Campbell set to face Foreign Affairs Committee

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has confirmed that the Prime Minister's director of communications and strategy, Alistair Campbell, will appear before the Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) after all.

Mr Campbell had been invited to appear before the committee on Friday but that invitation had been refused on the grounds that it would set a "wider precedent".

However, Mr Straw wrote this morning to the Chairman of the FAC informing him of the change of decision. Mr Campbell as chairman of a cross-departmental communications committee, and as a key adviser to Mr Blair throughout his premiership, would have vital information on the issue.

The FAC is investigating the government's handling of intelligence information relating to Iraqi WMDs – and most particularly the government dossier that alleged Saddam's weapons could have been deployed to threaten British interests within 45 minutes of the order being given.

The 'dodgy dossier' has been rubbished by sources from within the intelligence establishment as containing "sexed up" speculation rather than accurate information.

In a briefing to lobby journalists today, the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman claimed that Mr Campbell had always wanted to give evidence, but that Downing Street had been worried about the problems of "setting a wider precedent".

However, the spokesperson pointed – on a number of occasions – to newspaper reports which contained "misinformation", "factual inaccuracies" and "false accusation" over the nature of Mr Campbell's role and members of his staff.

These reports, he said, had to be corrected and so Downing Street was prompted to think again about the precedence issue.

Liberal Dem leader Charles Kennedy welcomed the move, saying: "When I pressed the Prime Minister on this issue two weeks ago, he refused point blank for himself or Alistair Campbell to give evidence to the committee, saying that it would break convention for either of them to do so.

"I welcome this partial climb down, but the Prime Minister should now go further. If he is now prepared to drop convention in allowing Alistair Campbell to give evidence, what is stopping him from now appearing before the committee?"

Tory Shadow Foreign Minister Alan Duncan also slammed the idea that Alistair Campbell volunteered to give evidence as "pie in the sky".

Mr Duncan added: "He is being dragged to the committee within days of the Prime Minister saying there was no chance that he would appear.

“I am sure that the committee will have searching questions and the world will only believe what he says if we can compare and contrasts the original document presented to the government by the Joint Intelligence Committee with the one that was eventually published.

“It beggars belief that Alastair Campbell, the master of spin, would have broken the habit of a lifetime because we were on the verge of war with Iraq."

(GMcG)