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Iraq War Inquiry

As usual, my right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely on the nail. I have pointed out how the Government have retreated from one argument to another. It may be the next stage of the retreat to argue that an inquiry cannot begin even when the troops are safely home, but I think that the Government know that they are in the last stages of their retreat—perhaps it is the last stage—on this matter. The Government have started to indicate that some kind of inquiry may be established later this year, but rather fittingly for a Prime Minister who said that he would end the culture of spin and treat Parliament with greater seriousness than his predecessor, the suggestion that they will hold an inquiry has been made not to Parliament, but to the News of the World on Sunday. It was reported on Sunday:""Gordon Brown is set to order an inquiry into the war in Iraq, the News of the World can reveal. Senior sources"—" this is the end of the culture of spin—""at the Ministry of Defence suspect the review will be announced"—" [Interruption.] I used to write an excellent column in the News of the World, but the Prime Minister of the nation is meant to announce things to Parliament, not in a column in the News of the World. The News of the World continued:""Senior sources at the Ministry of Defence suspect the review will be announced in Mr. Brown's speech to the Labour Party conference this autumn."" This "review"—notice it will be a review rather than an inquiry—will, said the paper,""have access to intelligence used to justify the invasion and records of the Cabinet's discussions before the war. It is also expected to review the Army's performance in the invasion and its aftermath."" This is a small classic in trying to use spin to wrong-foot the intentions of Members of Parliament, suggesting that the matter is all in hand while already seeking to water down what an inquiry would look at, and indeed whether it would be an inquiry at all. If Ministers think that they will get away with a "review", which looks at the decisions made before the war and the performance of the Army, they have another think coming. When somebody as senior as Sir Hilary Synnott, the diplomat who was put in charge of governing southern Iraq, says in his book—[Interruption.] I did refer to that book last year. Sir Hilary Synnott was so pleased that I did so, I thought that I would please him by referring to it again, because this part of the argument remains the same:""Hardly any Whitehall departments got involved with Iraq. There was none of the mobilising of the government machine—with cabinet committees, ministers and individuals nominated to deal with specific tasks, and taskforces—such as happened during the second world war…Instead, there was an ad hoc cabinet committee, where both chairmanship and participants changed."" When someone like that presents such an argument, it is clearly vital for a real inquiry to be able to look at the functioning of Government across the board, and to do so in the period after the invasion of Iraq as well as before it.