---

Iraq Inquiry

Since 2003 there have been four inquiries into the events leading up the war in Iraq, as has been stated. There has been the Butler inquiry, the Hutton inquiry, the Intelligence and Security Committee inquiry and the Foreign Affairs Committee inquiry, which was agreed in June 2003. However, there is a need for ongoing investigation and inquiry, and for lessons to be learned. I gave evidence to Channel 4's Iraq Commission inquiry a few months ago. That was a valuable exercise and the report of the commission, which is chaired by Lord Ashdown, was a valuable piece of work. However, that is not what today's debate is about. In today's motion, hon. Members are pressing for"““an independent committee of privy councillors””" to conduct an inquiry. We might ask whether one can find such a thing as a genuinely independent Privy Councillor, but that is a debate for another time. Reference has been made to the US Baker-Hamilton inquiry. That inquiry was composed not only of current members of the US House of Representatives and the Senate. It was a body that brought in academic experts and former diplomats, as well as Lee Hamilton and James Baker as its bipartisan chairs. My first criticism of the motion before us relates to my belief that we need to widen the focus of any such inquiry, when the time comes. We also need to take account of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) referred to as the long history of events in Iraq that led to the decisions made in this House in March 2003. The right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), who is not in his place at the moment, said that an inquiry should concentrate on 2002, 2003 and 2004. I would ask why, and I would do so for two reasons. Reference was made earlier to the Scott inquiry. That inquiry did not deal with the terrible crimes of Saddam against the Kurdish people in Halabja. Instead, it took a narrow focus on the supergun, Matrix Churchill and the way in which public immunity certificates were used in a legal process to stop the truth coming out under the previous Conservative Government. The late Robin Cook did a fantastic job of demolishing the Conservative party and its role in that debate, after the Scott report was published. Any inquiry that takes account of the recent past would also have to take account of the previous history. Reference was also made to the arms sales policies of the 1980s, when some of the Conservative Members who are here today were members of the Government who were selling arms to Saddam. We can look back to 1980, when Margaret Thatcher and the right hon. and learned Members for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) and for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) were all part of that British Conservative Government. They made the decision to support the Ba'athist fascist regime in Iraq, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, as well as supporting Osama bin Laden and other disreputable people whom we now regard as beyond the pale. At that time, however, for reasons of state, certain decisions were made. We need to look at the whole context. If there is to be an inquiry, let it not be partisan. Let us have an inquiry into the UK's relations with Iraq over the past 30 years. Let us really dig up the stones and look at the way in which those on the Conservative Benches who are now taking a holier-than-thou position on these matters were conspiring to support that Ba'athist regime while my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley, my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) and I were campaigning against the arming of Saddam. Let us not forget that as we discuss what kind of inquiry we should have.