---

Iraq Inquiry

The hon. Gentleman has been in the Chamber for only the smallest part of our proceedings today, but if that is the only contribution he can make, it speaks for itself. It is sad and misguided. Let me return to the points made by the Foreign Secretary. We heard two very important concessions from the Government Front Bench. The first was that the President of the United States was wrong and that mission has not been accomplished. It is important that the record shows that. The Foreign Secretary also confirmed that the four previous inquiries were limited; in the past, the Government have argued the exact opposite—that they have covered all the bases—so we have had an interesting change in the Government's position. They have stood their own warped logic on this question on its head this evening. The case for war and the continuing disaster that has engulfed Iraq has been exposed for the sham that it is. I would like to explain why, five years on from the start of the Iraq war, there is one new reason for holding an inquiry. It concerns our casualties and how we can avoid them. Many of us in different parts of the UK have had bad experiences, suffering heavy casualties in previous conflicts. Going back to world war one, Professor Niall Ferguson pointed out in ““The Pity of War”” that, relative to population, Scotland suffered the third highest casualties of any country; it came after Serbia and Turkey. As to the number killed as a proportion of the total number of troops mobilised, Scotland provided 26.4 per cent., while the UK average was 11.8 per cent. We know that in the second world war, 50,000 names of Scottish service personnel out of a UK total of 388,000 were added to the rolls of honour for having died in conflict. On the basis of the writings of Trevor Royle, probably Scotland's best known military authority, we also know that a quarter of all UK service personnel killed in action in the Korean war never came home to Scotland. Some of those conflicts, and certainly the second world war, were just wars, and perhaps the fact that we lost more people than did other nations was the price that had to be paid. Five years into the Iraq war, however, the statistics on deaths from various nations greatly concerns me. We find that of the 23 coalition nations, the United States leads, which is unsurprising, given the number of its troops there. The next nation on loss of troops relative to population is Wales, and the next after that is Scotland. Some 38 per cent. behind is England. The list goes on. On these islands, we have lost more lives than have many other countries—some larger than our own, but almost all larger than Scotland or Wales. On one level, those statistics do not matter to mothers and fathers—wherever they are, on these islands or elsewhere—who have lost their loved ones. Every loss is a tragic loss. But the fact remains that the number of Scottish military casualties is higher than the number of casualties in almost every other coalition country, and I want to know why that is. I do not know why it is, and I think that we deserve an answer.