Butler Inquiry

Former Cabinet Secretary, Lord Butler will head the five-member committee which includes senior parlimentarians Ann Taylor (Labour Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee) and Michael Mates (a long serving Conservative member of the ISC), former Chief of Defence Intelligence, Lord Inge and former Senior Civil Servant, Sir John Chilcott.

It appears that the Butler Inquiry's remit will not extend to an examination of the political decision making process. Ministers believe that any question of wrongdoing on their part has been dealt with by the Hutton Inquiry which reported on January 28 2004 - Tony Blair said: "The issue of good faith was determined by the Hutton Inquiry". However, the Hutton Inquiry's terms of reference were limited to the circumstances leading to the death of Dr David Kelly. In the course of his investigations Lord Hutton cleared the Government of deliberately inserting false intelligence into their published dossier on Iraqi WMD. But the Hutton Report left the wider questions about the Government's propriety in its handling of intelligence unanswered. For instance, questions remain regarding the possibility that the Government and Intelligence Services "cherry-picked" intelligence that tended to support the case for war, and that the public presentation of this intelligence was misleading:

• Evidence to the Hutton Inquiry indicated that changes to the wording of the September Dossier suggested by the Prime Minister's staff contributed to the misleading impression that Iraq was capable of launching Weapons of Mass Destruction at targets beyond its borders within 45 minutes of an order being given. The ISC were critical of the impression created by the wording of the dossier:

"The 45 minutes claim, included four times, was always likely to attract attention because it was arresting detail that the public had not seen before. As the 45 minutes claim was new to its readers, the context of the intelligence and any assessment needed to be explained. The fact that it was assessed to refer to battlefield chemical and biological munitions and their movement on the battlefield, not to any other form of chemical or biological attack, should have been highlighted in the dossier. The omission of the context and assessment allowed speculation as to its exact meaning. This was unhelpful to an understanding of this issue."

• Tony Blair was advised by the intelligence services in February 2003 that military action against Iraq could increase the risk of WMD falling into the hands of terrorists. This advice, (unlike the 45 minute claim) was not shared with the public or other politicians before the invasion. Blair told the ISC that he judged (contrary to his intelligence advisors) that the threat posed by proliferation from Saddam's regime outweighed this danger stating:

"This is where you've just got to make your judgement about this. But this is my judgement and it remains my judgement and I suppose time will tell whether it’s true or it’s not true."

Whether or not such issues are investigated by the Butler Inquiry will be a test of its independence from the Government that both appointed it and set its terms of reference.

Because the role of politicians has been excluded from the Inquiry's remit, the Liberal Democrats have opted not to take part (senior Lib Dem MP Alan Beith was to have been the sixth member of the panel). Explaining their position Foreign Affairs spokesman Sir Menzies Campbell asked the prime minister:

"Don't you understand ... that following the public response to the Hutton report that an inquiry that excludes politicians from scrutiny is unlikely to command public confidence..."

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