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Iraq Inquiry

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell), and I must say that I agree entirely with his analysis. I was opposed to the war, but not because I thought Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction. I thought that he probably did possess some residual capability of the weapons that we knew he had possessed in the Gulf war. There was evidence of that past possession, and in my view it was likely that he still maintained some capability. In the 1990s, however, weapons inspectors were crawling all over Iraq, and Hans Blix and his team and Mohamed el-Baradei were not able to gather sufficient or indeed any evidence to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein was a threat. I was also very suspicious of President Bush constantly referring back to 9/11 and suggesting that Iraq was involved with al-Qaeda. He specifically said that Iraq"““has aided, trained and harboured terrorists, including operatives of al-Qaeda.””" We know that that was not the case. Saddam was a secularist, and if anything he had a lot to fear from the likes of al-Qaeda. President Bush blatantly exploited his people's fear and anger about 9/11. When I put that to the former Prime Minister, he did not explicitly come out in support of President Bush, but neither did he condemn that link. Indeed, on 20 March 2003, the then Defence Secretary, now the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury, told me:"““There are clear links between the Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda.””" He went on to say:"““We are not sure of the precise nature of those links””.—[Official Report, 20 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 1096.]" How can we take a Secretary of State seriously when he makes such comments to this House? In fact, I could not take at all seriously the entire evidence presented to the House, and I was very surprised that Opposition Members went along with the campaign. It is time that we had a thorough inquiry into what happened in the run-up to the war and after it. I have reservations about the type of inquiry proposed, but the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) implied that Her Majesty's Opposition would give the House the opportunity to specify the kind of inquiry it wants.