Monday 2 May 2011

The Death of David Kelly - Why conceal his contract of employment?

During the process of the Hutton Inquiry some aspects of David Kelly's life were laid bare to public scrutiny.

Surprisingly, one aspect of his life which was directly relevant to the circumstances surrounding his death was concealed from the public - that was the nature and contents of David Kelly's contract of employment.

Its concealment is surprising since the Kelly family gave explicit written permission for the contract of employment to be released to the Hutton Inquiry. See Fax of letter from Peter Jacobsen to Juliet Wheldon & annexures, 07/08/2003.

Yet, the Ministry of Defence withheld the contract of employment from the family. See page 59 of the final submission of the family's QC here: Written submissions of the family dated 7 and 16 October 2003:

As has been pointed out~ the family have not seen a document that purports to set out Dr Kelly's terms and conditions of employment.


Why was the contract of employment concealed?

What did the Ministry of Defence have to hide?

3 comments:

  1. But whom did Dr Kelly work for?
    At CAB/1/0016/7, Patrick Lamb writes:
    Around this time Dr Kelly was working more closely with MOD than FCO as he
    was due to deploy to Iraq as part ofthe UK component of the Iraq Survey Group,
    for which MODhas the policy lead. His travel and visits overseas were no longer
    authorised and paid for by FCO but were instead funded as part of Operation
    TELIC.



    "more closely???

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  2. Felix,

    Yes, the nature and scope of David Kelly's work is something which the Hutton Inquiry is noticeably silent about.

    I would be astonished if that silence proves to be by chance.

    The question that, for me, refuses to go away is just what it is about David Kelly's work that needs to be covered up.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Andrew

    worth revisiting comment # 1 here

    ReplyDelete