Tragic weapons expert David Kelly brought his public exposure upon himself, a senior Ministry of Defence official said yesterday.

MoD personnel director Richard Hatfield told the Hutton Inquiry into the scientist's death that Dr Kelly would not have found himself in the public eye if he had not spoken to BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan.

The inquiry is investigating how Dr Kelly apparently came to take his own life after being identified as the source of Mr Gilligan's story claiming the Government "sexed up" its Iraq weapons dossier.

Mr Hatfield - who was involved in interviewing Dr Kelly about his contacts with Mr Gilligan - said he saw no reason why he should have informed him that the MoD had decided his identity would be confirmed to journalists if they came up with right name.

"I did not think that I needed to tell Dr Kelly about it. I am not sure what you think I should have told him," he said in answer to questions from counsel for the Kelly family, Jeremy Gompertz.

He added: "The public identification followed from his own act of talking to Mr Gilligan."

Mr Hatfield said he had been surprised by earlier evidence to the inquiry from Dr Kelly's widow, Janice, who revealed he had felt "betrayed" by his treatment by the MoD.

"I was very surprised to hear that he thought that way if that means the people dealing with this crisis betrayed him, because I think we gave him a lot of support," he said.

Later, Mr Gilligan denied doctoring his computer notes of his meeting with Dr Kelly.

The inquiry was shown evidence that his Sharp ZQ770 personal organiser contained two versions of his note of the meeting.

Only the second version contained a reference to the then No 10 communications chief, Alastair Campbell.

In his earlier evidence, Mr Gilligan had said that Dr Kelly blamed Mr Campbell for "sexing up" the Government's Iraqi weapons dossier in order to strengthen the case for war.

Mr Gilligan told the inquiry that the first version had been made during the course of his meeting with Dr Kelly at London's Charing Cross Hotel on May 22, which he "saved" on the personal organiser.

At the end of the meeting he then checked the quotes with Dr Kelly and made a number of revisions to his original notes, which appeared on the personal organiser as the second version.

It was the second version that contained the single word "Campbell".

Mr Gilligan flatly denied a suggestion by counsel to the inquiry James Dingemans that he had actually made the second version the following day when he was writing up a handwritten note of the meeting.

Mr Gilligan's account of his meeting with Dr Kelly has already been challenged once during the inquiry.

Olivia Bosch, a former colleague of Dr Kelly's, said he had told her the journalist had elicited Mr Campbell's name from him by way of a "name game".

Mr Gilligan, however, insisted that it was Dr Kelly who mentioned the name "spontaneously".

The latest development comes the day after Mr Gilligan admitted a series of errors in his original report on the Radio 4 Today programme claiming the Iraq dossier had been "sexed up".

Mr Gillingham has conceded he should not have said that No 10 ordered the claim that some Iraqi weapons could be deployed in 45 minutes be included in the dossier against the wishes of the intelligence services.