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Iraq War Inquiry

My hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Paul Flynn), with whom I often disagree, brought home the gravity of the decisions with which we were all confronted back in 2003 by the simple act of reading out the names this afternoon of all of our people who died in the operation in Iraq. Acknowledging that gravity is something that unites the House. A couple of other things also unite the House. The first is the need for a full investigation of our involvement in Iraq. That should be comprehensive and should look at the reasons leading up to the decision to invade Iraq. It should also look at the aftermath and the full agenda that applied after the initial invasion in order to try to capture all the lessons that we owe it to people—most of all our armed forces—to learn for the future. No hon. Member would disagree with that. We can also unite on the ground that we need to be able to say that those people did not die in vain. I do not believe that they did die in vain. I firmly believe that our armed forces have displayed a phenomenal capability and an indomitable spirit in Iraq, and that they have achieved massively. I have heard only one hon. Member this afternoon question whether they will be able to leave Iraq, irrespective of political arguments, with their head held high, having achieved a great deal. It is important to acknowledge the improvement that has occurred. The situation in Basra, the area for which we have operational responsibilities, is phenomenally improved. We have had elections, which went off peacefully and in which people were free to vote. I have been able to walk around Basra and people have talked to me about the same kind of things that worry us here in Britain—jobs, the economy and the future of their families—and not the abject fear that dominated them a couple of years ago and throughout the reign of Saddam Hussein. If all those things unite us, as I think they do, what divides us? We are divided, simply, on the timing. The Conservatives are trying to say—the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) said it, in his usual amusing way—that it is an issue of time. He did not allow the facts to stand in the way of a good joke when he put his case. He was determined repeatedly to suggest that we no longer have people actively engaged in Iraq. He said repeatedly that our people are not actively engaged in Iraq. That is not so. There was an attack on the contingency operating base only a couple of weeks ago that killed not a member of the British armed forces but a civilian contractor. There are, albeit at a far lower level, improvised explosive device attacks taking place in the south-east as well as in the rest of the country. Our people—more than 4,000 of them—are still in danger at this moment. There are still malevolent forces intent on doing them harm. It is our duty—I worry about this in my role as Minister for the Armed Forces—to ensure that no complacency creeps in during this final period of our active engagement in Iraq that could possibly lead to unnecessary deaths. I put our people at the forefront of my mind, but there should be no distractions either. It is no good saying that only the military would be distracted. I do not want the top of the shop—both on the military side and the civil service side in the MOD—to be distracted from the task at hand while we still have people in harm's way. All we are arguing about is the timing. The timetable is not a political one, but is simply a matter of our people still being actively involved in Iraq.