THE last few months have been difficult, above all for the family of David Kelly, whose grief at his death will not end with yesterday's events.

I have nothing but the deepest sympathy for what they have endured. Yet I find it hard to describe the sense both of relief at the conclusion of the Hutton Report, and anger at the way in which once high standards of journalism at the BBC and in some national newspapers have been tarnished.

I was present at the key meetings in Downing Street last July to discuss how to handle the fact David Kelly had come forward as the likely source of Andrew Gilligan's unfounded story.

I knew there had been no conspiracy to leak Kelly's name. What in truth we faced was a classic dilemma of reconciling two entirely worthy but irreconcilable objections.

On the one hand, to deal with David Kelly's potential breach of the rules in as normal a way as possible. On the other, we had to ensure the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Intelligence and Security Committee were not unwittingly misled as one was about to publish a report, and the other was about to start a further enquiry.

I remember saying to the Prime Minister we should deal with the dilemma "strictly by the book." Everyone agreed, the only problem being was the rule book had no guidance on what Lord Hutton described as a "wholly exceptional case." So we did our best.

Because David Kelly was employed by the Ministry of Defence and not the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, I was much less involved in what followed than Geoff Hoon and many of his officials and press officers.

But I have seen at close quarters what appalling pressure they have been under and the effect of the most outrageous attempts at unjustified character assassination I have seen for a very long time.

They had done nothing wrong - just handled to the best of their ability an incredibly difficult situation. Geoff and the officials have survived with great equanimity - but I am still very angry on their behalf.

Let me tell you why, and why it matters to us in Blackburn as well as elsewhere. Politicians are no different from anyone else. They should not be. Democracy is by the people, for the people and, above all, of the people. There are some not so good politicians and occasionally some who are corrupt or bad.

The latter are very few in number. but the quality of people varies and always will. The standards of conduct of teachers, doctors, judges, the police and many other professions is high, compared both with our own history and many countries.

That shows in opinion polls, with their professions receiving the highest level of trust from the public. But here's the rub - politicians aren't a race apart.

Local politicians almost always combine their services with other employment, and MPs include many teachers, doctors, judges and former police officers. Do these people change overnight? Of course not. Yet put the label "politician" on them and levels of trust suddenly plummet.

What was outrageous about the Gilligan episode was the BBC and parts of the national media got themselves into a mind-set that politicians did not tell the truth. I hope Lord Hutton's report may now start to bring more balance into how politics is reported.