Portrait of the week | 7 February 2004

The government announced a committee of inquiry into the accuracy of the intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the war last year; it will be chaired by Lord Butler of Brockwell, the former Cabinet Secretary; the other members will be Mrs Ann Taylor, a Labour MP and chairman of the Commons intelligence and security committee (ISC); Mr Michael Mates, a Conservative MP and member of the ISC; Sir John Chilcot, the staff counsellor for the security and intelligence services; and Field Marshal Lord Inge, the former Chief of the Defence Staff. There will be no Liberal Democrat, since Mr Charles Kennedy, the party leader, decided not to support the inquiry. The inquiry followed the agreement by President George Bush of the United States to appoint an independent commission to inquire into pre-war intelligence on Iraq. All this came in the wake of the Hutton report, which first saw Mr Gavyn Davies resigning as chairman of the BBC; the governors then asking Mr Greg Dyke to go as director-general; and finally the resignation of Mr Andrew Gilligan, whose wireless report on the government dossier about Iraq set off a chain of events that included the suicide of Dr David Kelly. The new director-general will be appointed under the aegis of Dame Rennie Fritchie, the Commissioner for Public Appointments, working with three privy councillors from the main parties. Mr David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, proposed that suspected terrorists should be tried in secret before they carry out terrorist acts, without evidence being disclosed to them, and with the verdict being decided on the balance of probabilities. Four flights from Britain to America were cancelled for fear of attacks by al-Qa’eda. Labour named Mr Ken Livingstone as its next candidate for the mayor of London; he was expelled from the party in 2000 for standing against the Labour candidate.