question?

A. Yes.

Q. "Is it a senior figure? "It is not a member of the Senior Civil Service (steer -- a middle ranking

official)." That rather suggests not a member of the Senior Civil Service and that, you know, in follow up

conversations you are going to steer the journalists to believe he is a middle ranking official.

A. Yes.

Q. Who was responsible for putting that "steer" in?

A. I cannot remember if it was me or Pam; it may well have been me. The point of it was to make it

clear that he was not a junior official. One of the things that journalists often like to establish, you know,

for good reason is exactly where in the hierarchy somebody fits within a story. So if somebody's laptop

has been stolen you try to establish how important they were, therefore what did they have on their

laptop? It was that sort of question I was trying to predict, but it was important that people did not

assume it was somebody very junior as well.

Q. Did you know anything at all about Dr Kelly apart from the letter you had read at this stage?

A. I knew that his boss was a grade 5, and I think I had probably asked what grade he was and been

told a sort of 6/7.

Q. You were told he was 6/7?

A. Something like that, yes.

Q. Who had told you that?

A. It would probably have been Martin. I cannot remember but it was something that came up during

the meeting.

Q. Martin being Mr Howard?

A. Yes.

Q. If we go down the page a bit further, you can see this question: "Are you suggesting that Andrew

Gilligan has deliberately sexed up his story and twisted/exaggerated the information he received? "The

MoD has drawn no conclusions and is not making any suggestions. We have simply given the facts.

Only Mr Gilligan can know how he handled the information he received. "This is just spin -- you're

releasing this information in order to help clear the Government's name?" And then this comment:

"MoD did not break this story. We have today put out a statement in response to clarify speculation."

We know, for whatever reason, that no-one actually required the issuing of the statement over the

weekend; and we know, in fact, that the Ministry of Defence issued the press statement on 8th July. Is

it fair, then, to think that when it was issued on 8th July and the Ministry of Defence did break this story,

that it was spin in order to help clear the Government's name?

A. No, not at all. I mean, the reason that we put this Q and A brief together was because we thought

there was a possibility that it would come out that weekend, which would have been just before the

FAC report was published. What we needed to do was, you know, establish, as far as possible,

whether or not this was the source of the story. We were not in a position to put out a statement at all

at that stage, but it certainly was not spin. There was a danger, if we had not said anything at all

throughout, then the Government would be accused of trying to cover up something that was directly

relevant to the FAC.

LORD HUTTON: Are you saying that the suggested answer, "The MoD did not break this story", is to

be related to the point you made a short time ago that this would only issue if the press broke the story

themselves over the weekend?

A. Yes.

LORD HUTTON: I see. Yes.

MR DINGEMANS: I think at the bottom it deals with the suggestion of the cover up story, is that right:

"The letter was written on 30 June. Why did it take a week to deal with it?" Then you suggest some

answers to be checked against Dr Wells' recollection.

A. Yes, that is right.

Q. Did you have any further involvement over the weekend?

A. No direct involvement, only that I saw the Tom Baldwin piece on the Saturday, which I thought was

quite interesting and, if anything, sort of put more pressure on the Department.

Q. In what sense?

A. In what sense did it put more pressure on?

Q. In what sense was it both interesting and likely to increase pressure?

A. I thought it was interesting because it quoted unattributable BBC sources, but it was the first time

anyone had given any information out about who the source might be. It seemed to me that was

almost a sort of watershed moment potentially and also suggested that there was, you know, still a lot

of interest in it.

Q. I have shown you the fax which sent two drafts of the statement over to No. 10. That was CAB/1/48.

This appears to be sent over on 7th July. The first draft was said to be defensive lines. The other

reflects "further discussions today" but requires "further checking and represents a higher risk

approach as we cannot be sure that he is Gilligan's single source". Can I go through 49 then to 50,

which is version 2? This is the higher risk approach --

LORD HUTTON: Sorry, Mr Dingemans, where are we at?

MR DINGEMANS: CAB/1/50: "An individual working in the MoD has come forward ... "The official has

volunteered that he had known Mr Gilligan for some time. "This individual was not 'one of the senior

officials in charge of drawing up the dossier'..." He is not a member of the Intelligence Services. Mr

Gilligan raised the issue of the involvement of Mr Campbell: "The individual was not involved in the

process, he did not comment." Mr Gilligan has made it clear he only had one source. It said this: "From

the account we have received from the MoD official, this leads us to conclude that either there was

more than one source, or Mr Gilligan misled his employers about the information the MoD official

discussed with him. We assume the Intelligence and Security Committee will take this into account..."

That was a higher risk version. Do you know who produced that? Had you been party to producing that

on 7th July?

A. It is based on the version that Pam and I were working on on Monday night, but I do not recognise

the final bit.

Q. There are various bits which appear to have been added in. We can see some handwriting at the

bottom; and 51 and 52 there is more handwriting, and 53. Some of that we have heard about from Mr

Powell and Mr Campbell and I think Mr Smith and Mr Kelly as to who was responsible for that. The

next draft of the statement appears on 8th July at CAB/1/68. This is 9.16 in the morning. That is on

Godric Smith's computer. We know, from the evidence, that he is at No. 10. You can see: "Dominic..."

That is obviously to Dominic Wilson: "This is a revise of version 2 reordering a bit with a different

penultimate para which asks the question but doesn't point the finger. Grateful if you could forward to

Pam." That must be Pam Teare, is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. "Let me know how things progress." CAB/1/69 is the statement. That says: "The individual is an

expert on WMD but is not a member of the Intelligence Services or a member of the Defence

Intelligence Staff." It then goes on to deal with what is said. We have heard of various discussions that

took place during the day and drafting of the press statement. CAB/1/63 appears to be the next

version we get on 8th July. Were you involved in looking at that press statement that had been faxed

over or e-mailed over from No. 10 on the morning of 8th July?

A. No. I was not involved on 8th July until we actually put the statement out.

Q. Right. Well, this appears to be getting closer to the final version. Then at CAB/1/70 we get a

document that is saved on Mr Smith's machine at 4.35. You were not party to any of that; is that right?

A. No.

Q. The press statement is issued. In fact, because I have got confused before about which was the

right press statement, can I take you to FAC/1/9, which is what the Foreign Affairs Committee say is

the right one, so that I can be sure, because there are various changes. When did you see the press

statement that was actually issued?

A. I saw it just after 5 o'clock, when Pam Teare came back with the final version of the statement and

the final version of the Q and A -- sorry, came back to the press office.

Q. Does this look like the final version that was issued?

A. Yes, it does.

Q. And you can see: "The individual is an expert on WMD..." Which we have had before: "... who has

advised Ministers on WMD and whose contribution to the dossier of September 02 was to contribute

towards drafts of historical accounts of UN inspections. He is not 'one of the senior officials in charge

of drawing up the dossier'. He is not a member of the Intelligence Services or the Defence Intelligence

Staff." Do you know who had been responsible for inserting the greater detail about Dr Kelly or his

role?

A. No, I do not.

Q. Did you not consider whether or not this was likely to lead to an identification of Dr Kelly, giving

quite a degree of detail about his role?

A. I mean, I was not involved in considering the final version; but I mean, you know, the point from the

outset was that it seemed to be only a matter of time before somebody put 2 and 2 together, and we

were not in a position to prevent his name coming out.

Q. No, but do you agree there is a difference between not preventing someone's name coming out and

giving it a healthy push?

