The first real flashpoint of the hearing comes as Tory MP Baron suggests that Tony Blair is trying to avoid a question on whether David Cameron and other leaders exceeded the UN's authority through their intervention in Libya. There is a frisson of excitement in the committee room as Mr Blair replies. 

John Baron is back on international support for the intervention, claiming that Russia, China and the African Union believed that what the West did in Libya far exceeded the terms of the UN mandate that had been agreed. 

He asks whether Mr Blair agrees. 

The ex-prime minister suggests that the line between the responsibility to protect civilians from a murderous regime and toppling that regime is "pretty thin". 

Tory MP Andrew Rosindell asked whether it was Mr Blair's own initiative to contact Gaddafi or if had been contacted first by the Libyans. 

Mr Blair says he is pretty sure he acted off his own back but will have to check. 

He makes clear that the UK and US, while "content" for him to try and use his influence to try and explain the West's position, were "not committing to any outcome". 

"It never got far enough to get into a detailed discussion", he says, adding that "events moved very quickly in these situations" and he swiftly had to relay the message that the Libyan leader to go. 

His phone calls to Gaddafi were "cleared" by the US government, Mr Blair recalls. He also says he spoke to David Cameron before contacting the Libyan leader, suggesting that Downing Street was "open" to the idea of him trying to act as a broker. However, he says President Obama's position was that Gaddafi "just had to go".

Tony Blair is now asked about a series of phone calls he made to Colonel Gaddafi in March 2011 as the conflict intensified. 

He says his concern was not for the dictator's personal safety but to try and persuade him to leave the country so that a peaceful transition could take place. 

He says all the calls took place within a matter of 24 hours, reading out from a memo he wrote at the time. 

Mr Blair says he wanted to "use the relationship I had with him to try and get him to do something" 

However, he says he quickly realised there was no appetite for this and "events took their course".

The former prime minister is asked whether he backed David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy in the action they took in 2011. 

He says a peaceful transition would have been a "better outcome" but he did not believe this was viable and intervention was inevitable. He says he would never criticise other leaders who he believed had been "well-intentioned" and acted in "good faith". 

The first mention of the Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

Mr Blair says that Mr Putin often believed that it is worth keeping undemocratic and unpalatable regimes in place in order to maintain regional stability. 

He says he understands this point of view, and, referring to the overthrow of former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, he says the West disowning regimes that it previously do not make good diplomacy or politics". 

But he says in the end keeping old regimes in place, which he refers to as an "Arab Winter", is not a sustainable position because in the end no form of government is stable if the people will not tolerate it. 

Conservative MP John Baron says he opposed the intervention in Libya and questions the grounds that the UK gave at the time - the likelihood of an imminent massacre in Benghazi. 

He says, "rightly and wrongly" there was suspicion that the intervention by regime change and some members of the UN who backed a resolution felt they had been "hoodwinked". 

Mr Blair says it is difficult to say what would have happened in Benghazi but he has not reason to doubt the UK government's statements at the time and people should be under no illusion about how repressive the Gaddafi regime was. 

Tory MP John Baron is pressing Mr Blair to spell out "what changed" in the UK's relationship with Libya, raising compensation for victims of IRA terrorism which may have been funded by the Libyan regime and other issues. 

Mr Baron gets a brief reprimand by Mr Blunt who says his line of questioning falls outside the remit of the inquiry. 

Mr Blair says the rapprochement with the Gaddafi regime did not happen overnight or come about in a matter of weeks or months and talks had been going on for years. He points out that there were "10 steps" preceding the famous meeting in the desert in 2004. 

Tory MP John Baron, a vocal critic of the Iraq War and other foreign interventions, now takes up the questioning - asking Mr Blair about whether attempts to secure justice for the families of the Lockerbie families and the family of the murdered police officer Yvonne Fletcher were in any way compromised by the rapprochement with the Gaddafi regime. 

Mr Blair strongly rejects this, saying that it was while he was in power that the first UK policemen went to Libya to make inquiries about the Fletcher case. 

He acknowledges that better relations with Libya were a "huge prize" but there was no question of "holding back" on issues key to the UK's security.

Asked whether the UK did too little to plan for the aftermath of the Libyan intervention, Mr Blair says he was not in power at the time and cannot answer for David Cameron.

But he says any post-conflict planning is "very, very tough" as the country had to withstand lots of challenges, including from radical Islamist groups.

Mr Blair is asked about his attempts in 2011 to broker a "peaceful transition" in the country at the height of the Libyan conflict. 

At the time, it was reported that he tried to intervene as Middle East envoy to get Colonel Gaddafi to leave the country as part of an attempt to stop the violence. 

He says the Libyan people were never going to "tolerate" Gaddafi remaining in place as the people believed the regime was no longer "sustainable".