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Iraq

Well—[Interruption.] I am not stumped. There have been a number of inquiries by the Select Committees on Defence and on Foreign Affairs, and by Lords Butler and Hutton. We have trawled through all the issues of the past. It seems to me that, whatever the motivation of Conservative Members, they are making a serious mistake. We should put ourselves into the minds of people who are currently serving in Iraq, those who have served and those who will serve in the months to come. Conservative Members know that we have an enemy that is looking for any signs of weakness, of loss of resolution or lack of determination. Those forces of evil do not understand the subtleties of democracy or the political point scoring of our parliamentary process, but they will recognise an opportunity when they see it. They will see an opportunity to carry out more attacks, take more innocent lives and create a breach in our resolve. I would have expected more from Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition than the position in which they now find themselves—and who are their running mates in this particular approach? It is the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru. At least they have been consistent. They oppose what we do as a United Kingdom and as a nation, because they want to undermine the Union. Let us not forget that the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) condemned our actions in Kosovo and the Balkans. Let us not forget that the separatists of Scotland and Wales oppose our membership of NATO and, as a consequence, call into question our actions in Afghanistan. What they want is a show trial for narrow political ends. It is not about establishing new facts or new evidence. All the relevant material was examined in detail by the Butler and Hutton inquiries, by the Intelligence and Security Committee and by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee—[Interruption.]