A. I do agree with that; but I mean, it was a small field to start with.

Q. I have shown you the Q and A material I think you said you worked on on the Friday night.

A. Yes.

Q. The next version of the Q and A material we have is at CAB/21/5. This is said to have been sent to

the PUS office at 8.07 on 8th July, subject to discussion and approval. You can see, three lines down:

"Is it X (the wrong name)? "No. "Is it X (the right name)? "If the correct name is put to us from a number

of callers, we will need to tell the individual we are going to confirm his name before doing so." Did you

see this material on the morning of 8th July?

A. I think this is the material that we were working on on the evening of the Monday, so I saw it then.

Q. Who else was working on the material in the evening on the Monday?

A. It was just me and Pam again.

Q. We know the final version, as it ends up in the final version -- perhaps we can just leave that on

screen -- but in the final version it says: we will confirm the correct name if given. Do you know who

was responsible from the change from "Is it X..." to "We will confirm the correct name if given"?

A. No, I do not.

Q. From what you have said it must have been you or Ms Teare, is that right?

A. Sorry, I thought you were talking about the final version.

Q. Yes, the final version of the Q and A material. You are working on it on 8th July, is that right?

A. No, on the 7th, on the evening of the th July.

Q. Did you work on it after the evening of the 7th July?

A. No, I did not.

LORD HUTTON: You were not concerned with either the statement or the question and answer

material until just a little before the statement was put out on the late afternoon of 8th July; is that your

evidence?

A. I was working on other things. Pam was working on this and she came back with both final versions.

MR DINGEMANS: She came to you with effectively, as far as you were concerned, a fait accompli,

because she is your boss and: here is the press statement and here is the Q and A material.

A. Yes, they were the final versions.

Q. The final draft version you were working on on Monday, 7th July was pretty close to this type of

material, is that right?

A. I think this was it.

Q. Right. By this stage you have obviously decided that a question you have to anticipate -- and that is

the point of the Q and A material, is it not, to anticipate questions? A question you have to anticipate is:

is it Dr Kelly?

A. Yes. And other names as well.

Q. You have decided: "Is it other names?" "No." "Is it Dr Kelly?" "We will need to tell the individual we

are confirming his name before doing so." Why had you put that in as a draft answer?

A. Sorry, the second, is it the correct name?

Q. Yes.

A. At the time we did not know that Dr Kelly had already had a discussion about the fact that his name

was likely, almost inevitable, to come out once the statement had been put out. Not because that was

the position -- Sorry, if I start again. Because the statement would accelerate, you know, the interest in

the story, and people that might have put two and two together at some point would probably put two

and two together more quickly once the statement had gone out.

Q. So what is the difference between Monday 7th July when you are drafting it, and Tuesday 8th July

when it is decided, not by you but by others, that Dr Kelly is not going to be contacted before his name

is confirmed?

A. He had already been told that his name was likely to come out. This was before that had happened

or before we knew that had happened. That conversation we would have had once the correct name

was put to us had already happened with Richard Hatfield.

LORD HUTTON: That was the meeting on the afternoon of 7th July?

A. Yes.

MR DINGEMANS: When were you drafting this material?

A. On the evening of the 7th.

Q. Which was after the interview anyway?

A. We did not know the outcome of it or any detail of it at the time.

Q. You were no party to the interview or any discussions after it?

A. No, but I mean, Pam was in the lead on the issue. But, you know, we understood what the

discussion had been about and the fact we would have to put out a statement and his name was

almost certain to get out was part of that discussion.

Q. Is there a distinction between a name coming out and your employer giving out your name to the

correct question, so far as you are concerned?

A. Sorry, can you say the question again?

Q. You are a member of the Civil Service. Do you think there is a distinction between your employer

confirming your name in answer to the correct question and your name, as it were, just coming out

because press have identified it through other sources?

A. There is a distinction; but I think, you know, as I am a press officer the thing that we were keen to do

was (a) to prevent the wrong name being put all across the papers, but also to try and encourage

media to come to us rather than go direct to Dr Kelly. If we were -- if our Q and A did actually provide

some information, journalists were more likely to come to us. Do not forget, there were a lot of

journalists that did not -- well, there was certainly Nick Rufford who did not need the Q and A material

or the statement in order to identify Dr Kelly, he had already done so.

Q. He said, in evidence, that he thought it was and then was going up to try to confirm that. Can I then

take you on to the 8th July? You are there and you are presented with the final version of the press

statement and the final version of the Q and A material. Do you have any conversations with Dr Kelly at

all on 8th July?

A. Not at that point. I knew that Richard Hatfield had just cleared the statement, which is why we were

then in a position to put it out. I was going to speak to him once it had gone out and we had had some

response to it, to let him know what the response was.

Q. When did you in fact speak to him?

A. I think it was 8.26 that evening.

LORD HUTTON: I missed that.

A. Sorry, my Lord, 8.26.

LORD HUTTON: 8.26, yes.

MR DINGEMANS: On the evening of the ...?

A. Of the 8th.

Q. What did you say to him?

A. Well, I had two calls with him; both of them were very brief. The first call he said he was out walking

and could I call him back, so I called him back about 20 minutes later and I said that we put the

statement out. I wanted to make sure he had my contact numbers. He said he did not have anything to

write with so he could not take my number down, so I asked him if he had the number for the duty

press officer which he said he did. I said: we have had a lot of follow up questions. He did not ask me

what they were. I said: you do need to think about alternative accommodation. I asked him if there was

anything he wanted from me and he said no. That was also a brief conversation.

LORD HUTTON: Did he have any reaction when you said he should think about alternative

accommodation?

A. I mean, he acknowledged the comment but he did not actually say anything other than sort of "yes"

or "hmm" or something like that.

MR DINGEMANS: Did you tell him that a decision had been taken to confirm his name if the correct

name was given?

A. No, I do not think I did. The conversation was about how to handle what I thought was inevitable at

some point, which would be that media would come direct to him, and if that were to happen then he

should put them on to me or on to the press office. It was about directly handling the media himself.

Q. Did you offer him accommodation or you just said he ought to go and stay with friends?

A. I did not offer him accommodation. My view is always that it is better to go and stay with family or

friends than, you know, go to a hotel or something, and that is what I recommended to him.

Q. How did he sound at that time?

A. I mean, he was not surprised by anything I said. He seemed very calm.

Q. Did you have any other conversations with Dr Kelly?

A. I spoke to him on the next day, on the th, which was after his name had been confirmed. He actually

called me, although I was about to call him to ask if he wanted a press officer to go to his house.

Q. So what time was that conversation?

A. The conversation on the 9th?

Q. Yes.

A. That was 8 o'clock.

Q. 8 o'clock. We have heard evidence that Mrs Kelly believed that the call was made to Dr Kelly.

A. I mean, I do not think it can have been, assuming it came from the press office, because I was the

only person with his number.

Q. You phoned him or he phoned you?

A. He phoned me at 8 o'clock.

LORD HUTTON: Before you phoned Dr Kelly, did you phone Dr Wells?

A. I spoke to the Permanent Secretary's office once I knew that the name had been confirmed, so that

someone in the Permanent Secretary's office could get Dr Wells to give him a ring.

LORD HUTTON: Yes. And you did that before you rang Dr Kelly yourself?

A. I did not ring Dr Kelly. He called me.

LORD HUTTON: I should have said: before you were about to ring Dr Kelly.

A. Yes.

LORD HUTTON: I see.

MR DINGEMANS: When did you ring Dr Wells? Do you remember what time that was?

A. I did not ring Dr Wells myself because I did not have his mobile number. I asked the Permanent

Secretary's office to ring.

