Former BBC Director General Greg Dyke paid tribute to Oxfordshire scientist Dr David Kelly, saying the Butler report appeared to back claims that a dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction had been "sexed-up".

Dr Kelly's apparent suicide sparked the Hutton inquiry after the scientist, an expert in weapons of mass destruction, had claimed that the Government had embellished reports into Iraq's military capabilities to justify the war.

The fall-out from the BBC's reports into the claims led to Mr Dyke leaving the BBC, after it was heavily criticised in Lord Hutton's report.

As the Butler report was published yesterday, Mr Dyke was at Sunderland's football stadium, the Stadium of Light, to receive an honorary doctorate from Sunderland University for his outstanding achievements in the field of broadcasting.

During his acceptance speech -- the first time he has spoken in public since he left the BBC -- Mr Dyke said the Butler report appeared to agree that Dr Kelly's claim of "sexing up" information about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was correct.

He said: "I left the BBC after a very unpleasant battle with the Government and the publication of the Hutton report -- a report which to this day makes very little sense to me. I think Hutton and I were living on different planets and attended a different inquiry.

"Butler appears to agree that the intelligence, as Dr Kelly said, was 'sexed up'. What the Butler report doesn't tell us is who did the 'sexing up'. This weekend is the first anniversary of the death of Dr Kelly and he was a brave man, prepared to speak out when he discovered something which he believed was very wrong."

Andrew Gilligan, the BBC who spoke to Dr Kelly and made the controversial broadcast, said: "I am very pleased with Lord Butler's report, which supports much of what I already said -- and what the Government has always denied."