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Iraq

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. The Statement is as follows. "Mr Speaker, the whole House will want to join me in expressing our condolences to the family and friends of the two soldiers who recently lost their lives serving in Afghanistan—Lieutenant Paul Mervis of 2nd Battalion the Rifles and Private Robert McLaren of 3rd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland, the Black Watch. Our troops first went into Iraq in March 2003 and now they are coming home, so it is fitting that I should come to the House to talk of their achievements through difficult times, to chart the new relationship that we are building with Iraq and to set out our plans for an inquiry into the conflict. As always, we can be supremely proud of the way in which our forces carried out their mission—of their valour in the heat of combat, recognised in the many citations, rewards and decorations, and of their vigilance and resolution amid the most difficult imaginable conditions and the ever present risk of attack by an unseen enemy. Today, we continue to mourn and remember the 179 men and women who gave their lives in the service of our country. In my Statement to the House last December, I set out the remaining tasks in southern Iraq for our mission: first, to entrench improvements and security by putting Iraqis in charge of their own defence and policing; secondly, to support Iraq’s emerging democracy through the provincial elections; and, thirdly, to promote reconstruction, economic growth and basic services such as power and water, to give the Iraqi people what matters most for their livelihoods in years to come and a stake in their economic future. I can report that these objectives have been achieved and that, thanks to our efforts and those of our allies over six difficult years, a young democracy has replaced a vicious 30-year dictatorship. In recent months, we have completed the training of the 9,000 troops in the 14th division of the Iraqi army, which is now fully in charge of security in Basra. It was the 14th division that, with our help and the help of the Americans, took on the militia in the crucial Charge of the Knights operation in spring last year. Since then, violence and crime in the Basra region have continued to fall, while levels of violence across Iraq as a whole are at their lowest since 2003. Provincial elections were held peacefully on 31 January with 7 million Iraqis turning out to vote for 440 different political groups. The Iraqis ran the elections themselves with only three violent incidents across the entire country. Preparations are now under way for national elections on 30 January 2010. Since 2003, the UK has spent over £500 million in Iraq, including providing humanitarian assistance and infrastructure and promoting economic growth. Support for the health sector has included $14 million spent on 189 projects in Basra, including the refurbishment of Basra general hospital and the building of the Basra children’s hospital. As a whole, the international community has rehabilitated over 5,000 schools, as well as constructing entirely new schools and new classrooms in existing schools. Despite high unemployment and the scale of the global recession, economic growth in Iraq this year is predicted to be nearly 7 per cent. Significant challenges remain, including that of finding a fair and sustainable solution to the sharing of Iraq’s oil revenues, but Iraq’s future is now in its own hands—in the hands of its people and its politicians. We must pay tribute to the endurance of the Iraqi people and pledge to them our continuing support, but it will be support very different from the kind that we have provided for the last six years. As the House knows, our military mission ended with the last combat patrol in Basra on 30 April. As of today, there are fewer than 500 British troops in Iraq, with more returning home each week. On the day of that last combat patrol, I welcomed Prime Minister Maliki and most of his Cabinet to London, where we signed together a declaration of friendship, partnership and co-operation, defining a new relationship between our two countries for the future. At the request of the Iraqi Government, a small number of British Navy personnel, no more than 100, will remain in Iraq for the long-term training of the Iraqi navy at Umm Qasr. Royal Navy ships will continue to protect the oil platforms on which Iraq’s exports depend and we will continue to offer training to the Iraqi army as part of a wider NATO mission. We will also offer training opportunities at Sandhurst and elsewhere in the UK for Iraqi officers of high potential. At the core of our new relationship will be the diplomatic, trading and cultural links that we are building with the Iraqi people, supporting British and other foreign investors who want to play a role in the reconstruction of southern Iraq. I have discussed with Prime Minister Maliki a plan for British companies to provide expertise to the Iraqi Oil Ministry. Earlier this year, the Mesopotamia Petroleum Company signed a joint venture worth $400 million. Shell is working with the Southern Oil Company to bring to market some of the 7 million cubic feet of gas currently lost each day by flaring. British firms are now competing for further contracts totalling $15 billion, and Rolls-Royce and Parsons Brinckerhoff are currently discussing with the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity proposals for a new power generation infrastructure in Iraq, worth an initial $200 million. British funding will support lending to 1,000 businesses in southern Iraq, and a youth employment programme, which should give training and work placements to 500 young Basrawis, could be rolled out across the whole of Iraq. We are supporting the Iraqi Transport Ministry in the resumption of civilian flights. Also, DfID and the British Council are working on a major education programme; Iraq has already identified its first 250 students—an early initiative in Britain’s contribution to Iraq’s plans for 10,000 overseas scholarships for Iraqi students. Issues in the region still confront us. Iran is an independent nation that deserves our respect, and the Iranian people are a proud people who deserve democracy. That is why the regime must address