BBC dossier pleads case for Dyke

New documents today revealed how the BBC wriggled to the very end to deflect Lord Hutton from castigating its senior management.

Lawyers for the corporation sent a 70-page dossier in an attempt to save director-general Greg Dyke and its governors from severe criticism.

They argued that Mr Dyke, the BBC's editor-in-chief, was blameless for the "defective" system of checks which failed to expose the mistakes made by reporter Andrew Gilligan.

Mr Dyke, they argued, had a long list of extra responsibilities, from " motivating staff " to handling budgets and could not have been expected to check Mr Gilligan's story which alleged that the Government inserted bogus material into the Iraq dossier.

Although editors traditionally accepted responsibility for their journalists' shortcomings, that did not mean Mr Dyke "could or should" have had any clue about the inaccuracies in the story.

The BBC submission said its governors did not have "direct management responsibility" although they did take "ultimate responsibility for the BBC in everything it does".

And it argued, astonishingly, that the governors were never asked to treat the deluge of demands for an apology made by Alastair Campbell or the Government as "a formal complaint".

Meanwhile, in a separate legal submission, Gilligan attempted to claim that reporters should be allowed "a margin of error" to make mistakes.

His 47-page document argued it was unfair to focus on his errors alone. "Particular words and phrases should not be picked out from a transcript for detailed forensic examination that distorts the effect of the words at the time."

The documents, which were kept secret during the inquiry, were published for the first time today. They were revealed as the BBC governors went into a crisis meeting following the resignation of chairman Gavyn Davies - with more resignations predicted.

The fear at the corporation was that the Government will use the findings to justify sweeping reforms during talks under way on the renewal of the BBC charter, which has left management structures virtually unchanged since it was formed in 1922.

The Government, meanwhile, was beginning to look for a new chairman to replace Mr Davies - amid signals that it wants a figure willing to make drastic changes at the corporation.