Blair government accused of cynical abuse of Kelly

The British government sustained a withering attack yesterday at the end of an inquiry into the suicide of an Iraq weapons expert which an opinion poll showed had severely damaged public trust in Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The family of David Kelly, who killed himself after being sucked into a feud between the government and the BBC over a disputed report on Iraq, accused the government of cynically using Dr Kelly as a pawn in its battle with the broadcaster and portrayed Defence Minister Geoff Hoon as a liar and a hypocrite.

Senior Judge Lord Hutton, chairing the inquiry, says no one will be immune from criticism in his final report, which will address doubts over Mr Blair's case for the Iraq war, questions over the government's treatment of Dr Kelly and over BBC reporting.

The Kelly inquiry and the failure to find banned weapons in Iraq - the primary motive Mr Blair gave for war - has plunged him into the worst political crisis of his six-year tenure.

The latest sounding in The Guardian newspaper showed Mr Blair's ratings have slumped over the summer so that now 61 per cent of voters are unhappy with the job he is doing.

Jeremy Gompertz, counsel for the inquiry, accused the government of seeking Dr Kelly's exposure as the source of the BBC report in a bid to discredit the accusation that it "sexed up" the case for war in Iraq.

Such a strategy "was a cynical abuse of power which deserves the strongest possible condemnation," Gompertz added.

He described government denials that it had sought to exploit Dr Kelly as hypocrisy and singled out Mr Hoon, who is widely expected to lose his job after the inquiry, for stinging criticism.

Mr Hoon, who told the inquiry of his concern to protect Dr Kelly, had in fact strongly supported efforts to expose him, Gompertz said. "The Secretary of State's denials of the government's strategy, put to him in cross-examination, were false".

Government lawyer Jonathan Sumption denied the charges. "The government is not and never has been engaged in a crusade against the BBC. Nor are any of the ministers or officials," he said in closing remarks which also sharply criticised the public broadcaster.

Lord Hutton's inquiry has spent two months putting Mr Blair's government, intelligence services and the BBC under the spotlight. His final report is not expected before November but the political fallout from his inquiry is already being felt.

Last week Mr Blair's ruling Labour Party lost a normally safe parliamentary seat in a by-election where disaffected voters deserted Labour in droves. Thursday's opinion poll in The Guardian newspaper showed Mr Blair's rating for trustworthiness has fallen nine points since July to just 30 per cent.

An overwhelming 70 per cent say he is far too concerned with public relations and "spin doctoring".

His troubles over Iraq mounted after a senior US official said on Wednesday that an initial report from inspectors searching for weapons in Iraq is expected to say they have found no proof of actual arms but merely "documentary evidence" that Iraq had biological weapons programmes.

Under fire over the failure to find banned weapons in Iraq, Mr Blair has told his critics to wait for the report by the Iraq Survey Group, led by weapons inspector David Kay.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told BBC radio he had only seen extracts from the report, but he stressed that it was a "work in progress" by the survey group.

Lord Hutton's inquiry has dug deep into the process behind the compilation of the dossier and revealed that a number of British intelligence officers were unhappy with the way intelligence was presented in the September 2002 dossier.