The intelligence agencies were issued with an 11th-hour appeal for more evidence to strengthen the Government's dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, it was disclosed today.
The Hutton inquiry into the death of weapons expert David Kelly was told that the agencies were asked to come up with more evidence of Iraq's weapons programmes because Downing Street wanted the dossier to be "as strong as possible".
But Mr John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee responsible for drawing up the document, insisted to the inquiry that there had been no interference from Number 10 in the intelligence judgments in the dossier.
The inquiry also heard evidence that Dr Kelly did not give his "specific consent" to be named publicly as the possible source of a BBC story claiming the dossier had been "sexed up" to strengthen the case for war.
And it was also told that the intelligence agencies privately concluded that some Iraqi weapons could be deployed in as little as 20 minutes, rather than the more cautious 45 minute estimate contained in the dossier.
The inquiry was set up to investigate how Dr Kelly apparently came to take his own life after being identified as the source of a BBC report claiming the dossier had been transformed in the week before publication at the behest of Downing Street.
The inquiry was shown an e-mail from the Cabinet Office assessment staff, responsible for drafting the dossier, on September 11th - less than a fortnight before its publication - appealing to the agencies for more information.
It noted: "I appreciate everyone, us included, has been around some of these buoys before. But Number 10, through the chairman, want the document to be as strong as possible within the bounds of the available intelligence.
"This is therefore a last (!) call for any items of intelligence that the agencies think can and should be included." However Mr Scarlett - a former senior MI6 officer - told the inquiry that the request was "simply part of the work in progress".
He stressed that the document had simply been designed to show the intelligence assessment available to ministers, and was not intended to make the case for war.
"In no sense, in my mind or in the mind of the JIC, was it a document designed to make a case for anything," he said.