No censure for PM

Joe Murphy @JoeMurphyLondon|Evening Standard Political Editor

13 April 2012

Tony Blair faced severe embarrassment but "no silver bullet" today with the Butler report delivering stinging criticisms of intelligence chiefs, the Downing Street dossier on Iraqi weapons and the infamous 45-minute claim.

Lord Butler's inquiry into intelligence failures was expected to criticise Downing Street for sloppy management but contain no personal censure of the Prime Minister or his close aides severe enough to force resignations.

Mr Blair was due to face MPs this afternoon, an hour after the report's publication, amid speculation that he would admit mistakes were made.

Among Lord Butler's findings were expected to be:

A recommendation that intelligence chiefs should never again be ordered to produce a dossier like the September 2002 document that said Iraq had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction.
Criticism of Joint Intelligence Committee chairman John Scarlett, who took charge of the dossier and failed to ensure it fully reflected the intelligence picture. But in an unusual move, the inquiry will urge that the spy chief - named by Mr Blair as the next head of MI6 - should not have to resign.
A demolition of the controversial claim that Saddam had chemical weapons on 45-minute standby for deployment, saying it should have been left out or heavily qualified.
Criticism of dossier claims that were presented as near certainties when the intelligence about Iraq was patchy and covered with caveats that were left out of the document.
That Mr Blair's informal management style could have encouraged mistakes. Key meetings were not recorded in official minutes and decisions were taken with little consultation of the Cabinet.

There were no signs of panic at No 10 after an advance copy of the report was handed in yesterday. Opposition leaders were arriving at the Cabinet office at 6am to preview the report's contents. Tory leader Michael Howard said: "This is a very important report looking into very important issues. I look forward to reading it."

Charles Kennedy said the findings would shed light on the motives for a "quite unnecessary war".

In his Commons statement, Mr Blair was expected to come out fighting and insist he was right to help topple Saddam.

He will say military action was justified and lawful because of Iraq's flouting of United Nations resolutions and that the Iraqi people have a better future with the move to democracy.

Mr Blair was also said to be ready to acknowledge faults in his

management style but say that procedures in Government have since been tightened and lessons learned.

The conclusion that Saddam did, after all, plan to obtain WMD will be a strong card for the Prime Minister to use against critics of the war - although it is far short of his claim before the war that Iraq "has stockpiles of major amounts of chemical and biological weapons".

Controversy over the dossiers has raged since the war ended and inspectors failed to find weapons or WMD factories that British and American intelligence claimed to have pinpointed. Allegations made by the BBC that Downing Street improperly pressured intelligence chiefs to "sex up" the dossier or exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam-will not be supported by the Butler findings.

"The Prime Minister will be cleared of misusing intelligence," a senior Whitehall source was reported to have said.

It was believed, however, that the inquiry would recommend that the JIC be chaired by a figure nearing retirement, to avoid any suspicion the chairman might be influenced by promotion prospects.

That will be seen as a clear suggestion that Mr Scarlett - described as "a mate" by Alastair Campbell - was too eager to please Downing Street. Left-wing Labour MPs today targeted Mr Scarlett, saying his appointment to MI6 should be halted. Two backbenchers put down a Commons motion criticising Mr Blair for making the appointment before Lord Butler finished his inquiry. "It seems very strange that he should be promoted in the middle of the inquiry," said Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn.

The Butler report comes days after the CIA was severely rebuked by a US senate committee for a "collective failure" that exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam.

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