---

Foreign Affairs and Defence

I welcome the Defence Secretary to his new position. He and I shared Opposition defence spokesmanships for a considerable time. I fear that he is doing us an injustice, no doubt inadvertently. If he remembers, in 1998 the reason that provoked military action was the fact that the inspectors were being denied access to a number of facilities. The military action that was taken was designed to destroy those facilities. It was taken over a period of some three days. It was entirely proportionate. It was a last resort because Saddam Hussein would not submit to any diplomatic initiative and it did not have as its objective regime change. Those are three very substantial differences in principle from the basis of the military action taken against Saddam Hussein in 2003, as we now know from the leaked minutes of the meeting held in July 2002.