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Iraq

I need to make progress. There is no shame in changing one’s mind when new facts come to light. Ask the Attorney-General. He changed his mind three times in three weeks. He finally decided on 13 March 2003, after talking things through with his secretary, that his 7 March opinion was wrong after all and that, to quote the Attorney-General’s recent disclosure to the Information Commissioner,"““the better view was that a further resolution was not legally necessary””." Incredibly, that U-turn was not based on a detailed paper setting out the legal arguments. The Attorney-General who, by his own admission, is not an expert in international law, did not ask for legal advice until after he had come to his decision. [Interruption.] The Minister is shaking his head. I am reading from the Government’s own disclosure to the Information Commissioner, which states:"““It was also decided to prepare a statement setting out the Attorney’s view of the legal position and to send instructions to counsel to help in the preparation of that public statement.””" So the Attorney-General decided what the legal position was, and then asked for legal advice. You could not make it up, Mr. Speaker—well, you could if you were the Attorney-General, apparently. The Attorney-General went on in the same disclosure statement to admit, crucially, that the revival argument—the notion that the use of force authorised by resolution 678 from the first Gulf war was capable of being revived by the Security Council—““was and remains controversial””. Finally, a full three years on from the invasion, we have an unequivocal admission from the Attorney-General that his statement to the House that the war was legal was ““controversial””—his word, not mine.