The Ministry of Justice is stalling on the question of releasing Dr Kelly’s autopsy documents.

Although unwilling to speak in public – at least for the time being – I hear Lord Hutton is ‘bemused and perplexed’ by the failure of the Justice Ministry to make promised documentation available to doctors questioning the findings of his Inquiry into the death of Iraq War whistle-blower David Kelly. Whether this is Hutton’s friends spinning in order to absolve him from blame is hard to tell at this point. But his Lordship’s reputation for plain speaking and fairness is widely recognised.

The Kelly case has always had two distinct sets of followers: one lot who insist that Hutton produced a bland report designed to whitewash everyone concerned, and another who insist equally vehemently that Brian Hutton was misled. This latter crew are more in tune with the judge’s previous behaviour: whether dealing with authority or the IRA, he seems to be a pretty fearless person. So if he is now fulminating in private about MoJ filibustering, this would make sense.

I confess to having been absolutely astonished when Hutton told the medical dissidents that he would release the autopsy report to them. But on reflection, I think there are probably two key points here. The first is that if Hutton had been conned into thinking the autopsy was kosher, he wouldn’t have had any hesitation in releasing that part – if only to satisfy the conspiracy theorists. The second is that his Lordship isn’t medically trained…and one suspects that somebody in the MoJ (with a guilty conscience) knows a proper medic would quickly spot the scam – if there is one.

Staying with the assumption that Lord Hutton is innocent of any wrongdoing, he did nevertheless slap the world’s longest gagging order on some of the evidence involved. He is by nature a discreet man (and a patriot) and thus the mind boggles at the harm that might be done to certain figures in New Labour were the full details ever to emerge. I’m thinking primarily of Messrs Blair and Campbell here, although the Attorney General Mr Goldsmith perhaps also owes Hutton a debt of gratitude.

Regular followers of this story might remember The Slog’s piece of late last year, referring to allegations that shortly before his death, Robin Cook confided to ‘a colleague’ that the Kelly case led ‘right back to the War Cabinet’. Such allegations are easy to make, the person concerned being no longer with us. I have a friend (more than a source) who swears blind that the colleague was Clare Short; if it was, Ms Short is staying tight-lipped on the matter – and I can’t say I blame her.

Yesterday’s piece in the Sunday Telegraph moved the game on a bit, in showing that the Shadow Justice Secretary Dominic Grieve senses blood, guts and skullduggery in all this shilly-shallying by the MoJ. If so, Mr Grieve’s nose has certainly taken its time getting the scent – but better late than never.

From the outset, informed opinion has refuted the image of Kelly as a suicidal person (despite Campbellian smears) while commonsense observers have ridiculed the idea of a man opening his veins with a blunt garden fork. Doubt has also been cast upon the ‘overdose’ allegation, given the apparently minor amount of analgesics found in Dr Kelly’s body. “I am aware of the work of the doctors’ group on challenging Lord Hutton’s findings,” said Grieve last Saturday, “They have made an impressive and cogent case.”

They may well have done. But somebody needs to get on the case regarding release of the promised documents: delays spread suspicion. It is a telling thought that, with just two reliable leaks – one from the MoD and one from the MoJ – we would have, I believe, a conspiracy scandal which, at long last, truly deserved to have ‘gate’ as its suffix.