Committee divided on verdict of innocence and one of 'case not proven' verdict

Within the narrow remit the Foreign Affairs Select Committee set itself, it has done a creditable job. It has made some well-justified, if widely predicted, criticisms of the Government - for example in its handling of the second "dodgy dossier". It has made some sensible recommendations on the mechanics of dealing with intelligence material. It has demanded answers to some pertinent questions of detail. It has exposed some of Alastair Campbell's influence and modus operandi to the light of day.

It has also helped to start defusing one of those short-term crises to which British politics is especially prone. Before Donald Anderson, the chairman, cast his vote in the Government's favour - and he did not do so on every issue - the Committee divided on Mr Campbell's role over the "45 minute" threat in the September dossier. But it divided not between innocence and guilt but between innocence and the equivalent of the "not-proven" verdict in Scottish law. This is a clear result for Mr Campbell.

At the same time, the row with the BBC, which seemed to be all consuming, looks deadlocked. Mr Campbell's barnstorming performance at the Select Committee strengthened the Government's hand in this conflict. But it was a mistake to widen his attack into one of "a disproportionate focus" to anti-war dissent. Whatever criticisms can be made of the approach to politics in parts of the BBC - and there are some that the Corporation should be thinking about anyway - the BBC has been right to fight off a generalised attack on the independence for which it is rightly prized. There are tentative signs that the Government is belatedly realising this.

What the Committee hasn't pretended to disentangle is some of the larger questions about the decision to go to war, in particular when and on what conditions such support was promised to President George Bush. Even on the narrow question of intelligence there may be more to say. In evidence to the committee, Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, a former Joint Intelligence Committee chairman and a current Governor of the BBC, pointed out that in cases where a modern democracy is engaged in fighting a hidden enemy, the public - including the families of those being sent to risk their lives - rightly require evidence of a casus belli. But she added: "Clearly there is a very fine line between showing the evidence and making a case. It is where showing the evidence turns into making the case where the system has to take a very, very strong grip on itself."

There had certainly been disquiet within the intelligence services about using secret material in this way at all, even if sources could be protected. This was first because of the constant danger that it will sooner or later be used for "making the case" in a propagandist way, and secondly because it would be picked over with varying degrees of scepticism. Were the chairman of the JIC John Scarlett and Sir Richard Dearlove seen - whether fairly or not - by some in the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, as a little too malleable in allowing the material to be used as it was?

There is also a question not so much about where the public were in some way conned, but whether the Government placed too much reliance on the intelligence conclusions that were offered it. And as Dame Pauline suggested, this is actually a more "fundamental question" than whether or not the best gloss was put in documents that frankly show little sign of having had much influence on public opinion one way or the other.

So questions remain. There is little sign the Government is any more likely to yield to Opposition demands for a judicial enquiry than the BBC is to apologise. But it should do as the Thatcher government did after the Falklands War and set up a formal Committee of Enquiry. The high political reason is that if it believes its own case, it has nothing to lose from submitting to such scrutiny the most difficult foreign policy decision for perhaps 20 years or more. The low political reason is that it would go a long way to get the present issue off its back for a long time, perhaps so long that the present intense debate will be a distant memory.

Which raises the relationship between the future and the past. If weapons of mass destruction are found in the mean time, the Government will have resolved its immediate problem. But the political, if not the legal, reality is that a very large proportion of those who supported the war did so because they wanted to see the back of Saddam Hussein.

Saddam's removal from power - though not necessarily from Iraq - has been achieved. But Iraq remains far from being the stable, prosperous and democratic country repeatedly promised by Washington and London - not to mention one in which the lives of innocent Iraqi civilians and British and US troops are no longer at risk. If and when the promises are kept- and perhaps not until then - the failure to find WMD may start to recede as an issue.