BBC stands by its man

The BBC today vowed to stand by its defence correspondent, Andrew Gilligan, despite the fact that he was branded an "unreliable witness" in the continuing and bitter row with Downing Street over Iraq.

The BBC's deputy director of news, Mark Damazer, dismissed the verdict, delivered yesterday by the Commons Foreign Affairs committee, as "absolutely unfair".

He denied the claim from the committee's chairman, Labour MP Donald Anderson, that Mr Gilligan had retreated from his original report alleging that Downing Street had "sexed up" last year's intelligence dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

And he went on: "The BBC stands by him with no reservations whatsoever."

Mr Gilligan came under attack after he faced two hours of crossexamination at an extraordinary closed session of the committee.

Mr Anderson emerged - with a senior Tory member of the committee, Sir John Stanley, standing alongside him - to accuse Mr Gilligan of changing his account in the course of his evidence, in particular on his critical claim about Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister's director of communications.

This was that Mr Campbell had inserted in the dossier a claim that Saddam Hussein could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.