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Iraq

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, but the Foreign Secretary has been unable confirm that there would be an inquiry at all. That remains one of the differences in the House today. I presume that the hon. Gentleman believes that an inquiry should take place at the point that he identified. Perhaps he should have intervened on the Foreign Secretary, rather than on me, to make that point. Our second difference with the motion is that we do not believe that such an inquiry should be established now. As the Foreign Secretary said, important operations are under way in Iraq. Major political decisions in Iraq and efforts to contain the insurgency appear to be in the balance. The Baker commission is expected to report in the next few months. Any inquiry should be able to examine what happens in the coming months as well as the events of recent years. To begin an inquiry now would therefore be premature—to that extent, I agree with the Foreign Secretary—but there is no legitimate reason why the Government cannot say today that an inquiry will be established at some point in the next Session. That means any time in the next 12 months. The Defence Secretary has spoken about being"““quite far down the process of transferring responsibility to the Iraqis””," and the Minister for the Middle East has said:"““certainly within a year or so there will be adequate trained Iraqi soldiers and security forces…in order to do the job.””" Ministry of Defence sources told The Daily Telegraph last week that more than half the British troops would be withdrawn by next February. It would be inconsistent to make those assertions while maintaining that in the course of the next year no committee of inquiry could even begin its work, which would presumably take a further six to nine months to report in 2008.