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Iraq War Inquiry

I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman. Let me be clear, however. I am not suggesting that the inquiry's remit should be over-prescribed—tempting though that might be, and even more so if Liberal Democrats were alone able to write it. However, its remit must be flexible enough to try to get the truth behind the many unanswered questions and serious allegations. They include, for instance, the question of how and why the Attorney-General's legal advice changed, and how and why the expert intelligence was abused and politicised in No. 10. For the sake of brevity, let me give just one example of the questions the inquiry must be able to tackle. This question goes to the heart of the legal and political case made for war, and it is one that could have massive implications in the future. I am referring to the issue of how close Iraq was to manufacturing nuclear weapons. Much attention has focused on the notorious 45-minute claim, yet there has been much less publicity over what seems to me to be the critical question of the validity—and, indeed, the veracity—of the claims made by Tony Blair, in the dossier and in Parliament, that Saddam Hussein was between one and two years away from producing a nuclear weapon. Understanding how that assessment was made could be critical for future policy, given the huge and pressing problem of Iran's nuclear capabilities. People often talk about the parallels with Afghanistan, and the lessons that can be learned for that conflict, but the parallels and lessons in respect of Iran are at least as important. So if there is one question that I think it essential for the inquiry to consider, it is this nuclear question. It is also essential that the inquiry look at that question for the reason that it was fundamental to the case made by Tony Blair for going to war. The evidence, as far as we have it today, is extremely damaging for him. If one pieces together the various drafts of the dossier as we now have them, and reads them in the light of the memos and emails that have been obtained—mainly through the assiduous freedom of information requests made by the superb investigative journalist, Chris Ames—it becomes clear that there was a concerted and politically driven effort to alter the assessments made by Britain's intelligence experts. The Butler inquiry revealed some of that information; it showed that the Joint Intelligence Committee's last major assessment of nuclear capability was that""it would take at least five years to produce a nuclear weapon."" There was a rider that the""timescale would shorten if fissile material was obtained from abroad"," yet no serious evidence—even in the dodgy dossier—was advanced for that. Instead, in just three days, the "at least five years" time scale was more than halved, with no evidence. Butler questions that, but makes no attempt to explain it. There is no attempt to apportion responsibility despite the centrality of the issue. An inquiry must provide an explanation. Was it, as some of the recently published memos suggest, because the Americans had changed their assessment? Between the publication of the two key dossier drafts, in a speech made on 12 September, George Bush claimed that Iraq would have nuclear weapons within a year. Was it the request made by a senior Cabinet official, Desmond Bowen, in an e-mail to John Scarlett of 11 September to reduce or remove any caveats or hedged judgments? Whatever the answer, we need to know how such deceptions can be prevented in the future, and the inquiry's remit must be wide enough to enable that to happen.