Letters • February 15 2004

How much evidence did the noble lord ignore?

Helen Caruana Galizia

I refer to your editorial MaltaToday 1 Feb entitled ‘The Hutton whitewash and lessons to be learned.’
While you are right in one respect - that of the time honoured practice of accepting the referee's verdict, it is considerably more complex where the BBC and Lord Hutton's report is concerned. The BBC's own legal advisers advised that there were about twelve areas on which Lord Hutton's verdict on the BBC could have been challenged. The governors chose to disregard their legal advisers and Greg Dyke was virtually forced out of office. The unofficial jury (ie members of the British public) who read the report - or who were present in the court) found it hard to believe how much of the evidence presented was disregarded by the noble Lord. Of course the Prime Minister appointed Lord Hutton and defined the terms of reference, in the same way as the terms of reference -narrow - of the forthcoming Butler Inquiry have been defined. There is a growing movement of people demanding a full, open and independent inquiry.