Q. When did you ring the Permanent Secretary's office asking them to call Dr Wells?

A. It would have been about quarter past .

Q. What time was Dr Kelly's name first confirmed?

A. I heard that it was first confirmed at about 6 o'clock.

Q. Did anyone think of ringing and telling Dr Kelly this?

A. Yes, that is why I rang the Permanent Secretary's office, to make sure somebody was doing that.

Q. And do you know what process was followed to notify Dr Kelly?

A. I knew that Dominic was going to get hold of Bryan Wells to get him to make the call, because

however inevitable being in the media spotlight is, you know, it is never pleasant. Dr Kelly had not

wanted to discuss anything particular with me the night before, so I thought if he did have any

concerns they would probably be better coming from Bryan than from me.

Q. What did Dr Kelly say to you at 8 o'clock?

A. He was ringing specifically to tell me that Nick Rufford -- I thought it was a phone call at the time, I

learned on Sunday that he had actually been to the house. He said that Nick Rufford had been in

contact with him and asked him why he was not now in a hotel. He was now minded to go to family

and friends and he would be heading to the West Country, but he would let me know where he was

when he got there.

Q. How did he sound at that time?

A. Again, he still sounded calm.

Q. Did he say that anyone had actually told him, before he had seen Mr Rufford, that his name had

been confirmed?

A. He did not say and I did not specifically ask him because, you know, we were dealing with the fact

that Nick Rufford had already been in contact with him. I did say that I confirmed that other journalists

had got the name.

Q. And how long did your conversation with Dr Kelly last?

A. I do not know. I mean, it was again very short. All three conversations were all very short.

Q. There is a document dated 9th July at MoD/31/19. Do you know what this document is?

A. Yes, that is an extract from my notebook from the 9th.

Q. Right. If we scroll down that, does it have anything to do with Dr Kelly?

A. No, no. I mean, the first issue was a member of the public that had rang -- sorry, that had called me.

And the second was a journalist who had called saying that he understood that the 45 minutes claim

had come from an MI6 agent and therefore could not have come from somebody that did not work in

the DIS. That was the only call I made a note of because it was the only thing that was not covered in

the Q and

A. I did not know whether or how to answer it.

Q. At the bottom, the journalist appears to have asked: how could he have known that if he did not get

it from the source? And surely this: did he have access to the MI6 documents?

A. Yes.

Q. Over the page at MoD/31/20, is this also from your notebook?

A. Yes, this is the next page of my notebook.

Q. What is the last entry referring to?

A. The last entry, which I think must have been the next day because at that stage the FAC had not

asked for Dr Kelly, I do not think -- but that is from a journalist at Sky News.

Q. That is on 9th July, in the evening. Had you attended any discussions earlier on in the day relating to

Dr Kelly and press announcements?

A. The only meeting that I had attended was the standard No. 10 8.30 meeting, which is a meeting of

all press people from different Government departments.

Q. What had been discussed there about the MoD press statement which had gone out on 8th July?

A. I mean, the discussion was primarily about the fact that the BBC had issued a statement shortly

afterwards, and the BBC statement had sort of confused us slightly, I suppose, because it said, to start

off with, that their source did not work in the MoD, which seemed to be a fairly categoric piece of proof

that it could not be the same person. But the statement ended by saying: we do not know whether it is

the same person or not. So we talked about the implications of that statement.

Q. Was there any discussion about whether or not to say, as a result of that: well, Dr Kelly actually does

work for the MoD but he is paid for by another Department?

A. Yes, there was discussion about whether we could make that point or whether we should make that

point, and also whether it was relevant to make the point that specialists in particular areas often

advise more than one department or agency.

Q. What was the point of making those points?

A. Well, we were very confused by the BBC statement. As I say, on the one hand it seemed to be a

categorical denial that it could be the same person, but at the end it seemed to be a non-denial denial,

is what I would call it. It was whether or not there was more information that would be relevant to that

specific point; we were getting asked questions about it.

Q. Is that why the Prime Minister's official spokesman in the afternoon of 9th July gave -- I will not take

you to it, if that is all right -- far more details about Dr Kelly saying: in fact, he was employed by the

Ministry of Defence but paid for by another Department. There were very few people. Is that the reason

that that was given out to journalists?

A. I mean, I can only speak from the MoD perspective but from our perspective we were getting asked

the question: does this mean he cannot possibly be the same person? The actual answer to that was:

not necessarily, no. We were being asked a specific question; we needed to be able to say something

about it.

Q. At this stage you have done what was perceived to be necessary, declared that a person had come

forward. The BBC had clarified the matter. Why was there a need to give further detail and information

which, as we know, journalists used to help identify Dr Kelly, because Mr Blitz went along to the Prime

Minister's official spokesman's lobby briefing and said that he got the distinct impression that further

details were being given out which inspired him to make further investigations. Why was that?

A. It was not my decision to do it but, as I understand it, (a) we had to come up with an answer to the

question were being asked and the question was: does this mean it could not possibly be the same

person? But (b) the additional information that was being given out did not particularly narrow down

the field, I do not think.

Q. Can I just take you, very briefly, to MoD/32/46, which I think is the beginning of the log. It goes up

the page, as it were, in time order. It is the beginning of the logs on 8th July, dealing with contact in

relation to Dr Kelly; is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. If we go back to 45, and then to 44, we can see that at 18.10, it is about five entries down: Paul

Sykes, the press officer; caller, Kate Wilson: "The FT have the name of the person from MoD who was

Gilligan contact." That is the first noting, is it? Then Mr Norton-Taylor for the Guardian: "I have the

name: Is it Dr David Kelly?" "Confirmed name is correct." Those are the details of the noting. Then it

appears to be No. 10, Paul Sykes: "Has Dr Kelly been told that he is to become a public figure and

what arrangements are in hand to protect him? "Advised that I was sure Kate would have considered

this. Rang Kate to make sure." Do you recall that conversation?

A. Yes.

Q. What arrangements had been made for Dr Kelly by this time?

A. It is the arrangement that we would always make, which is that we have a press officer on standby

to go to his house if needed, and if indeed he was going to stay in the house. The normal arrangement

is that -- or the normal way that we work is that once a journalist has got the correct name they then

work through the electoral register, come up with all the people of the same name, in this case David

Kelly, and then it takes them another couple of hours to work out which one it is and where he lives. So

that was the arrangement we were working on.

Q. Was not a problem with the Q and A material this: that you were just never going to know exactly

when Dr Kelly's name was going to be confirmed?

A. Well, I mean, it comes back to the sort of point that first of all we were trying to encourage

journalists to come to us with names rather than go anywhere else, so that we knew if they were going

to run the name in the paper the next day, but that we could never prevent journalists from ringing Dr

Kelly direct if they suspected that he was the source. So what we were trying to do was encourage

people to come to us so that we had advance notice, so that we could get our press officer up to him if

he chose to stay in the house.

Q. But if his name was inevitably going to come out, why was it not done by the Ministry of Defence

who would then have been able to answer all the follow up questions: he will not be contacted; he will

not be interviewed; he has gone away to an undisclosed location, rather than have a situation where

from Mrs Kelly's evidence he felt, so it is said, betrayed that the Ministry of Defence had confirmed his

name?

A. Well, the point was in terms of so that nobody could get in contact with him. Journalists already had

his number, we knew that, so we were not in a position to stop journalists from calling him direct. All we

could do was try to encourage them to come to us, which is what we did.

Q. And encouraging them by giving a series of draft answers which provided quite a lot of information?

A. There was certainly some information provided, but they were legitimate factual questions. What we

did not do was give clues, which has been suggested. There were plenty of questions that we were

asked that would have been clues that we refused to answer, because we were sticking to legitimate

factual questions.

