Hutton saves the day one last time
by Rory Hodgson

The honourable Lord Hutton retires this week after clearing the Government of wrongdoing in the unfortunate death of outspoken weapons expert David Kelly and dealing a blow to the left wing lunacy of the BBC. However this is far from the first time he has achieved such a commendable feat.

Known as Baron Hutton of Bresagh to his republican friends in Ulster, he was instrumental in defending the army during the troubles. He played an invaluable role in the judicial cover up of the Bloody Sunday massacre which cleared British soldiers of murder. Then in 1978 he represented the British Government at the European Court of Human Rights after it was wrongly accused of abusing detainees in Northern Ireland. In thanks for his sterling work he rose to become Lord Chief Justice of Ulster in 1988.

More recently he was involved in overturning Lord Hoffman's decision to extradite General Pinochet to Spain on charges of war crimes. Hutton said that "public confidence in the integrity of the administration of justice would be shaken" if Hoffman's ruling to extradite Pinochet went ahead. Hoffman's conflict of interests involved ties with the shady human rights group Amnesty International.

Maintaining “public confidence in the integrity of the administration of justice” is a theme that runs through Hutton’s career. David Shayler, the would be MI5 whistle-blower, was stopped dead in his tracks with the help of Lord Hutton. Along with Lord Hobhouse of Woodborough and Lord Scott of Foscote, Hutton ruled that Shayler cannot disclose official secrets in the name of the “public Interest”.

And so he has once again come to the aid of the British establishment preforming another remarkable feat of balanced judgment. He has purged the Today programme of its defence correspondent and the BBC of its chairman and director general whilst absolving the MOD and government bodies.

This has paved the way for the new BBC chairman (Lord Ryder of Wensum), who was appointed by the Prime Minister last week, to knock some sense into the BBC and select Greg Dyke's replacement. Ryder has a distinguished journalistic career which includes being the Tory Party chief whip, secretary to the Treasury, and political secretary to Margaret Thatcher. David Attenborough, speaking out of place last week, accused Ryder of "grovelling" to ministers in his apology for the whole affair.

Greg Dyke's temporary replacement, Mark Byford, was former head of the World Service which receives most of its funding, about £250 million a year, directly from the Foreign Office. “we are going to learn from those mistakes and move forward", he told the BBC’s Newsnight programme on Friday.

To draw a line under the affair, which we are told is what we all must do, we should hope that, in future, powerful civil servants like Dr. Kelly will think hard about expressing their opinions and journalists and their management will think hard about reporting them.

And of course we wish the honourable Lord Hutton of Bresagh a long and peaceful retirement after his lifelong commitment to upholding the integrity the MOD and other state institutions.

Rory Hodgson