PATRICK BARKHAM, a former member of the FCA, is a reporter for The Times in London. He was an embedded journalist on RFA Argus during the Iraq war and has since followed the events linked to it very closely. Here, he reflects on what the Hutton inquiry spells for journalism.

Most journalists in Britain greeted the findings of the Hutton Report with incredulity. It was summed up by the cover of the satirical magazine Private Eye, which carried a picture of Lord Hutton saying: "...and in conclusion I find Dr Shipman innocent of all charges".

The feeling is that it was not a good day for journalism in general. While most British newspapers are only too ready to savage the BBC at any opportunity, in this case most felt a feeling of frustration that the corporation had been so roundly condemned and responded by broadcasting its own sense of internal crisis so clearly. The BBC now appears to be on the defensive. Its journalists already have to satisfy a huge array of internal procedures and its response to the Hutton Report is only likely to increase these processes. There is a fear that its journalists will not only be further restricted by such media "bureaucracy" but will also become more self-censoring of stories they find that are critical of the Government.

Of course, most journalists feel that Andrew Gilligan made serious mistakes. Not perhaps so much in relying on a single source, but in failing to take adequate notes of his conversations and betraying that source in conversations to MPs. The other feeling is "there but for the grace of God go I". Those reporters who attempt to break serious exclusives will often be pushing at the boundaries of what is on the record, what is off and what is non-attributable.

The perception that the Hutton Report was a whitewash seems firmly entrenched in popular opinion as well. The consensus among the political classes seems to be that in coming down so conclusively on the Government's side Lord Hutton has not actually done it any favours. Many MPs and newspapers seem to have redoubled their efforts to nail the "lie" on which the Government appears to have taken the country into war.

Regardless of whether Tony Blair secretly doubted the credibility of the claim that Iraq could deploy chemical warheads within 45 minutes when arguing the case for war last year, it seems likely that the Government seriously believed that Iraq did possess a credible arsenal of weapons. (Whether it seriously believed Saddam Hussein would use them in an offensive capacity - as was claimed - is another matter entirely.)

During the Iraq War, I was an embedded journalist on RFA Argus, Britain's hospital ship in the Gulf. Three days before the campaign began, I was party to a secret briefing in which the captain discussed with key crew members the threat posed by the Iraqi military. We were told that, cruising some 20 miles off the Iraqi coast, we were at risk from seersucker missiles, some of which could be carrying chemical warheads. It is clear from that briefing that the British armed forces seriously believed that Iraq could deploy chemical weapons in battlefield munitions. Armies always have to prepare for the worst. And this worst-case scenario is obviously different from the scenario painted by Government intelligence before the war suggesting that Saddam Hussein would consider aiming and firing chemical weapons at Israel or Cyprus without provocation.

In the event, no chemical weapons were used, even in the desperate dying days of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime. Since the war, no chemical weapons have been found in Iraq. Increasingly, the British press and the public appear to believe that the Government moulded its intelligence as best it could to support a US-led war. Rather than to make a choice, that intelligence was used to rationalise a war that Tony Blair had rashly committed Britain to joining months earlier in private conversations with George Bush.