Q. Is there anything else surrounding the circumstances of Dr Kelly's death that you can assist his

Lordship with?

A. No, I do not think so.

LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much. I think we will rise for a short time now, to give the

stenographers 5 minutes.

3.30 pm, short break

3.35 pm:

MR DINGEMANS: My Lord, I have in fact just been asked to elicit a few more pieces of information.

LORD HUTTON: Yes.

MR DINGEMANS: Did anyone ask for any clues? We have looked at the press log. Did any journalists

ever ask for any clues over the course of that afternoon when you were being asked questions?

A. The afternoon of the 9th?

Q. Yes.

A. Yes, various journalists asked for various bits of information. Examples are: what were his initials;

what does he look like; does his name rhyme with anyone in the press office's name?

Q. What was your response to those questions?

A. We refused to answer them.

Q. How many names were put to you by The Times, for example?

A. Mike Evans says it was 20, which is possible, but it seemed certainly lower than that to me, and they

were not all put to me in a great long list; it was three names at one point during the afternoon, then in

the evening another two, then perhaps another three.

Q. When you had been told that the correct name had been put and confirmed, were other journalists

still calling?

A. Particularly The Times, who called me probably another three or four times after I knew that the FT

and the Guardian had got the name. At one point I said to Pam Teare: this is stupid, I am being

pestered, can I not just give them the name, it is already out? Pam said: no, absolutely not. So I did not

give the name out .

Q. In the Q and A material describing Dr Kelly as "not a member of the Senior Civil Service", is there

anything else you wanted to say in relation to that?

A. I mean, the only thing that I wanted to say is it has clearly been taken as a slur, and what I was trying

to get across by saying -- you know, the steer about middle ranking was to make the point he was not

a junior official. It was not intended as a slur, it was just intended to give people an indication of where

in the hierarchy he was. The statement itself did make the point, you know, that he was an expert in his

field.

Q. On 9th July you have told us that Dr Kelly called you. Had you planned to call him at any stage

yourself?

A. Yes. Sorry, I meant to call him as soon as I had got Howard ready to go to his house, to make sure

he wanted somebody to go to his house.

Q. Howard?

A. Sorry, Howard Rhodes, who was the senior press officer.

Q. After the meeting on 9th July in the morning with the Prime Minister's official spokesman, was there

any follow up to that meeting with the Foreign Office?

A. Yes. I mean, it was taken away as an action for the Foreign Office representative to go and check,

because it was the Foreign Office who paid the salary, although we did not know whether or not they

would say that or they should say that. We did not think they would, and indeed they did not in the end.

But it was for the Foreign Office to decide whether or not that information could be used in some

format. So Ian went away to check it.

Q. And they came back and said: no. Do you know what the result of the Foreign Office checking was?

A. I mean, I assume that the result was the briefing that Tom gave in Lobby that afternoon. But, I mean,

because time was running out, originally I thought they wanted something for the morning Lobby,

which is at 11 o'clock, so Ian Gleeson went direct back to No. 10, rather than coming through me.

MR DINGEMANS: Thank you very much.

LORD HUTTON: Yes, Mr Gompertz. Cross-examination by MR GOMPERTZ

Q. Ms Wilson, you had Dr Kelly's home telephone number on the evening of the 8th?

A. I had his mobile number.

Q. Mobile only?

A. Yes.

Q. You did not have his home number?

A. No.

Q. Did you try to get it?

A. No, I did not need it.

Q. Very well. At any rate, you had it available to you, did you, on the evening of the 9th?

A. His mobile number?

Q. Yes.

A. Yes.

Q. We know that the first identification of him was made at about 5.30; right?

A. Between 5.30 and 6 o'clock, yes.

Q. We have heard about 5.30. It was not communicated to you that that had happened until 6 o'clock,

are you saying?

A. It was about 6 o'clock, yes.

Q. Were you not in the MoD press office?

A. Yes, I was.

Q. How come it took nearly half an hour, or whatever the time lag was, before you were even told of an

identification?

A. Because the first -- the FT, who were the first journalists to get the name, spoke to Pam Teare direct.

Her office is right at the other end of the corridor and her phone was ringing permanently. I went in to

see her about 6 and she told me straight away that the FT had got the name, and straight away I told

the duty press officer and the Permanent Secretary's office.

Q. Did she have no means of telling you that there had been a positive identification?

A. I mean, her phone was going constantly, so it was when I walked in that I learnt that.

Q. Was there no other means of her telephoning you? Only one phone, is that what it is? No internal

phone or anything?

A. I mean, there is not an internal phone. At that time of night her assistant would have gone home

anyway.

Q. Well, all right. Let us take it that there was that time delay. Why did you not immediately telephone to

Dr Kelly?

A. Well, because, as I have said, I had spoken to him the night before and he did not seem to want to

have a particularly prolonged conversation with me. Being in the media spotlight is never pleasant,

even if you are expecting it, so I thought it would be better to come from his line manager.

Q. I dare say he would not have minded knowing that he had been identified as the source. Did that

thought cross your mind?

A. That is why I, you know, put in train for him to be informed by what I thought was the most

appropriate person.

Q. Why not phone him immediately yourself?

A. The reason I did was, as I said, because I thought it was better he heard what to anybody would be

fairly bad news from his line manager.

Q. Had you taken the trouble to get his line manager's number in advance?

A. No, I had not got his line manager's number, but I spoke to somebody that did have it.

Q. Why not? You were supposed to be helping him out, were you not?

A. Sorry, helping out Dr Kelly?

Q. Yes.

A. Yes.

Q. Why had you not got the means of communicating with his line manager, if that was the appropriate

method of communication?

A. Well, I spoke immediately to the Permanent Secretary's office, who did have his mobile number, who

spoke to him straightaway.

Q. When did you speak to Dr Wells?

A. Sorry, I did not speak to Dr Wells because I wanted to carry on getting Howard ready to go. I asked

for the Permanent Secretary's office to speak to Dr Kelly.

Q. We can hear in due course from Dr Wells whether that happened, but did it occur to you to, after

that, enquire whether any contact had been made with Dr Kelly?

A. I mean, I was focusing on getting Howard ready to go to his house. I knew that he had my number if

he needed it. I was going to ring him as soon as Howard was ready, to say, you know: Howard is on his

way if you want him.

Q. It might have been suggested the obvious thing to do was for you to telephone Dr Kelly immediately,

as you had telephoned him the night before. Why could you not do that?

A. I could have done that. As I have said, what I thought was better was to hear what would in any

circumstances be bad news from somebody he knew.

Q. Right, well, I do not wish to labour the point, but in fact you never telephoned him until he

telephoned you.

A. I was about to telephone him when he called me.

Q. Let me go on to something else. Is it right, as you have told us, I think, that you were involved in the

first draft of the Q and A material which is CAB/21/3?

A. Yes, I was involved in that.

Q. Yes. I am not going to take you through it, but you can see at the top the first question, the answer:

"We are not prepared to name the individual involved." And the second question: "There is nothing to

gain by revealing the name of the individual who has come forward voluntarily." Right?

A. Hmm, hmm.

Q. You and Ms Teare put that in of your own initiative, did you?

A. Yes.

Q. Because you thought that was appropriate?

A. Yes. I mean, as I have said, it is an early draft. These things evolve over time.

Q. Yes. Can you look, please, at CAB/21/5? This is the draft that was reworked, I think you have told

us, in the evening of Monday 7th July; right?

