Blair's 'kitchen cabinet' prepares for rare dose of public scrutiny

Tony Blair's reclusive inner circle will be exposed to unprecedented public scrutiny next week after Downing Street's most powerful officials were ordered to give evidence to the Hutton Inquiry.

The Prime Minister's trusted aides will be forced to explain in detail their roles in the Government's decision to name Dr David Kelly, the weapons scientist who apparently killed himself last month.

In an unexpected move, both Jonathan Powell, Mr Blair's chief of staff, and Sir David Manning, Mr Blair's chief foreign policy adviser, will give evidence on Monday on the events leading up to Dr Kelly's death.

The two men guided the Prime Minister before and during the Iraq war, but Downing Street has previously refused to allow either of them to give evidence to MPs.

Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair's director of communications, and Tom Kelly and Godric Smith, his official spokesmen, will also testify to the Hutton Inquiry next week.

Mr Powell, Sir David and Mr Campbell effectively form Mr Blair's kitchen cabinet at Downing Street, while Mr Kelly and Mr Smith are intimately involved in his daily affairs. Only Baroness Morgan, Mr Blair's director of government relations, has not been called.

Mr Campbell, who is expected to face questions over a BBC report claiming he was responsible for having "sexed up" the Government's dossier on Iraqi weapons, will appear before the inquiry on Tuesday.

Lord Hutton will, however, concentrate on his precise role in the so-called "clarification strategy", whereby Ministry of Defence press officers confirmed Dr Kelly's name if it was put to them.

He will be followed on Wednesday by Mr Kelly, who described Dr Kelly as a "Walter Mitty"-type fantasist. Mr Kelly will have to explain exactly how he came to give reporters clues to Dr Kelly's identity in a lobby briefing the day before his name appeared in newspapers.

Yesterday, David Davis, the shadow Deputy Prime Minister, alleged that Downing Street had decided to force Dr Kelly to appear before MPs in public simply to further its feud with the BBC.

As Lord Hutton's net draws closer to the heart of government, Mr Blair is now expected to be called as a witness in the week beginning 25 August. Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, will also be called that week.

Sir Kevin Tebbit, the permanent under secretary at the Ministry of Defence, and Pam Teare, the MoD's director of news, will also give evidence.

On Thursday, the final day of next week's hearings, Donald Anderson, the chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, which questioned Dr Kelly in the week of his death, will appear.

He will be followed by journalists involved in the naming of the scientist. Nick Rufford, of The Sunday Times, James Blitz, of the Financial Times, Richard Norton-Taylor, of The Guardian, and Tom Baldwin, of The Times, will give evidence.

The final witness will be Lee Hughes, of the Hutton Inquiry secretariat, who is expected to use the opportunity to formally record the posting of every single evidence document on the inquiry's website.

Sir David, who is set to take over as the British ambassador to Washington soon, is seen by Mr Blair as his most important adviser on foreign policy.

Mr Powell, whose influence extends to all domestic policy too has, along with Mr Campbell, unprecedented powers to give orders to civil servants.

The inquiry was told this week that Mr Powell and Sir David received copies of key Whitehall memorandums on how to deal with Dr Kelly. Mr Powell spoke by telephone with Mr Hoon to discuss the case the day before Dr Kelly was interviewed for the first time by Ministry of Defence managers about his contacts with the BBC defence correspondent, Andrew Gilligan.