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Iraq

My Lords, I respectfully applaud the fact that this debate has been arranged, as I respectfully applaud the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, has placed this matter before the House. I fear that the arrangements for an inquiry into the Iraq war and its terms of reference are patently unacceptable. The absence of powers of subpoena is a grave flaw. The imposition of total secrecy by the Prime Minister is inappropriate. The explanation that it will ensure, for example, that the evidence of serving and former Ministers will be as "full and candid as possible" lets the cat out of the bag. The condition that the committee, ""will not set out to apportion blame"" is truly absurd. It means that if the committee considers that the previous Prime Minister and the Cabinet were to blame, it is not entitled to find accordingly. It is also extraordinary that nowhere in his Statement has the Prime Minister faced up to the fact that the question of law concerning the legality of the invasion of Iraq was at the heart of the matter. Why cannot that issue be explored in public, and before the next election? Let me explain the point briefly. One starts with the advantage of the magisterial lecture of Lord Alexander of Weedon QC entitled "Iraq: The pax Americana and the law", delivered under the auspices of Justice on 14 October 2003. Lord Alexander was one of our greatest lawyers and this was possibly one of his finest speeches. He laid bare the speciousness of the arguments of the Governments of the United States and the United Kingdom in favour of the legality of the war. A text of the lecture is now readily available on the web at www.justice.org.uk. For what it is worth, I would mention that shortly after my retirement as a Law Lord, I was for a brief while the chairman of Justice. On 18 October 2005, I paid tribute on behalf of Justice to Lord Alexander’s exposure of the illegality of the Iraq war. It was necessary for our Government to find a justification for their action in international law. The Security Council was plainly opposed to the use of force. The only argument available to the British Government was to fall back on Security Council Resolution 678 passed in 1990 for the purpose of expelling Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. The sole reason for harking back to it was that it was impossible to obtain Security Council approval for the use of force against Iraq in 2003. Resolution 678, passed in 1990 in a wholly different context, had no relevance to the international position regarding the use of force against Iraq in 2003. For many legal arguments, some support can be dredged up. While there was limited support for our Government, the overwhelming view of international lawyers was that the invasion of Iraq was illegal. Lord Alexander’s criticism of our Government’s position on the critical matter of international law at issue is quite devastating and fully justifies his view that in their search for a justification in law, the Government were driven to scrape the bottom of the legal barrel. I am in full agreement with what Lord Alexander said about the legality of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Government’s contrary view is plainly absurd and wrong, but the Prime Minister’s decree prevents this debate being aired before the next election. For the avoidance of doubt, I make clear that my conclusion is based on two issues. First, I was brought up to admire American constitutional traditions, and I still do. There is nothing anti-American in my stance. Secondly, I respect the operational conduct of our brave troops on the battlefield of Iraq.