A. Yes.

Q. We can see what is endorsed at the top. It was evidently ready certainly by 8 o'clock on Tuesday

morning. Would you like to look at just two questions there? The fourth one down asks: "Is it X (ie the

wrong name)?" Answer: "No." "Is it X (ie the correct name)? "If the correct name is put to us from a

number of callers, we will need to tell the individual we are going to confirm his name before doing so."

Did you put that question and answer in of your own volition?

A. I cannot remember who of Pam or I put in which bits. We were working on it together.

Q. What are you saying, that it was either you or Ms Teare who put that question and answer in this

draft; is that what you are saying?

A. It was Pam and I who worked on that document, yes.

Q. Why was there such a change in approach from that which you had thought proper to adopt on the

first draft?

A. Well, I mean, I was not involved in the -- sorry, from the first draft?

Q. Yes. You have just told us that you were responsible for producing, with Pam Teare, the draft which

we looked at -- if you want to see it again, by all means, CAB/21/3 -- the draft that was produced on

the evening of Friday 4th July.

A. Hmm.

Q. Yes?

A. Yes.

Q. There is a very considerable difference in the approach to the naming of the individual between that

draft and the one which you worked on on the evening of Monday, 7th. I would like to know, please,

why it was that that change took place?

A. I mean, you know, a Q and A evolves over time. It is not something that you start with and you have

one finished document. You go away and you think about it, you try to predict the questions you are

likely to get asked by journalists. By Monday night we were asking the question: what we will do when

names get put to us? What we will do if the wrong name gets put to us? We were never in a position to

prevent Dr Kelly's name coming out but we were in a position to prevent other people's names coming

out.

Q. So, are you saying this: that the responsibility in the MoD for the decision as to whether somebody

should be named or not is left to the press office; is that the position?

A. No, not at all. This is a second draft, this is not the final version.

Q. Right. Perhaps you better look at the final version, even though, as I understand it, you did not have

anything to do with it. MoD/1/62, please. You see there has been a change to the wording used in the

question 2: "We wouldn't normally volunteer a name." But after that: "If the correct name is given, we

can confirm it...", and so on. Is this what you are saying: that you and Ms Teare were responsible for

changing the approach from not making any revelation as to the name to what we can see and have

seen on 21/5, that you will name the individual if he is identified, and you have confirmed the name with

the person involved; but you and Ms Teare were responsible for that policy, were you?

A. I was involved in the first two versions but not the third version. It was only the third version that

needed to be cleared, because that was the final version, and that is what happened.

Q. Right. And that what you and Ms Teare had drafted was subsequently, without your knowledge,

adopted by whoever was responsible for the final draft?

A. As I have said, a Q and A evolves. It just happens that in the final version I was not working on it.

Pam was working on it with Martin Howard, and it was subsequently cleared with the Permanent

Secretary. But as I have said, it evolved and this is the final version.

Q. One other matter: I wonder if you could look, please, at MoD/31/16, which I understand is the log of

calls made to the press office. We see, working up the page, that the last call recorded for the 8th is

22.37. The first one that we have on this document for the th is at 5 minutes to 6 in the evening of the

9th. Why is that? Were there no calls during the day?

A. No. The purpose of the duty log is so that the duty press officer can log what has happened

overnight so that everybody else coming in in the morning is instantly up to speed on what has

happened overnight. It is not a day log, it is just for the night time.

MR GOMPERTZ: I see. I have misunderstood the nature of the document. It would not be the first time.

That is all that I want to ask. Thank you, my Lord.

LORD HUTTON: Now Ms Rogers, thank you. Cross-examination by MS ROGERS

Q. I want to ask you about the calls to the MoD on 28th May.

A. Okay.

Q. You first met or came into contact with Andrew Gilligan when you were a junior press officer at the

MoD?

A. Yes.

Q. He at that point was at a newspaper The Telegraph?

A. The Sunday Telegraph.

Q. Then you go away to the Home Office and come back as chief press officer at the MoD.

A. I was in MoD for four years, then I went to the Home Office for two, and then I came back last July.

Q. When you come back, he is defence and diplomatic correspondent on the Today Programme?

A. He was actually on the Today Programme before I left MoD.

Q. So you deal with him as a junior and as a chief press officer?

A. Well, I mean, it is boring, but as an information officer, then a senior information officer, then I went

away and came back as a chief press officer.

Q. If you forgive me I will omit the detail of the Civil Service grades. One gets an impression that life in

the MoD press office is rather busy and rather demanding.

A. It is fairly busy, yes.

Q. Plenty of phone calls coming in every day?

A. Yes.

Q. You mentioned to Mr Dingemans the possibility of say 20 to 30 calls a day. Presumably there could

be days you are on the phone all day?

A. There could well be, yes.

Q. In terms of calls coming in from Andrew Gilligan, I mean he was a regular caller to you as well as to

the MoD press office more generally?

A. That is right, yes.

Q. I think his recollection is he probably would have spoken to you a couple of times a week.

A. Yes, that sounds about right.

Q. Unless there is a particularly big story in which he is having more regular contact, but that is the kind

of --

A. Yes.

Q. At that point you are having lots of calls, lots of phone calls from lots of people, lots of calls from Mr

Gilligan?

A. Sorry, on the 28th?

Q. No, just as part of the general pattern before we get to the 28th. So in a sense, when he rings you

on the 28th there is nothing at all out of the ordinary about that?

A. No, not particularly.

Q. In terms of the wider story, I suppose there was a time when people did not talk about weapons of

mass destruction, the WMD, but the WMD story had been running for very many months?

A. Different twists to it but there had been a story since the war had finished.

Q. Sure. There had been a story before the war started.

A. There may well have been.

Q. About the dossier. Lots of stories that had been running for many months. You have the dossier,

there is the war, then there is the post war. By the time we get to the 28th, the war is over and there are

running stories about the failure to find WMD.

A. Hmm, hmm.

Q. And, in particular, I think it is on the 28th itself, there is reporting of Donald Rumsfeld's statement.

A. Yes, that is right.

Q. And as Defence Secretary he had raised the possibility and I think it is the first time, that perhaps

the Iraqis had destroyed WMD before the war began.

A. That is right.

Q. That was seen as a significant new angle on the running story. And you were aware of that on the th,

presumably?

A. Probably. I do not know what time on the 28th I was aware of it, but at some point, yes. I think it was

running on the 27th as well, actually. I am not sure.

Q. I do not know, but certainly by the 28th you would have been aware of it before he called?

A. Yes.

Q. When someone calls you, because you are getting calls from all sorts of people, is it not your

practice to log the time and the person calling you?

A. It is my practice to log the time of the person calling me and what they want if what they want I

cannot just give them over the phone as I have it. Because if it is a journalist ringing about something

that we already have, that has already come up, in this case perhaps I would have alerted -- well, I did

alert someone because it was a bid anyway, but you know, you would not necessarily make copious

notes of each call if you already had information on it.

Q. You do not simply keep, in a sense, a diary of calls, at such and such a time someone calls, just as

an aide memoire?

A. I do not keep a call of everybody that has called me. I keep a call of the people that have called me

who I have not been able to help on the spot, so I have to go away and find some information and then

come back to them.

Q. If it requires action from you, you make a record; and if you have dealt with it, you do not make any

record?

A. Hmm, hmm.

Q. As far as the daily log is concerned, help me with this: this is a log that is only kept by the overnight

duty officer?

A. The purpose of the log is so that people coming in the next morning understand, without having to

go and ask whoever was on duty, exactly what happened the night before. So the log is for the out of

hours period, effectively.

Q. Is there a set time at which the log commences or does it depend on which time the day staff go

home?

