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Iraq (Basra Incident)

With respect, I am probably the last person on earth to be asked about the motives of a crowd in Basra, but I can tell the hon. Gentleman about my own professional experience prior to my election to the House, when I practised for some time in the criminal courts in Scotland. Unfortunately, on occasion, serious violent incidents arose from the behaviour of mobs and/or crowds. The one thing that I learned during that time was that it was very difficult to try to get to the bottom of the behaviour of a crowd of people. Sometimes crowds of people come together for perfectly innocent reasons, and then behave in mob ways that are difficult to fathom. That was my experience. I was reinforced in that analysis by comments that have come directly from officers in Basra in communications and interviews over the weekend. I have heard, I think, Brigadier Everard—if I have identified the wrong officer, I apologise—express exactly the same emotions in response to a question that he was asked in an interview—on the BBC, I think. It would be unhelpful to speculate about why things may have happened—but one can hope that the investigations will reveal some information that will enable us to ensure that they do not happen again.