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Iraq Inquiry

I realise that that is the line that is given—that we were all woefully misled by the Prime Minister—but large numbers of Members of the House were not woefully misled by the Prime Minister. They interrogated the evidence, made political judgments and came to rather shrewd conclusions. Indeed, the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea has just told us that that is entirely what should have happened, so it cannot be simply that the Opposition were misled by what the Prime Minister said. The story is deeper, richer and more troubling than that. I now want to talk about Parliament, because that element is the bit of the Opposition motion’s call for an inquiry that I dissent from. The Opposition are mistaken to call for a committee of Privy Councillors. Again, there is a story behind what happened. A couple of years ago the Public Administration Committee, which I chair, conducted an inquiry into inquiries; it was the first time that that had been done. We looked into the whole history of inquiries—who called them, how they were organised, and the whole shooting match. At the time the Government were introducing their own Bill—the Inquiries Bill—to regularise how a range of them were conducted. What became clear as a result of our inquiry was that Parliament had, through a complex process, effectively abandoned the field. In the 19th century the parliamentary inquiry was the dominant form of inquiry. Reference has been made to the first world war and the Dardanelles campaign, but we could go all the way back to the Crimean war. The House established a Committee of inquiry to report on the condition of the Army before Sebastopol. Gladstone spoke against it, and it produced the downfall of the Aberdeen Government. However, as the party system solidified at the beginning of the 20th century, it became difficult for Parliament to undertake dispassionate cross-party inquiries. The example that is always cited is the Committee on the Marconi scandal. That parliamentary inquiry divided on party lines, and has been described as the first great whitewash. As a consequence, the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921 was introduced, which effectively took inquiries outside this House, retaining only the requirement for a resolution of this House to set up such an inquiry. The establishment of an inquiry was still anchored in a parliamentary resolution, although the inquiry itself was taken outside the House. That in turn was also criticised. The Salmon commission looked into the matter, and now we have this Government’s Inquiries Act 2005. The overall consequence has been that Parliament has been taken out of the picture. In our report of a couple of years ago, my Committee argued that we should not abandon that territory. There is a category of inquiry on issues of great political importance which only parliamentary politics can get its teeth into. I say, with great respect, that such matters are not for judges. We heard great evidence from the then Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, who emphatically said that there is a category of politically contentious inquiries in which judges should not be involved. Therefore, there is a need for a specific kind of inquiry on matters that are not appropriate for the judge route or other routes—but Parliament has abandoned conducting such inquiries and is unable to undertake them through its existing Select Committee system. I am referring to forensic, fact-finding inquiries, such as the example we heard about in respect of the Foreign Affairs Committee. That is why I have a reservation about the form of inquiry proposed in the Opposition motion. We asked Lord Butler about this matter, and he agreed that it would have been better if his inquiry had been a parliamentary inquiry. He also pointed out that four of the five members of his team were parliamentarians, so it would have been quite easy to have made it a parliamentary inquiry. For the category of inquiries I am referring to, it is constitutionally important that Parliament as an institution can say, ““This subject is of such great public importance that Parliament must set up a parliamentary commission of inquiry, beyond its Select Committee system.”” That would involve bringing in outsiders, as required. However, Parliament must be able to do that.