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Iraq Inquiry

I agree completely. The weakness of the Government's case can be analysed in this way. First, the case that an inquiry would harm the ability of our forces to carry out those duties has so far rested almost entirely on assertion by Ministers, rather than on evidence. The Foreign Secretary was asked by the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) whether any military commanders, past or present, had lobbied against an inquiry being held now or had counselled delay. The Foreign Secretary replied straightforwardly that none had made any such objection. Indeed, senior former commanders—such as Lord Inge, Lord Guthrie and Sir Mike Jackson—have supported calls for an inquiry. The suggestion—which, in fairness, only the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford made—that we would somehow face the prospect of rank and file servicemen and women being hauled back from Basra airbase to London to be quizzed by the great and good in a Privy Council inquiry, is nothing short of bizarre. It is a feeble argument on which we do not need to linger. The Government then resort to saying that it is not only the soldiers about whom they are concerned. The fear is, the Foreign Secretary said, that senior Ministers and diplomats will be distracted from concentrating on their duties on Iraq. The Foreign Secretary echoed words previously spoken by the Prime Minister, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) pointed out. He asked who these people are who are so consumed now by duties relating specifically to Iraq that they cannot give evidence about events that took place, for the most part, between 2002 and 2004. Many, probably most, of those who were in senior positions in those years will now have moved on. In fact, we can measure their career progress by consulting the publishing schedules for memoirs and the television schedules for interviews. The idea that senior Ministers or officials will ever reach that miraculous day where their diaries are clear and they can fill in the empty hours by preparing evidence to submit to the inquiry is fanciful in the extreme. And yet the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister have said that fear of distracting such people is a key part of their case for refusing to have an inquiry now. Well, look at what has happened in the United States. It has suffered far greater casualties, and continues to commit a far larger number of troops to Iraq than we do. It has had five separate inquiries, and senior military, diplomatic and political leaders have given up their time and energy to respond to those inquiries. It is to the credit of democracy in the US that both the Bush Administration and both sides in Congress recognise the importance of holding themselves accountable to the American people for the decisions that they have taken, and of arguing their case openly on the basis of evidence. Then the Government say that we cannot have an inquiry because of the state of Iraqi politics, and that we have to wait until Iraq is a stable country. The mixture of disbelief and ridicule with which my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) greeted that element of the Government's argument did it perfect justice. Does anybody seriously believe that decisions by Iraqi leaders about petroleum revenue sharing or forming a stable coalition Government, or the outcome of Iraqi provincial and local elections, will be influenced one jot by whether or when we hold a Privy Council inquiry in London about how the decision to go to war came to be taken? The idea that Iraq's leaders are sitting inside the green zone scanning Hansard online, or waiting for minutes of a Privy Council inquiry to appear, is just ludicrous. The Foreign Secretary shot down the hon. Member for High Peak (Tom Levitt) when he tried to ramp up that argument in an intervention. The words slipped out of the Foreign Secretary's mouth—and were true—that the Iraqi Government have more important things on their mind. The hon. Member for Stockton, North (Frank Cook), argued that an inquiry would give encouragement to al-Qaeda and other terrorists. Terrorists need no excuse for their campaigns of slaughter. If they did not have Iraq, they would have something else. I do not believe for a moment that they would be swayed one way or the other by the existence of an inquiry. The hon. Gentleman also mentioned 7/7 and the risk that an inquiry could feed extremism in our own country. He is now returning to his place, and I say to him that on the basis of my constituency experience, it is the absence of an inquiry and the impression of secrecy that allows conspiracy theories to run rife and plays into the hands of the extremists whom both he and I wish to see defeated. Many Members have spoken about the importance of an inquiry to learning lessons for the future. My hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) asked why we could not learn from Iraq and apply in Afghanistan the lessons about the failure of the coalition in Iraq to recruit, train and supervise an effective police force. A number of my hon. Friends, including my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) in an intervention and my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood), talked about the lack of connection between the military moving in and securing territory, and the relief and reconstruction effort moving in so that ordinary Iraqis or Afghans can see greater security and a benefit to the quality of their everyday lives from the intervention of western forces. Those lessons need to be learned, but there is a further important reason why we should have an inquiry without delay. The hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. Keetch), in a passionate speech, spoke about how future Governments might one day wish to seek agreement from Parliament to take this country to war again. We cannot predict now the circumstances of such decisions, but I fear that one result of the decisions on Iraq has been seriously to harm public confidence in this country about the capacity of the British Government to take such decisions correctly and explain their reasoning honestly to Parliament and the people. I want to believe that the Government of my country, whichever party happens to be in government at any one time, measure the advice given to them by their professionals in the diplomatic service, the Ministry of Defence and the armed forces. I want to be confident that the Prime Minister and the full Cabinet have access to all the information, including the dissenting opinions, available in Whitehall and from outside advisers. I also want to be confident that the Government will be straight with Parliament and the public about the decisions that they recommend on the nation's behalf. The debate has shown that the Government are bereft of any plausible reason to resist an inquiry. It is in our national and democratic interest to press ahead with one, and I hope that hon. Members of all parties will feel able to support the motion this evening.