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Iraq Inquiry

I always like to try to help the hon. and learned Gentleman. My right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) made a compelling case in principle for an inquiry of the type he set out, and the debate has illustrated that his view is widely supported on both sides of the House. It is thus extremely disappointing that despite the fact that the Foreign Secretary has had seven months to consider the arguments my right hon. Friend made previously, she has not been persuaded of them—unlike her right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Education and Skills and for Defence, both of whom have accepted the case for an inquiry, although they have not put a timetable on it. The Foreign Secretary seems to be out of step with many members of the current Cabinet and—who knows?—possibly the next one, too. The Foreign Secretary not only said that her position was unchanged but made the astonishing remark that accountability was now self-indulgent introspection. It is astonishing that she should have equated the accountability in the House with narrow introspection. We make no apologies for holding this debate. She described it as opportunistic. If it is opportunistic to give right hon. and hon. Members an opportunity to express their views on a matter of major national importance, we are proud to have facilitated it and proud to have done so again today. Furthermore, in another astonishing contribution, the Foreign Secretary responded to my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mr. Baron) by making it clear that she saw no merit in looking back to examine the lead-up to the war in Iraq. In essence, she argued that past experience can inform neither the present nor the future. That is a serious indictment of her policy, and if it is the Government’s policy it is a serious indictment of their strategy, too. If we cannot learn from our experience, we are not doing a service as Members. It is significant that some Members who supported the war in the past have said that we owe it to the public to revisit the matter—the right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher) is one such Member. I offer three reasons why an independent Franks-type inquiry would benefit all of us, Ministers included. First, there is now almost universal recognition that there was a woeful lack of debate in the UK about post-conflict reconstruction. Paradoxically, in Washington in the six months leading up to the war there was talk of little else, but in this country—silence. The Government would not make time for a debate because they did not want to give their Back Benchers the impression that they had already signalled to the US Government a tacit commitment to provide British military support. We had to initiate the debate and we did so on 30 January 2003, when my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) said:"““If the wider war on terrorism is to succeed, it is crucial that we do not forfeit vital international support by pursuing a war against Saddam Hussein without a comprehensive humanitarian strategy for helping the innocent Iraqi people.””" During that debate, not only my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden but many other hon. Friends tried to get an answer from the then Secretary of State for International Development about what precisely the British Government had it in mind to do post-conflict. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short)—I am pleased that she is in the Chamber today—gave a lot of background about the circumstances and the lead-up, about Saddam Hussein and so on. However, she gave the House very little information about exactly what the Government’s strategy—indeed, the allies’ strategy—was for post-conflict reconstruction. All she said was:"““I have had talks with the various UN humanitarian organisations and the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which leads co-ordination of the UN effort. I think that the preparations are as good as they can be.””—[Official Report, 30 January 2003; Vol. 398, c. 1043-54.]" That was virtually all the information given to the House. The result was that Parliament had almost no opportunity to test the Government’s post-conflict reconstruction policies—how the country was to be run after the decapitation of the Saddam regime, let alone the rebuilding of Iraq’s crumbling infrastructure. It was interesting that Washington had a clear plan, although as my hon. Friends have suggested, it did not last beyond the first round of gunfire. None the less, there was a plan, which was to leave in place those who were running the infrastructure in Iraq, but that was not consistent with removing the Ba’athists from the regime. Save for the opportunities afforded by the Opposition, the House could not debate those matters and we are pleased to offer Members a further opportunity to discuss them today. As General Sir Mike Jackson, until last year head of the British Army, made clear in the Dimbleby lecture last December, the solution in Iraq does not lie simply with the military. He said:"““I want to say something about across-government capabilities. Particularly in post-conflict situations, it is not just a matter for the military. The political and military approaches must be as one. Complex and difficult conditions follow war, ethnic conflict, and failed states. My analogy here is the strands of a rope. Individual strands are just that, they have this or that breaking strength. But when you weave them together you actually produce something that is stronger than the sum of its parts. And these strands for me are obviously security, the political dimension, humanitarian, and economic—at least those four. And you don’t have long to get going. There is a sense that you must make a difference within a hundred days, or you will have a lost opportunity. It gives me no pleasure to say that I fear this was not the case where Iraq was concerned.””" Our armed forces are simply brilliant at getting things done quickly. I give the House an example. When the Select Committee visited Iraq less than three months after the war ended, we were given a briefing by a young captain from the Royal Monmouthshire Militia Royal Engineers and a senior warrant officer from the Army Air Corps. Within 13 weeks of the end of the war, they had already undertaken the refurbishment of 13 schools in Basra—a phenomenal achievement. We went to see DFID. What was it doing? Still designing the forms. There was a grotesque lack of co-ordination between Departments, which is a real indictment. The military had done their bit; they had fulfilled their obligations, but unfortunately the civil side had not. There was