I was ambushed by a hanging jury, claims BBC man

The row between Labour and the BBC descended into a personal dispute last night after MPs branded the reporter Andrew Gilligan an "unsatisfactory witness".

The Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs accused him of "changing his mind" about a claim that Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's director of communications, "sexed up" the Government's dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction published in September to include a reference to Iraq's "45-minute" capability. The criticism sparked a furious response from the BBC which said it was sticking to its story.

In a move which could lead to a fundamental collision between Parliament and the media, the committee last night rushed out a report urging that witnesses, who use Parliamentary privilege to make an allegation against a third party, should be required to name their sources.

The committee's report concluded: "It is unsatisfactory that a witness who enjoys the full protection of Parliamentary privilege should be free to make an allegation against a third party, however serious, without revealing the source for that allegation.

"We invite the House to consider this matter, and to offer guidance to its committees and to their witnesses."

Parliamentary privilege provides protection against libel and covers both Houses of Parliament and its committees.

In a private evidence session before the committee yesterday, Mr Gilligan again refused to reveal his source, and exactly when the meeting with the source had taken place. He has repeatedly insisted he will never name his source.

The committee acknowledged that although it was central to journalists' work that the identity of sources must be protected, witnesses before parliamentary committees were bound to answer all questions put to them, whatever their professional code.

The report said: "Mr Gilligan has refused to answer, in writing, or in private oral evidence, the question put to him by our chairman: on what date, and at what time, did the meeting with this source take place?

"He also refused to disclose any further information about his source over and above that given in oral evidence on 19 June. He bases his refusal to discuss any detail about his contacts with his source on what he calls 'a necessary principle of free journalism'.

"We accept that journalists regard the maintenance of this principle as being fundamental to their ability to carry out their work.

"However any witness - including a journalist - is free under the cover of Parliamentary privilege to make an allegation before a select committee about a third party, who then has no recourse to a legal remedy."

Mr Gilligan was the first journalist in modern times to refuse to reveal a source which formed the basis for an allegation made in evidence before a committee, the report said.

Mr Gilligan accused the committee of carrying out "a planned ambush by a hanging jury". He said: "The committee was absolutely determined to find fault with my story. They did not do so. I defended my journalism with vigour. I am very shocked at the way this inquiry has now been turned and perverted into part of the Alastair Campbell witch-hunt against me."

The row reignited the bitter dispute between the BBC and Downing Street over claims that the Government exaggerated the case against Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

Donald Anderson, the committee's chairman, said: "In the view of the committee this was an unsatisfactory session with an unsatis- factory witness.

"Mr Gilligan clearly changed his mind during the course of his evidence, in particular in relation to serious allegations concerning Mr Campbell, and any responsibility of Mr Campbell for the insertion of '45 minutes' into the dossier of 24 September of last year."

Mr Anderson said he was taking the highly unusual step of publishing the full transcript of Mr Gilligan's private evidence, within the next seven days, to allow the press and the public to make up their own minds.

Mr Gilligan said he had asked for the transcript to be published to put the record straight, claiming that Mr Anderson had "deliberately misinterpreted" his evidence. He said: "I have not changed my story. I told the committee several times over that I stand by my reporting of every one of the source's allegations."

The BBC highlighted the fact that two Tory members of the committee, John Maples and Richard Ottaway, did not attend the meeting, while the committee's only Liberal Democrat member, David Chidgey, left early. That left a Labour majority with a solitary Tory, Sir John Stanley.

Mark Damazer, the BBC's deputy director of news, who accompanied Mr Gilligan to the hearing, said the reporter had repeatedly insisted that he was not backtracking. He said the MPs questioned Mr Gilligan in an "unremittingly hostile" atmosphere.

Mr Gilligan was recalled to the committee after David Kelly, a senior Ministry of Defence adviser, denied being the source of his report on BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the September dossier had been "sexed up".