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Iraq War Inquiry

I do not think that those on the Government Benches now take enormous pride in the Government's position. Indeed, the variants on this motion that I have tabled in recent years were defeated only by quite narrow majorities, given the balance of parties in the House. I am sure that a huge number of Labour Members want an inquiry to commence, and commence now, as I shall come to argue. To be fair to the then Foreign Secretary, in 2007, she made the further and more substantial argument that""while our troops remained actively engaged and facing real danger in Iraq, it would be wrong to launch such an inquiry."—[Official Report, 11 June 2007; Vol. 461 c. 539-45.]" Many of us in the House have never agreed with that particular line of argument. Those of us who talk regularly to members of our armed forces, as I do at Catterick garrison in my constituency, have formed a clear view that most of them would welcome an inquiry at any time, since they, above all, are the people who have had to wrestle with the consequences of mistakes that have been made and are extremely interested in ensuring that such mistakes are not repeated. Their morale would be raised, rather than lowered, by knowing that an appropriate inquiry was going on. There is the further consideration that in an extended conflict—as the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr. MacNeil) said, the Iraq war has gone on for longer than either of the world wars of the 20th century—waiting for the end of all hostilities before learning from any mistakes is a grievous error. Our predecessors in the House launched an inquiry into the Dardanelles campaign while the first world war was raging, and indeed into events in Mesopotamia in 1916 while military operations continued there. Nevertheless, that was an argument until, in the course of last year, our troops were no longer actively engaged on a daily or large-scale basis. At that point, the Government's defence against starting an inquiry changed again and was redefined on 10 December last year by the current Foreign Secretary, who said that""we do support an inquiry into the origins of the Iraq war, when our troops are safely home."" So, the mantra that an inquiry could not begin while our troops remained actively engaged has turned out not to represent the real reason why the Government would not set up an inquiry in recent years; it was simply one of a number of excuses, and its ceasing to be relevant has led them to abandon it in favour of another, much weaker excuse. Even now, it seems that the Government have to be dragged slowly to the course of action that they know is right and inevitable. The Foreign Secretary said, also on 10 December:""We are not going to hide behind the idea that the last troop must have come home".—[Official Report, 10 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 565-6.]" but given their record of steady retreats from one excuse to another, it would not now be surprising if they tried to hide behind that.