the serious questions that have been asked about the conduct of the elections. The way in which the regime responds to legitimate protests will have implications for Iran’s relationship with the rest of the world. The House will also note the speech of Prime Minister Netanyahu, where, for the first time, he endorsed the two-state solution. His speech was an important step forward, but there remains a long road ahead of us. I will speak to him later today to press on him the importance of freezing settlements. With the last British combat troops about to return home from Iraq, now is the right time to ensure that we have a proper process in place to learn the lessons of the complex and often controversial events of the last six years. I am today announcing the establishment of an independent privy counsellor committee of inquiry. It will consider the period from summer 2001, before military operations began in March 2003, and our subsequent involvement in Iraq until the end of July this year. The inquiry is essential; by learning lessons, we will strengthen the health of our democracy, our diplomacy and our military. The inquiry will, I stress, be fully independent of government. The scope of the inquiry is unprecedented, covering an eight-year period that includes the run-up to the conflict and the full period of conflict and reconstruction. The committee of inquiry will have access to the fullest range of information, including secret information. In other words, its investigation can range across all papers, all documents and all material, so the inquiry can ask for any British document to come before it and any British citizen to appear. No British document and no British witness will be beyond the scope of this inquiry. I have asked the members of the inquiry that the final report of the inquiry will be able to disclose all but the most sensitive information—that is, all information except that which is essential to our national security. The inquiry will receive the full co-operation of the Government, with access to all government papers and the ability to call any witnesses, with the objective to learn the lessons from the events surrounding the conflict. It is on this basis that I have accepted the Cabinet Secretary’s advice that the Franks inquiry is the best precedent. Taking into account national security considerations, as the Franks inquiry did—for example, what might damage or reduce our military capability in the future—evidence will be heard in private. In this way, evidence given by serving and former Ministers, military officers and officials will, I believe, be as full and as candid as possible. The committee will publish its findings in as full a form as possible. These findings will then be debated in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. It is in these debates, as well as from the report itself, that we can draw fully on the lessons learnt in Iraq. So while the format is the same as the Franks inquiry, we have gone much further in the scope of the inquiry. No inquiry has looked at such a long period. No inquiry has the powers to look in so much breadth. While Franks looked only at the run-up to the Falklands conflict, the Iraq inquiry will look at the run-up to the conflict, the conflict itself and the reconstruction, so that we can learn lessons in each and every area. The inquiry will take into account evidence submitted to previous inquiries. I am asking members of the committee to explain the scope, width and breadth of the work to opposition leaders and the chairs of the relevant parliamentary committees. In order that the committee should be as objective and as non-partisan as possible, the membership of the committee will consist entirely of non-partisan public figures acknowledged to be expert and leaders in their fields. There will be no representatives of political parties from any side of this House. I can announce today that the committee of inquiry will be chaired by Sir John Chilcot and will include the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, Sir Roderick Lyne, Sir Lawrence Freedman and Sir Martin Gilbert. All are or will become privy counsellors. The committee will start work as soon as possible after the end of July and, given the complexity of the issues that it will address, I am advised that it will take one year. As I have made clear, the primary objective of the committee will be to identify lessons learnt. The committee will not set out to apportion blame or consider issues of civil or criminal liability. Finally, I am sure that the whole House will join me in paying tribute to the courage and dedication of every one of our Armed Forces and our civilian personnel who have served our country with such distinction in Iraq over six years and who continue to do so in Afghanistan and on peacekeeping missions around the world. At its peak, a force of 46,000 served tours of duty in support of operations in Iraq. In total, 120,000 served over the period of the entire conflict; 179 Britons died and 222 were seriously or very seriously injured. I said in my Statement in December that the memorial wall in Basra would be brought home. I can now confirm that it will form part of a new memorial wall to be built at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire. Just as it is right that we should pay tribute to the memory of those who have fallen and the wounded, so it is right that we should celebrate the safe return of their comrades and their shared achievements. I can also tell the House that in the autumn of this year a service of thanksgiving and commemoration will be held in Westminster Abbey. We salute our forces today. Through their work, the work of their American and coalition comrades and that of the Iraqi security forces, supported by the courage and vision of those within Iraq led by Prime Minister Maliki, Iraq is emerging from the shadow of 30 years of brutal dictatorship and then conflict. Today, Prime Minister Maliki and his Government can work together for a peaceful and prosperous future. That they can do so now is the ultimate tribute to all who served in Iraq—to their skills, commitment and sheer professionalism, to their great and enduring courage in conflict and to their immeasurable contribution to reconstruction and to peace". I commend this Statement to the House.