The Hutton Report has just concluded with a completely one-sided criticism of the BBC and completely whitewashed the Blair Government, his Ministry of Defence as well as his spin doctor Alistair Campbell. Lord Hutton, law lord and former chief justice was appointed to head the inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly, a Ministry of Defence biological weapons expert.

Before governments, including our own, gloat over this unbelievable castigation of the independent media, let us examine the circumstances surrounding the case and see if there are lessons for us who aspire to a better and democratic society.

Too narrow terms of reference

Although much of the evidence he heard over the months of the inquiry related to the events leading to the Iraq war, especially whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, Lord Hutton concluded that "a question of such import, which would involve the consideration of a wide range of evidence, is not one which falls within my terms of reference."

Even the issue of reliability of the intelligence in the government's dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction was ignored. He chose instead to confine himself to the narrow remit of whether the BBC journalist Andrew Gillingan's claim that the British government had tampered with intelligence to strengthen the case for war was false.

Thus the first lesson we must draw from the Hutton Inquiry is that the terms of reference of any public inquiry must be seen to be adequately defined and not narrowly confined to merely meet the standards of proof applied in criminal cases. In this case, Lord Hutton was only interested in one narrow question: Did the British Government tamper with the intelligence dossier? He then proceeded to give ministers and government officials the benefit of the doubt while denying this to the BBC.

Questions unanswered

Judges like Lord Hutton are neat to a fault! To be consistent with his final conclusion finding the British Government faultless and the BBC defective, he chose to ignore the evidence of another BBC science correspondent Susan Watts, whose taped conversation with Dr Kelly corroborates much of Gillingan's report.

He did not find inconsistent the evidence of Sir Kevin Tebbit of the Ministry of Defence that the decision to issue a press statement was taken at a meeting at Downing Street chaired by the prime minister, and Mr Blair's denial that he had anything to do with the revelation of Dr Kelly's identity.

He cleared the government of having "sexed up" the dossier. He maintained this slang expression could mean either the government had used "false or unreliable" intelligence to embellish the dossier, or that the government had drafted the document in such a way as to make the case for war against Saddam as strong as possible. His conclusion was that the government was not guilty of the first interpretation but then there is no criticism of the government for doing the latter.

Lord Hutton also ignores the evidence by John Scarlett, the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee who drew up the dossier, that the "45 minutes" (for Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction to reach the West) related to battlefield weapons and not to long-range weapons, as was widely assumed. The judge maintained that this distinction "does not fall within my terms of reference". Mortals like us can see that this distinction is crucial to the BBC case that the threat from Saddam Hussein was not as critical as the dossier had made out.

Likewise, he does not pursue the criticism by another senior official in the defence intelligence staff, Dr Brian Jones of the way the 45 minute claim was described in the weapons dossier. The government had denied there was any dissent from within the intelligence staff.

Then, regarding the outing of Dr Kelly, the question of who, if not Downing Street actually leaked details of David Kelly to the Times before his identity became public and which led him to take his own life, is not explored in the Hutton report. The inquiry was privy to extracts from the diary of Blair's spin doctor Alistair Campbell in which he had written that it would "f@#$ Gillingan" if Dr Kelly turned out to be his mole. Also in the diary of Campbell is a reference made to Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon for a "plea bargain" with Kelly. It is remarkable that Lord Hutton did not find these Campbell's jottings to be very telling in the outing of Dr Kelly's name in the press.

In its submission to the Inquiry, the family of Dr Kelly had argued that the government wanted Kelly's name out as part of its battle against the BBC:

"Alastair Campbell's diary reveals that it was his desire and the desire of others, including the secretary of state for defence, that the fact and identity of the source should be made public."

Lord Hutton also criticizes Dr Kelly for having an unauthorized liaison with journalists saying he had broken the civil service code. In fact, the government gave evidence that it was part of Kelly's remit to brief journalists and that he had told the Foreign Office what he was doing.

A one judge public inquiry?

Thus, the next time there is a public controversy and we reach for a quick fix "public inquiry", let us ensure that there is a fair composition of members to make such an inquiry believable and that the "truth" is not beholden to one judge.

Putting our trust in one man, albeit a judge, to reach a conclusive truth has not been borne out by past cases. There was the Profumo Affair in 1963 when Lord Denning concluded that "people of much eminence could not possibly have misbehaved". Then there was the Bloody Sunday inquiry when Lord Widgery whitewashed the killing of civil rights protesters by British troops in 1969.

Why should one judge carry so much mystique and credibility that we are prepared to relegate all judgement to him? What is his map of the world that distinguishes him from mere mortals like us? Is he likely to be a conservative "establishment man" who believes in the "innate goodness of the government" or is he going to be more progressive and defend the media's freedom to publish opinions of legitimate public interest?

That is ultimately the lesson to learn from the Hutton Inquiry. This is by no means an attempt to gloss over the oversight by the editorial management of the BBC regarding the veracity of Andrew Gillingan's report. Rather, the British public and concerned peoples the world over expected the public inquiry to unravel the circumstances surrounding the death of an honourable public servant and the truth of the British government's claim that Saddam Hussein could launch his weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes.

Surely it is time the British government called a proper inquiry into how they got it wrong about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and led the country into the Iraq war.

Dr KUA KIA SOONG is director of the human rights group Suara Rakyat Malaysia (Suaram) and a former opposition member of parliament.