Portrait of the Week - 23 August 2003

Documents presented to Lord Hutton’s inquiry into the events surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, the expert on Iraqi weapons, showed that Mr Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, overruled a recommendation from Sir Kevin Tebbit, the permanent undersecretary at the ministry, that Dr Kelly should not be required to appear before the Commons foreign affairs committee as well as its security and intelligence committee; ‘Presentationally, it would be difficult,’ wrote Mr Hoon’s private secretary, ‘to defend a position in which the government had objected to Dr Kelly appearing before a committee of the House which takes evidence in public.’ A document by Mr Jonathan Powell, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, noted that Mr Blair thought Dr Kelly ‘probably had to do both [committees] but need [sic] to be properly prepared beforehand’. Mr Alastair Campbell, the director of communications and strategy at the Prime Minister’s office, asked by the inquiry if he had any influence on the claim in the September dossier that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction could be made ready in 45 minutes, said, ‘I had no input, output, influence upon it whatever at any stage in the process.’ Mr John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, approved a centre for 750 asylum-seekers near Bicester, Oxfordshire. Four asylum-seekers were jailed for their part in a riot at Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre, Bedfordshire, which ended in it being burnt down and 12 detainees never being seen again; the GMB union said it was suing Group 4, the company in charge of the centre, on behalf of its members. Divers said they might have found the bowcastle of Henry VIII’s warship the Mary Rose, the dull timbers of which were raised from the mud of the Solent in 1982.