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Kelly family blame Government
By Hugh Dougherty Home Affairs Correspondent, Evening Standard Last updated at 00:00am on 29.01.04David Kelly's family fought to the bitter end to have the Government accept some blame for his death, it was revealed today.
Only weeks before Lord Hutton published his report, the family sent him a devastating indictment of key government evidence.
And they urged him to conclude that officials and spin doctor Alastair Campbell were to blame for their treatment of the weapons expert.
In a 73-page submission to the judge only published after his report was made public, the family urged him to discard evidence that he broke civil service rules by talking to BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan.
But Lord Hutton relied on the evidence to reach his key conclusion that the meeting was "unauthorised" and "in breach of the civil service code of procedure".
The devastating judgment meant that Dr Kelly, in the judge's view, was effectively the author of his own downfall.
The family argued that documents which purported to show that Dr Kelly was not allowed to speak to the media without authorisation were irrelevant - and many of them were not even in force.
The lawyers wrote: "The inquiry will note that the MoD has failed to point to a single, unambiguous, clearly expressed paragraph in any document that purports to have regulated Dr Kelly's contact with the media."
In the submission, the family slammed the quality of MoD personnel director Richard Hatfield's evidence. Lord Hutton made no such criticism.
The family's submission said: "He has relied on different documents at different stages of this inquiry to attempt to justify his suggestion that Dr Kelly was guilty of (in his words) 'a fundamental failing'."
The family said that a key part of the MoD evidence - a document which it claimed proved that Dr Kelly broke rules not to speak to the media without authorisation - flew in the face of the fact.
"These conditions were never applied to Dr Kelly's activities," they said. "Despite what the document says, no witness has given evidence to the inquiry that there was any expectation that Dr Kelly would have to seek consent from his line manager or that such consent had to be given in writing."
They added: "As to ... the Civil Service Code of Conduct, there is nothing in that document that gives any guidance to Dr Kelly in relation to his proper contact with the media, to whom he should have reported such contact and from whom he ought to have received authority."
In a devastating indictment of Mr Campbell's personal conduct, they urged Lord Hutton to find that the Government "made a conscious decision to cause Dr Kelly's identity to be revealed".
"It did so in order to assist it in its battle with the BBC," the family said.
They urged the judge to pay close attention to a crucial passage
