Thursday 19 May 2011

The Death of David Kelly - Item in the Evening Standard's Londoner's Diary today

The ripples from Sir Peter Tapsell's question about the "suicide or murder" of David Kelly at Prime Minister's Questions yesterday continue to reverberate round the Westminster village.

In today's Londoner's Diary in the Evening Standard there is the following piece: Kelly statement leaves Baker in a quandary.

I suspect that such items may be removed from the source web site in time, so I reproduce it below for the record.


How will transport minister Norman Baker be able to look the Prime Minister in the eye? Only yesterday David Cameron said he did not think a full inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly was needed, eight years after his body was found in a wood near his house in Oxfordshire. In 2007, Baker, the Lib-Dem MP for Lewes, published a book called The Strange Death of David Kelly, in which he concluded that Dr Kelly was murdered. Baker continues to believe this and has spoken frequently of the need for a full coroner’s inquest into the death because he says the public inquiry into it, chaired by Lord Hutton, had no proper investigatory powers. Some at Westminster are saying Baker is now facing a career-defining choice: serve in a government which is apparently happy to suppress the truth as he sees it, or quit. Which will it be? Last year he waxed indignant that Kelly’s name was barely mentioned during the Chilcot inquiry. “If we are to draw a line under the events of 2003, Chilcot needs to acknowledge that Lord Hutton was as useless in dealing with Dr Kelly’s death as he was with weapons of mass destruction, if not more so,” said Baker. “He should accept that Dr Kelly is entitled to the inquest he never had, and recommend that one should now take place.”When I asked Baker’s office for his response to the PM’s statement I was told he was unavailable for comment.


Copyright of the quote, of course, remains with the Evening Standard.

One might almost wonder if the Londoner's Diary had been pondering my post of 15th May: The Death of David Kelly - If Dominic Grieve says "No" to an inquest will Norman Baker resign?.

Perhaps it's simply that great minds think alike!

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