A. It depends a little bit when people go home but it is normally between 6 and 6.30.

Q. The earliest time that we have seen on the 28th is a call at 8 o'clock.

A. Yes. The reason for that is simply that we had not had any calls before that, and the log only starts at

the time of the first call.

Q. So the first call on the evening of the th, after you had gone home, is 8 o'clock?

A. Yes, the first call that was logged, yes.

Q. Is it normal for you to be in the office at .30 on a week day or is there something extraordinary about

that?

A. Sadly it is not that unusual.

Q. So when Mr Gilligan calls, again there is nothing about the fact he is ringing at 7.30 that is out of the

ordinary?

A. No, he also regularly rings fairly late.

Q. Just part of the job. In terms of the Today Programme, that would be an important exercise for you

to be dealing with that programme?

A. Yes.

Q. Just a normal part of your job again?

A. Yes.

Q. You would get calls sometimes from reporters as they were preparing stories, and sometimes from

reporters giving notice of a story the next day?

A. Hmm, hmm.

Q. There were also calls from the editorial production staff?

A. Occasionally, yes.

Q. Is that occasionally or is that normal? If you want to know about the format of the programme the

next day.

A. From my understanding, it depends how early they know what is running and what time it is going to

be on. Sometimes you get that from the journalist who has put the piece together and sometimes they

will call you back later, after the editorial meeting presumably, to tell you that they have now finalised it

and they would like you at whatever time on the programme.

Q. So there is no set practice. As long as you have someone who has told you what time they want

what Minister --

A. Yes.

Q. -- you do not mind who it is who tells you?

A. No.

Q. We have been told that you had a document in front of you when Mr Gilligan called; I have it as

MoD/31/2. I fear that there is a whole set of documents marked MoD/32 which I have not seen. So ... If

that could be scrolled down, you see you have "Cluster Munitions" at the top. At the bottom we see

there is a printed page number, 32. So this is part of a much larger document.

A. Yes. All it has come from is there was, for the whole of Operation TELEC, the Iraq operation, a

briefing pack. So you extract the relevant bit from it.

Q. That is something that is pre-existing and covers all sorts of different aspects of, if I call it the bigger

story?

A. Yes, it is updated fairly regularly.

Q. That is the page that I understand you pull out, the duty log, we had a copy initially at MoD/18/15.

This is the copy of the log that has Ian Watson on it.

A. Yes.

Q. Now, I appreciate you did not take this call, but you know who Ian Watson is?

A. Yes.

Q. He is the political correspondent on the Today Programme.

A. Yes.

Q. And you certainly know now, you may not have known at the time, that he was the reporter dealing

with the cluster bombs story.

A. Yes.

Q. We see this entry is made on the log at 8 o'clock. According to this, it is Ian Watson who makes a

bid for the Minister to talk about the clearance operation for cluster bombs. There is a note there, a

response there that it is a bid accepted by the Minister, which I take to be the armed forces, which is

Adam Ingram?

A. Yes.

Q. So that is Richard Whalley, his note of that?

A. Hmm.

Q. If there had been a 7.30 entry for Andrew Gilligan's call, might that not have caused questions to be

asked, at least within the press office, as to why two reporters had called?

A. No. I mean, it is reasonably -- not regular but it is certainly not without precedent that Andrew

Gilligan will call to put in a bid for somebody and then someone from the programme will call to put in a

bid for that person, or occasionally, as has happened, for somebody else within the MoD. Then you ask

them to speak to each other to say who they actually want on the programme. So that is not unusual at

all.

Q. Is it unusual to have two reporters calling, as opposed to a reporter plus an editorial person?

A. No, not particularly.

Q. We have that version of the log. We have another version of the duty log, which is MoD/31/3. This

one starts at later than 8 o'clock. I cannot see the Ian Watson call on this version. I think you have

described this as a rolling log?

A. Yes.

Q. We can see again from the bottom right-hand corner that what we have is page 372 of 1952. So it is

a very big log. But are there two different versions kept or --

A. Yes. The only reason why it looks different on one bit of paper to the other is that the format that you

see now is the standard format and that is what gets printed out and given to everybody that needs to

see it in the morning. The original grid version that you have is because the system went down and we

had to get somebody who knew what they were talking about to come to make it print for us.

Q. The advantage of the MoD one we now have up is that at least it has the press officer's name on, as

opposed to the grid version which did not?

A. It may well have. We do not normally see it in that format. It was just because we needed it urgently.

Q. Now, just looking at the entries that we have got that relate to Today. There is the 22.30 call; that is

from Chris Howard, who is the producer. As we see, he says he is told that: "Be prepared to answer

some questions (2 minutes at the end on WMD)."

A. Hmm, hmm.

Q. I appreciate this was not a call to you, but WMD, at the time for you, the live issues were principally

the Rumsfeld issue?

A. Yes.

Q. And in the past there had been the February dossier issue?

A. Although that was not such a current issue at the time.

Q. The real live issue so far as you were concerned --

A. Although they were not particularly issues for MoD, they were more issues for the Foreign Office and

No. 10.

Q. After that we have the 23.20 call, the Martin Sheahan call. There is a discussion between Downing

Street press office and the MoD. We have heard that at one point what used to happen in the evening

is that 10 Downing Street used to call Today every night as a matter of routine to see what was going

on. We heard that had stopped at some point, I do not think we know precisely when, before th May.

You mentioned that it was a routine matter for you, as a press office, to ring Downing Street tell them

what was going on?

A. To tell them what we were proposing to do in terms of the morning's bids and programmes.

Q. That was your standard practice at the time, to call Downing Street?

A. Yes, it is standard so that No. 10 knows what you are actually planning to do, to let them know if you

are doing what is called the Millbank round, where you take a minister down and do a series of

interviews.

Q. The Millbank round. So that is an established feature within Government, a sensible way of making

sure that information is shared and knowledge shared. Now, Mr Sheahan, we see, says at 23.20 that he

is going to send a fax, because obviously there are several lines that are agreed in different aspects. I

have as MoD/31/11, if we look at the top of that, there is a fax date of 28th May.

A. Hmm, hmm.

Q. And a time of 23.47.

A. Hmm, hmm.

Q. I think you see it is part of the MoD fax. If you look to the top right one sees it is page 3.

A. Hmm, hmm.

Q. I accept you were at home by the time the nearly midnight fax arrived. Do you know what is on the

first two pages of this fax?

A. I do not. It is an extract from the Prime Minister's press conference so it would be whatever he was

asked about at the time.

Q. So there would probably have been some kind of cover sheet plus?

A. Plus the first page of the press conference.

Q. We do not know whether page 3 was the last page or not?

A. There was a page 4, I think, because that has been shown up already today.

Q. Has it?

A. Unless the page 4 was page 2. I do not know.

Q. The only page I have been able to identify as the fax is that one. It is not a criticism of you at all.

A. Thank you.

Q. I think we would like to see that whole fax. So he sends a fax. That is pointing out what the Prime

Minister had said about it. He is also, one sees back on MoD/31/3, which is the log, raising the

Rumsfeld issue in particular, and giving certain lines; one has the expression "on message". The

message here is: "Whatever Rumsfeld says, we are confident we will uncover evidence of WMD

programme and sticking with the jigsaw argument." I am not going to go to the broadcast. One will see

that reflected in what Mr Ingram says the next day. In terms of briefing the Minister for the Millbank run,

as you mentioned, Mr Ingram is speaking over the phone to the Today Programme it appears.

A. In the studio, yes.

Q. In terms of briefing, what is the normal practice? Is the Minister normally briefed the night before or

on the day or does it matter?