no effective follow-up because there was no plan. General Jackson argued that there should have been much greater co-ordination between Departments—a point also made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood). The current Secretary of State for International Development seems to be moving in that direction, too. Recently, he said:"““Using ‘hard power’ alone will not be enough to tackle terrorist groups””." The second purpose of an inquiry would be to consider how we should adjust our whole military posture to the new type of military operations we face, including at the tactical level: whether our soldiers, sailors and airmen are getting the right training package for that type of warfare; whether, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said, we have the right equipment for the task; whether we have the correct balance of forces, and what needs to be done so that we do not become disproportionately reliant on urgent operational requirements—a kind of panic-buying formula—to make up the shortfall in equipment. I do not believe that such an investigation would be disruptive of ongoing operations, still less that the armed forces would resent it. Between us, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks and I represent a large slug of the British Army and we have not heard it said anywhere that such an inquiry would be damaging to the morale of those on the ground. They have acquitted themselves with enormous courage and dignity in a military operation that they know does not command universal approval at home. I believe that they would welcome any measure that would help to build public confidence that lessons have been learned. Significantly, when the Foreign Secretary was asked by the hon. and learned Member for Medway whether the military had given an indication that they would support an inquiry, she could not answer that question. Indeed, the Minister of State responsible for the armed forces could not give her any comfort, either. They both know that her point was bogus and invalid. The third reason why we need an inquiry has been set out by many right hon. and hon. Members: the four inquiries on which the Government rely as evidence that the House has had the opportunity to consider all the issues that have been debated today did not consider the issues in the round or in the way in which many right hon. and hon. Members would like. Simply speaking, those inquiries did not deal with the issues, or dealt with them partially and indifferently. We have heard at length how the Select Committee was treated contemptuously by the Government. I make no apologies for mentioning in this debate and in this week, which commemorates the 25th anniversary of the Falklands conflict, the issue of combat stress among our brave service personnel. We are embarked on two war-fighting operations that involve high-intensity combat, yet unlike the second world war, when civilians in London and Coventry were being bombed out of their homes, or the Falklands campaign, when the entire nation was engaged and glued to the evening news to find the latest reports from the front, today the rest of us are enjoying the cricket—I do not know the result of the test match—[Hon. Members: ““We won.””] We won, so the rest of us are enjoying the cricket, the motor racing and other relatively peaceful summer pursuits. This is a serious issue, and I do not want to demean it, but I want to make the point that the rest of the nation is enjoying the summer season, while our soldiers, sailors and airmen are engaged in bloody battles in the intense heat of the middle east. That experience will have an enduring effect on some of them. I met such personnel yesterday at a Falklands drumhead service in Aldershot military cemetery in my constituency, and they are still suffering after the Falklands campaign. It is said that more men have died by their own hands since 1982 than the 255 who gave their lives 6,000 miles away. I am aware of the Ministry of Defence’s announcement today, and I welcome it, but it is insufficient to meet the challenge that we face. An inquiry of the kind that my right hon. and hon. Friends have proposed tonight would provide an opportunity to examine why we are doing so comparatively little to help to mend those with broken minds. There is a precedent. In the Dardanelles campaign, it was said that the remit of the commissioners in that inquiry in 1916 included the conduct of the war,"““the supply of equipment to the troops, the provision for the sick and wounded and the responsibility of the Government whose duty it has been to minister to the wants of the forces employed in the theatre of war””.—[Official Report, 27 July 1916; Vol. 84, c. 1896-97.]" I rest my case—there is a precedent as to why an inquiry should consider such matters, too. We cannot postpone an inquiry until a time that is politically convenient for the Government. We need to make a decision in principle now, and to assemble a wise and experienced panel of eminent persons who can consider the lead-up to the war, the use and interpretation of intelligence, the war itself and the post-conflict reconstruction. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples) said, we can do that perfectly well without inflicting any problems on those engaged in war-fighting operations. The reason for the relative urgency is that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks said, while the events are fresh in people’s minds and the e-mails have not been destroyed, we need to learn whatever lessons we can from the background to operations in Iraq so far, and to apply them to Afghanistan before it is too late. The hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) made the point that Parliament needs to assert its authority over the Executive—a point that was also made by the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright). I strongly support that, and I hope that the House will support our motion and the principle that an inquiry should be established, even if the precise format proposed on the Order Paper is not exactly what some right hon. and hon. Members would like. The point is the principle of the matter, and we owe it to the nation to be able to establish that. When Michael Foot called for a special commission to consider the Suez campaign, he cited something said by Lord John Russell in respect of the Crimea campaign a hundred years previously:"““Inquiry is the proper duty and function of the House of Commons…Inquiry is, indeed, the root of the powers of the House of Commons. Upon the result of the inquiry must depend the due exercise of those powers.””—[Official Report, 16 November 1966; Vol. 736, c. 442.]" I submit that this House should support this motion.