The intelligence agencies have been damaged by the Iraq dossier row, Sir Malcolm Rifkind has said.

Intelligence documents have become "articles of propaganda rather than articles of information", he said in an interview with ePolitix.com.

As a former foreign secretary in John Major's administration, Sir Malcolm would have been responsible for the work of MI6, which gathers overseas intelligence.

The criticism comes after a summer in which the work of MI6 and the government's intelligence networks have been exposed to unprecedented public scrutiny.

Asked whether the row over the 45-minute weapons claim had damaged the credibility of MI6, he said: "Well of course it has, because what the intelligence agencies do is provide very good access to raw material, and they turn that raw material into editorial digest for ministers to assist them when they have their mind on policy matters.

"Once you start having their conclusions replicated in public documents without the necessary health warnings about the various caveats that would normally exist, then they become articles of propaganda rather than articles of information. And that must be damaging."

Ministers had mishandled the compilation of the dossier, he added.

"The information that's out there might sometimes be worth putting into the public domain, but it should never be referred to as intelligence information," said Sir Malcolm.

"The point that I'm concerned about is not the information itself. If the government wanted to argue the 45-minute claim, for example, then it should have done so without referring to its sources.

"Now that's difficult, I acknowledge that, but the consequence is what we now see, which is damage to the intelligence agencies."

And he added that ministers had attempted to turn the intelligence services into an "arm of government" in trying to convince the public or parliament about the case for war.

"The intelligence agencies are there to provide information to the government, not to be used to give a character reference to the government," said Sir Malcolm.