---

Iraq

This inquiry is part of a process of holding the Executive to account, but this House has mechanisms for holding the Executive to account: they are called Select Committees. Any member of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs will have first-hand experience of the limitations of a Select Committee's ability to hold the Executive to account. I, as a Member of Parliament, find it extremely difficult to accept that we are giving privileges to people outside this House, under the guise of independence, when we could have an inquiry that gave Members and Select Committees access to the kind of documents that we are giving to those people; when we could have hearings in public and in private; and when we could come to a view.