In the recent Iraq inquiry debate, Labour MP Lynne Jones flummoxed Foreign Secretary David Miliband with a question about their former colleague Ann (now Baroness) Taylor. Jones pointed out, as I have done, that Taylor made partisan presentational suggestions on the September 2002 dossier before taking part in two inquiries that looked into that very document. She has also asked Miliband’s younger brother Ed what role Taylor played in sexing-up the case for war, but he isn’t saying.

When she was chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), Taylor was invited in this oversight role to look at a draft of the dossier. Documents on the Hutton Inquiry website show that she gave advice on how the dossier and Tony Blair could make a better case for the war that she supported. But it is also clear that Taylor “passed on some detailed comments to John Scarlett” during a meeting with the then chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and nominal author of the dossier.

Jones wants to know what those comments were and asked the Cabinet Office via a parliamentary question. A couple of weeks ago Ed Miliband issued one of those carefully worded non-denials that ministers issue when they are hiding something.

“The Cabinet Office has no record of any written comments passed on by Ann Taylor to John Scarlett on the draft dossier.”

Knowing that the comments were likely to have been oral when they were passed on, Jones asked what form they took and whether anyone may have recorded them. But Ed Miliband referred her back to the earlier answer

When Jones brought up the issue last week during David Miliband’s defence of the government’s preposterously indefensible refusal to hold an Iraq inquiry, he didn’t have the benefit of a carefully prepared non-answer. Already looking badly out of his depth, he floundered around, claiming that:

“I have never heard the credibility or the good sense of the Butler inquiry called into question.”

Although Labour MP Alan Simpson heckled:

“What the Butler saw was as little as possible.”

After the Liberal Democrats refused to take part and the Tories withdrew support, the Butler Inquiry let Blair off the hook and now has little credibility. As it argued over its conclusions, it was reported that Ann Taylor, representing Labour, was arguing for its criticism of her friend John Scarlett to be toned down.

But perhaps the greater scandal is that Taylor herself chaired the 2003 ISC inquiry, which even let off Geoff Hoon, although he blatantly misled it.

So will the truth about how Taylor helped sex up the dossier show exactly why both the ISC and Butler let Blair off the hook?