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Iraq Inquiry

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt), who spoke lucidly and forcefully. At one time, he was my deputy in Northern Ireland and in those days we used to agree with each other rather more frequently than we do now, but I shall endeavour to explain why I find myself rather a long way from him on this issue. I shall focus narrowly on two issues. I shall not focus on whether we should have taken military action in Iraq or on the issues that ought to be the subject of an eventual inquiry, or even on whether we ought to have an inquiry at some stage. That is common ground in the House, which has emerged clearly from the debate. The issues I shall focus on are why we are having the debate on this motion, and on the arguments for having an inquiry now rather than later—and even more importantly, the arguments for not having one now. The reason for tabling the motion has not been addressed. Anyone who listened to the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) when he introduced the debate, and attempted to take his words seriously and at face value, would suppose that the Conservative party had invented the idea of an inquiry on the military operation in Iraq and had consistently been in favour of it. Nothing of the kind is the case. The Welsh and the Scottish nationalists devised the idea. At the time, I was a member of the Conservative party and I assumed, based on the party's reaction to such things in past years, or at least in past generations, that, as soon as it saw such opportunistic and irresponsible nonsense emerging on the horizon, it would reject it without further ado. To my horror, I found that that is not the way in which the modern Tory party works. The modern Tory party sees a bandwagon, thinks it might pick up some short-term party political benefit, and, without caring about the issue, jumps straight on it. I expressed my public disagreement in 2006 with the Tory party's conduct on the important matter that we are discussing. I think that the Tories were a bit miffed and felt that they had missed a trick—““trick”” is the right word for such a ploy—because the Scottish and the Welsh nationalists had thought of the idea first. They were determined to appropriate it if they could and, on another Opposition day last June, they tabled a motion calling for an inquiry, taking credit for the idea themselves. Why does an inquiry have such appeal for the Conservative party? The answer is plain. The Conservative party voted overwhelmingly for military action in Iraq and I was part of that—I had better say that now so that there is no doubt about it. I was a member of the shadow Cabinet when we decided to support the Government on the matter, for reasons that I do not regret. However, leaving that aside, the Conservative party has that record and cannot do anything about it. On the other hand, it has noticed that the Iraq war is not popular and would like to gain some party political advantage from that and attack the Government. How do the Conservatives attack the Government without saying that they were wrong about the Iraq war and facing some humiliation for doing that? The answer is that they call for an inquiry—which is irresponsible for reasons that I shall outline shortly, and could not realistically be accepted by any remotely responsible Government—and thus gain some short-term party political advantage. Such conduct from a major party and pretended alternative Government is beneath contempt. It is one of the major reasons that I do not sit on the Conservative side of the House any more. Let me consider why I believe that it would be irresponsible to hold an inquiry now. There are three reasons. First, there is a general principle that, when one's military forces are engaged in combat, one can responsibly do only two things: support them to the hilt or pull them out. It is impossible to be half pregnant; there is no easy halfway house. A public inquiry is not a Select Committee inquiry—in democratic countries, Select Committees always have the right to conduct an inquiry into anything, of course. It is not an inquiry into a matter, albeit important in itself, that is marginal to the main issue, such as the death of Dr. Kelly. An official public inquiry into whether we should be in a particular place, when we are asking our serving men and women to risk their lives there, is inconceivable and wrong. We should not even think about doing such a thing. We owe it to our troops—we all agree about how extraordinarily gallant they have been—not to sow the seeds of doubt about the rationale for their being in that situation and putting their lives at risk, which they do every day. There are strong reasons for not pulling out of Iraq now. We cannot let down the nascent Iraqi democracy, which has a chance of success. I do not know how great the chance is—perhaps not overwhelming, but certainly not minuscule. We owe Iraqi democracy a chance. We also owe it to our allies not to let them down, particularly when the Americans have bravely launched their surge campaign, which has yielded encouraging results. Those are good reasons why we can legitimately ask our serving men and women to continue to risk their lives in Iraq, but we should not raise any doubt. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, North (Frank Cook) so eloquently said, the signal that we would send out by starting such an inquiry at this time would be amplified and distorted by the press in this country and, no doubt, by malevolent forces in the middle east. That is a major reason of constant principle why we should never do such a thing. I am glad to say that we are a democracy that, traditionally, has been extraordinarily responsible in its conduct of anything to do with our armed forces, and we have never dreamt of holding such an inquiry at such a time before. We have already heard the examples of the Dardanelles campaign, when the inquiry did not take place until the year after, the Franks report on the Falklands conflict, which did not take place until the Argentines had surrendered, and the Norway debate, which was just a debate, of course. There was some doubt about that in the minds of those on the Opposition Front Bench, so let me remind them that the debate took place several weeks after the last British soldier and sailor had been withdrawn from Narvik. There is no doubt that that consideration has been a constant principle, and it should remain one. Secondly, there is the practical issue of interrupting operations on the ground by having to question soldiers, sailors and airmen who are currently involved in the campaign. That is not an overwhelming consideration, but it is a real one. It is not true that if we had such an inquiry, we would not need to question those engaged in operations in Iraq. Very much to the contrary: General Rollo, who is currently the deputy commander of coalition forces in Iraq, served in Iraq—in a two-star role, if I recall—a few years ago. He is exactly the sort of person who most certainly would need to be summoned back to such an inquiry. What an extraordinarily irresponsible thing it would be to summon the deputy commanding officer in the middle of a campaign to be interrogated by the Privy Council, presumably in public. The third reason has not been raised this evening, but it is possibly the most overwhelming one of all. If we were to have an honest public inquiry, and if we were to say that the electorate and the public had a right to know all the detail and that the truth would all come out—that is the only honest basis on which to have an inquiry, and I hope to God that we would never have a public inquiry in this country that was anything other than honest—we would have to go into all the issues that determine the success, the limited success, the failure or otherwise of the operation in Iraq. That includes matters such as logistics, capabilities and tactics, as well as intelligence, which is vital in any counter-insurgency or counter-terrorist campaign. Are we going to have a public inquiry telling al-Qaeda and all the militia in Iraq how good or how bad our intelligence is, has been or may continue to be? Do we want to tell them the breakdown of our intelligence among signals intelligence, visual surveillance and human intelligence? Do we want to tell them how good our infiltration of terrorist or insurgent operations might be or how good we estimate their infiltration of the Iraq defence forces or police has been? Are we really going to go into those matters? Are even those on the Front Bench of the modern Conservative party, in its appalling state of mind—in its complete rejection of any sense of responsible government and its willingness to try to make political capital irrespective of the importance or the sanctity of the issues involved—seriously going to tell the House tonight that we should go into all those issues in public now, thereby giving comfort and support to our enemies who desire the death of our servicemen and women who are deployed in theatre? I trust that the whole House will give a resounding negative answer to that question.