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Iraq

The hon. Gentleman should accept that we ought not to allow the Leader of the Opposition to be the only politician on YouTube. I would not want to condemn the youngsters of this country to such a situation. If the hon. Gentleman had been listening, rather than preparing his question, he would know that that I referred to precisely that issue—to the 23 Members, including the hon. Member for Islington, North, who came together to introduce a motion of impeachment. However, it was argued that we should change the motion for two reasons. The first was to broaden the base, because it is not just the Prime Minister who is responsible. Ministers have collective responsibility, and it was Government policy that took us into Iraq. The second reason, as the hon. Gentleman probably knows even though he is relatively new, was that the process of impeachment is a trial in Parliament by the House of Lords. Given what I found out recently about the complexion of Members in the House of Lords, I now think that Members of the House of Commons are the right people to hold such an inquiry. I hope that that satisfies the hon. Gentleman. I am glad to see that the Foreign Secretary has returned to her place. Earlier, she made the extraordinary proposition that it was not the right time to hold an inquiry. Apparently, we can allow an inquiry by Lord Butler and Lord Hutton when our troops are in the field, but not a parliamentary inquiry. What kind of argument is that? I know that the Foreign Secretary only recently took up her post, and perhaps she is not yet fully in command of her brief, but when she was asked a direct question by the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples)—a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee—about its inquiry, she said that there had been no Government obstruction of that inquiry. That is remarkable, because I have before me the title of the first special report of the Foreign Affairs Committee, which reads ““Implications for the Work of the House and its Committees of the Government’s Lack of Co-operation with the Foreign Affairs Committee’s Inquiry into The Decision to go to War in Iraq””. If the Foreign Secretary wants to be a success in her position and to defend the Prime Minister, she should familiarise herself with the work of that Select Committee. I was interested to hear the Foreign Secretary pray in aid my old friend Tam Dalyell against the Franks committee. I am in no doubt whatever about which Lobby Tam Dalyell would go into this evening, if he were still in the House. There are three basic arguments for the motion. The first concerns parliamentary accountability. It is pretty unprecedented in recent times, but the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell) reminded me that Lord Liverpool, in 1855, fell on just such a motion—