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Iraq Inquiry

No, I must get on. In the south, we have already been able to hand over responsibility for security to the Iraqi authorities in three of the four provinces in our area of operation. British troops and civilian staff are now engaged in an intensive drive to bring the last of these provinces, Basra, to the point at which security responsibility can be handed over there, too. At this critical juncture, when Iraq’s future clearly hangs in the balance, it would be wrong—plainly and simply wrong—for us to divert our focus from the tasks that need completing now, and again turn our gaze backwards. Let us have no pretence that this is an innocuous little motion that will have no effect on the atmosphere in, or background against which, these ongoing, highly difficult challenges have to be faced and met. If that were so, the shadow Foreign Secretary would not have troubled to table it. He made it clear last October that he hoped that the inquiry he proposed at that time would begin in this Session of Parliament. We believed then, and we believe now, that to carry a motion such as this would be an unnecessary and damaging diversion of effort, focus and attention.