Mr Campbell told the inquiry: “Pruce is a very good press officer, but this is him making contributions effectively above his pay grade.”Higher-paid figures had their own concerns, however. “It’s getting there, but it needs more work,” says Mr Pruce on 11 September. “Much of the evidence we have is largely circumstantial,” confesses one. That was not how he put it in a note after the meeting, however, which said: “Regarding the dossier, substantial rewrite.”This set off a process in which junior officials sent lengthy emails on the various drafts of the dossier, most of which Mr Campbell said he had not answered. When it was pointed out last week that there was no mention of it in a document considered by a meeting he chaired on 5 September, he answered that as far as he was concerned, the process only began when Mr Scarlett was brought in.

has been tightened,” Mr Scarlett replies, and the dossier made public on 24 September says: “Intelligence indicates that the Iraqi military are able to deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so.” Mr Campbell also told the FAC that the 45-minute claim was in the first draft of the dossier he saw. Mr Scarlett’s draft says: “The Iraqi military may be able to deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so.” Mr Campbell comments that “‘may’ is weaker than the document’s summary”, which says “could deploy” “The language you queried … None of them concerned the 45-minute allegation, but the Hutton inquiry has disclosed his original letter to the JIC chief, which asks for 15 changes – one of which is on precisely this point. In June Mr Campbell said in a letter to the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC), which was examining the decision to go to war in Iraq, that he asked Mr Scarlett to make 11 changes in the dossier. Last week’s evidence to the Hutton inquiry made clear that his efforts were being commented upon by a Downing Street chorus that included Tony Blair, Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff, and Alastair Campbell, his director of communications.The most controversial claim, mentioned four times in the dossier, was that Iraq could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes of the order being given.

It was decided that the Government would have to make public its secret intelligence on Iraq, and that the document should be written by John Scarlett, head of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). For all Saddam’s undoubted brutality, the only legal basis for war was that he had an arsenal of unconventional weapons ready for use on his neighbours and as far afield as Cyprus, where British forces are stationed. It has exposed a wealth of detail about the infinitely more important conflict in Iraq, and the way the Government went about persuading the British public it was justified in joining an unprovoked invasion to oust Saddam.The dossier was crucial in that campaign and provided the foundation for Britain’s efforts to raise international support for the invasion. Examining an email from Daniel Pruce, a member of the Downing Street communications team, he asked: “Is there not some force in the suggestion that the way Mr Pruce appears to be looking at this job is to build a case, a bit like building a prosecution case?”The inquiry was set up to examine the circumstances surrounding the apparent suicide of Dr David Kelly, the government scientist who found himself at the centre of a war between Downing St and the BBC. Any sexing up was done by a crowd.
“Was this dossier really building the case for going to war?” asked Peter Knox, junior counsel to the inquiry, on Wednesday. The evidence emerging at the Hutton inquiry over the last fortnight – including emails and documents never made public before – shows that the production of the dossier and the hardening of its language was a protracted affair, under the influence of many more minds than just Mr Campbell’s. Alastair Campbell is adamant he was not responsible for “sexing up” the dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and in a way he is right.