A. There is no point briefing him the night before because you do not know what the issues might be in

the next morning's papers. So the routine, which is what happened in this case, is that the duty press

officer went over at 7.30 the next morning, just to talk him through what the issues were in the first

editions of the newspapers and to talk him through the briefing pack -- the cluster bombs bit of it I

think he had seen before anyway. He flagged up the fact that WMD was going to come up. By that

stage he had already heard the 6 minutes past 7 interview and he had already had a call from No. 10 so

he had the No. 10 line and the No. 10 denial. So the duty press officer would have talked through that.

Q. The normal practice would be to brief him at about 7.30. That is what was planned for Mr Ingram, a

.30 briefing?

A. Hmm, hmm.

LORD HUTTON: Just so that I understand this fully. Mr Ingram was, what, in a studio in Millbank?

A. Not at 7.30 he was not, my Lord. The duty press officer met up with him in his office at 7.30.

LORD HUTTON: In Mr Ingram's office?

A. Yes. At that point he was taken through what was in the first editions of the newspapers; and they

had a quick run through the cluster bombs briefing, but he had seen it before.

LORD HUTTON: Yes.

A. And also went through what was in the .06 Today Programme piece.

LORD HUTTON: Yes.

A. Then they would have got into the car and gone over to the studio for 8.10.

LORD HUTTON: The studio being at Millbank?

A. Yes.

LORD HUTTON: Did Mr Ingram speak on the telephone then to the Today studio?

A. Yes. It is what is called a down the line interview, where he puts on the headset, so it is a clean ISDN

line, and speaks from Millbank.

LORD HUTTON: To the studio where the Today presenter is?

A. Yes.

LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much.

MS ROGERS: You mentioned the briefing on the newspapers. I think we have at MoD/31/8 some

media monitoring unit report. In the top right ones see it is the Government Information and

Communication Services header. Is this the standard kind of briefing you would be provided with every

day if you wanted?

A. It comes round every day just after 6 o'clock or thereabouts.

Q. One sees the fax timing at the top, May th, 6.10. We see it is the 6 o'clock edition. Looking at the

first paragraph, the subject index is "WMDs - TB", one assumes is Tony Blair. One has the 5 o'clock

BBC broadcast; whether they are radio or television, I simply do not know. If we look at the next

paragraph, this is a collection or summary of not literally headlines but head quotations or head themes

being taken in the newspapers on the 29th?

A. Yes.

Q. And this is prepared before Andrew Gilligan's broadcast. One can see here: "Blown apart, the case

for war -- TB stands accused of misleading Parliament and the people over Saddam's WMDs and

claims that threat justified war." Then there is a quotation from Robin Cook who says that: "Rumsfeld

statement 'breathtaking' and 'blows and enormous gaping hole in the case for war'." Then we have:

"[Labour] rebels include Kilfoyle, threaten to report TB for misleading Parliament." After a reference to

Keetch there is a reference to the war of lies and TB accused of joining a war based on lies. Moving

down to the WMDs US, which is the next heading, we see a similar sort of set of excerpts, starting with

"We've been conned". It is right, is it not, that by the time we get to these briefings there have been

allegations of misleading of Parliament and the people?

A. There have been allegations but there has not been a specific 45 minutes allegation put to anybody.

Q. But the allegations that Parliament has been misled, that the people have been misled, have been

made?

A. Presumably they were in the first editions of the newspapers.

Q. They had been made before, had they not? People had been calling for an inquiry back in April.

A. Certainly there had been lots of coverage. I could not tell you which pieces appeared when.

Q. So that is all part of the Minister's briefing. The Minister is briefed about the WMD issue and the

September dossier?

A. Hmm, hmm.

Q. We have not seen anything that has come over from No. 10 specifically about that. Do you know

whether there was anything other than the note?

A. No, it was faxed with the extracts from the Prime Minister's press conference.

Q. That is all that there is. There is nothing that comes over the following morning?

A. No. There was -- you have, I think, a copy of a note that Richard took.

Q. The manuscript note that you referred to with Mr Dingemans which I will not go back to, but there

was nothing, as far as you know --

A. There was nothing that came over on the fax at this time.

Q. Of course, it is easy to look at these things with hindsight, but we have a conversation which now is

assuming importance, which nobody has any notes of at all. At the time you heard, you had this

conversation, it was not really of any significance to you, not any particular significance to you?

A. Not hugely, no.

Q. I think you mentioned that you heard the broadcast the next day?

A. I heard the Adam Ingram interview, yes.

Q. And having heard it, your concern is one that it was a hostile interview?

A. My primary concern was that it was hostile. We had got a briefing from No. 10 just before Adam

Ingram had done the interview. So he was prepared for it the next morning. But that does not mean he

checked the story with us, because he did not.

Q. But your concern is, having heard the -- I think anybody who has heard it will agree that it is at least

robust and it is a very forceful piece of radio, one might say a heated debate. In your view that was

hostile. I think you said you thought about complaining about that; but you learn that Downing Street

are making a complaint?

A. Hmm, hmm.

Q. Did you see that letter before it went?

A. No. I was not involved from that point on.

Q. But from the minute they say they are making a complaint, you are not going to make any kind of

separate complaint of ambush or of any kind?

A. No.

Q. Mr Gilligan's recollection is that he spoke to you the next day.

A. Not that I remember, no.

Q. He was working on a story not to do with this at all but a story to do, in fact, about the Congo and

the movement of British troops.

A. I certainly spoke to him about the Congo at some point. It might have been the next day, I do not

recall. Again, it was quite a brief conversation I think.

Q. You have a memory of a conversation along those lines?

A. I do, yes.

Q. You could not say when it was?

A. I could not say for certain, no.

Q. You would be unlikely to have a note about it?

A. If he was asking me for information that I did not have already then I would have a note and I can go

and check.

Q. It may be a long shot, but if there is a note on the 29th. Certainly you do not make any complaints to

him about the story?

A. I may have had a moan, I cannot remember.

LORD HUTTON: Sorry, about what story?

MS ROGERS: My Lord, what had been broadcast on the 29th.

LORD HUTTON: Yes, I see. Thank you.

MS ROGERS: We have already heard from Pam Teare there are no further statements issued by the

MoD that day about this issue.

A. No, it was not our story so we did not pursue it. No. 10 did that.

Q. So it is right, is it not, that the first time you are asked about your conversation with Mr Gilligan is

28th June?

A. Hmm, hmm.

Q. And by that time things have moved on?

A. Hmm, hmm.

Q. Because we have had Mr Campbell giving his evidence to the FAC, and there has been the

exchange of correspondence which has been publicised, and so on. The 28th June is a Saturday. Are

you at home?

A. Yes.

Q. You do not hear the Ben Bradshaw interview?

A. No.

Q. So the first thing you know about anything that has been said is the call from the No. 10 press

office?

A. Yes.

Q. Do you remember who called you?

A. I cannot remember. It was either Martin Sheahan or Ben Wilson, whoever was on duty, I cannot

remember.

Q. When they call you, they are sure that they were not told anything about this story?

A. Yes.

Q. You had not had to think about your conversation with Mr Gilligan for a month?

A. Hmm, hmm.

Q. You have described your recollection as "clear". How clear was it, having not thought about it for a

month?

A. I mean, my recollection is extremely clear but the thing I recollect most strongly is Andrew Gilligan

saying it was not an issue for the MoD.

Q. But Mr Gilligan's recollection is that he rings you, not about somebody else's story but about his

own story, and that he outlines that he has a source who says the dossier is exaggerated.

A. Well, when we first complained to Richard Sambrook, Richard Sambrook's response said that

Andrew Gilligan acknowledged that he had spoken to me about cluster bombs but felt he had added

something on the end. I am very clear that he spoke to me about cluster bombs; and I am very clear

that he only asked me about the WMD accusation when I asked him if he had anything running. He did

not tell me what the accusation was.

Q. He does mention that there is a WMD story?

A. Yes. I have always been clear. He said he was working on something on WMD and the dodgy

dossier.

Q. And you do not ask him any questions about it?

A. He said specifically it was not a matter for MoD, and I agreed with him.

Q. In terms of referring to a dossier, I think you accept that there is a reference to a dossier which you

took to be a reference to the February dossier?

A. Yes.

Q. There is certainly a reference to a dossier.

A. Hmm, hmm.

Q. And to a dossier being exaggerated?

A. No, just to the dodgy dossier.

LORD HUTTON: You think Mr Gilligan referred to the dodgy dossier? Did he use the word "dodgy"?

A. Yes, I think he did.

MS ROGERS: You think he did?

A. No, I am clear he did.

Q. In terms of the intelligence community being unhappy with the dossier, you think he did not mention

that at all?

A. No, I am clear. You have seen the briefing that we did get. If Andrew had mentioned exactly what the

allegations were, when we spoke to No. 10 we would have told them. We would have had the denial

the night before and it would all have been perfectly straightforward. The only reason why I would not

have mentioned it to No. 10 is because I would not have known about it.

Q. You are, in a sense, working backwards that No. 10 was not told, therefore you cannot have been

told because if you had been told you would have mentioned it?

A. No, I am working forwards. I am very clear that when I spoke to Andrew Gilligan the conversation

was about cluster bombs. At the end of the conversation I asked him, he did not volunteer to me, that

he was working on something on WMD and the dodgy dossier but he said it was not a matter for MoD.

So I do not see how that can be classified as checking the story with MoD.

Q. Leaving aside whether it is checking the story with MoD. Speaking about a dossier being

exaggerated and referring to the 45 minutes intelligence --

A. He did not mention that.

Q. And he did not mention any unhappiness with the intelligence community, so far as you recall?

A. No. He said WMD and the dodgy dossier. He mentioned it in passing, because that was not what

the conversation was all about.

Q. Do you think that it would have been better to have made a note of this conversation at the time?

A. No. I wish I had, but it is not my normal practice. If I had known that it would be claimed that he had

checked the story then obviously I wish I had, and I wish I had recorded the conversation, but it was

not my normal practice to do that.

Q. And in terms of the circumstances in which you are first asked about it a month later, you are

approaching it on the basis of a call from Downing Street press office?

A. Well, I had two calls. I had one call from Downing Street to tell me that Ben Bradshaw had -- you

know, had done the interview and this is what John Humphrys had said. I had a second call from the

duty press officer saying they had had a panicky call from Andrew.

Q. You do not speak to Andrew on 28th June?

A. No.

Q. Andrew Gilligan calls on the 28th having heard Ben Bradshaw.

A. Calls the duty press officer, not me.

Q. No, because you are at home. He calls into the office essentially to remind them there was a phone

call from him on the 28th.

A. Well, he said: I am calling to record or to note the fact that I spoke to Kate and that is what I said;

although they did not realise -- they did not know what he was talking about.

Q. Is there a note of that call?

A. Yes, there is a note on the duty log.

Q. It is simply that we have not seen that.

A. It has gone forward.

Q. Oh, has it? Perhaps it will filter through eventually. In terms of what you then do, is it not right that

you then focus on your call with Andrew Gilligan rather than other calls that were made on the th?

A. No. What I did was to ask Howard, who by then had taken over on duty, to go back to the log for the

night that Richard Whalley was on, the 28th, and make sure there were not any other calls logged.

Then I called Richard on his mobile to make sure they had not had any other calls, and they had not.

Q. If we go back to the log again, MoD/31/3, there is a call from Chris Howard, who is the producer, in

which he says: "Be prepared to answer some questions on WMD."

A. Hmm, hmm.

Q. So on any view there is a call from Today on the question of WMD.

A. But the allegation that we were looking at was whether or not Andrew Gilligan had checked his story.

That was not a call from Andrew Gilligan.

Q. No, but in terms of whether there has been contact from the Today Programme as well as Andrew

Gilligan?

A. Hmm. We did not say there had not. We just said that Andrew Gilligan had not called us to check his

story. Do not forget, the Today Programme put out a statement that day as well, and it was specific that

Andrew had checked the story with me.

Q. So the focus in terms of the story is Andrew Gilligan, not the Today Programme?

A. Sorry, could you say that again?

Q. The focus of the press statement is Andrew Gilligan, contact from Andrew Gilligan, not contact from

the Today Programme?

A. Hmm, hmm.

Q. So when you produce your note, which becomes a press statement issued by Mr Hoon --

A. Yes.

Q. -- which I think we have at BBC/5/144, there is no reference there to other calls being made by the

Today Programme.

A. No, but the reason it was phrased in the way that it was was because Andrew had already called us

to say that he regarded the relevant call as being the one with me. I had asked for the log to be

checked and as we have seen the log just said that Chris said be prepared to take two minutes on the

end of it. That was not checking the story either.

Q. Andrew had called about his call to you?

A. Hmm.

Q. But there had been a call from the Today office?

A. There had been a call which was simply to say: yes, we will do two minutes on WMD at the end of

the interview. But it was not checking the content of the piece.

Q. And you did not ask any questions of Andrew Gilligan about what that story might be?

A. Sorry, I was not there on the --

Q. When you spoke to Andrew Gilligan, you did not ask him any questions about what the story might

be?

A. The WMD story?

Q. Yes.

A. No. I mean, he had said specifically that it was not a matter for MoD. MS ROGERS: Thanks, Ms

Wilson.

LORD HUTTON: Thank you very much. Mr Lloyd-Jones, are there any questions really by way of re-

examination?

MR LLOYD-JONES: My Lord, no, thank you.

LORD HUTTON: Ms Wilson, your evidence is that in your conversation on the telephone with Mr

Gilligan on the evening of 28th May he did say that he is working on a story about WMD and the dodgy

dossier.

A. Yes.

LORD HUTTON: Do I understand your evidence to be that he did not volunteer that, he said that in

reply to a question from you; is that right?

A. Yes. I asked if he was working on anything else for the programme.

LORD HUTTON: Yes. So therefore it was not, as it were, that he rang up and said, "I want to have a

report on cluster bombs" and then added, "and also there will be a report on WMD"?

A. No, that is not right.

LORD HUTTON: I see. Yes. Coming on to another matter, you said that you rang Dr Kelly and spoke to

him on the evening of Tuesday 8th July and in the course of that conversation you said to him that he

should think about looking for or going to other alternative accommodation.

A. Yes, my Lord.

LORD HUTTON: The implication being that if his name came out, that is something he should think

about or do.

A. Yes.

LORD HUTTON: We have heard evidence from Mrs Kelly that on the next evening he said to her that he

could not believe that the MoD would release his name to the press. Have you any comment on that

piece of evidence from Mrs Kelly, in the light of what you say was your conversation with Dr Kelly on

the previous evening?

A. I mean, the only thing I could say is that, I mean, the conversation I had with him was extremely brief

but it was implicit in the conversation that it was extremely likely his name would come out, and

probably quite soon.

LORD HUTTON: Yes, I see. Yes. Very well. Thank you very much indeed, Ms Wilson. That concludes

the evidence for today?

MR DINGEMANS: My Lord, yes.

LORD HUTTON: Very well. I will sit again tomorrow at 10.30.

4.30 pm, hearing adjourned until 10.30am the following day