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Iraq

My Lords, I strike a note of scepticism and discord. I recognise that the Government are honouring an obligation and have to proceed, but I am profoundly unconvinced that the exercise will be worthwhile. It is something of a pipe dream to believe that the inquiry as planned, or any inquiry, will lead to closure. I cite in evidence the letter page of the Guardian yesterday, where so many people have already made up their minds and their responses are already predictable. I recall that when the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hutton, was appointed there were paeans of praise about a man wholly incorruptible and fearless, and yet when his report was published and it was considered to be not the one people wanted, it was called a whitewash. Many critics of war do not want a sober analysis; they want an apology andthe heads of Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell on a platter. I chaired the Foreign Affairs Committee which produced the report. We looked, as far as we were able, at many of the documents. I hope that the Government will at least look at our special report and re-examine our experiences if they are concerned—as they say they are—about improving the powers of Select Committees. The responses to the Government’s announcement are already mostly critical. On the membership, I agree that there should have been a serious attempt at party consensus. It is wrong that there is no person with serious military experience on the committee. So far as secrecy is concerned, Hutton was in public but was nevertheless called a whitewash. But I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, that the presumption should be in favour of a public hearing and I hope my noble friend the Minister will confirm that the chairman will have considerable discretion. It is to be hoped that there will be a presumption of openness. The precedent of Bloody Sunday is not a happy one. Eight years on, with almost £200 million spent, it has been a bonanza for lawyers. It is perhaps cathartic, but it is likely to have little effect. Perhaps the Minister will confirm that if the committee really wants to be almost entirely in public it will be able to do so. Much of the ground has already been covered, both in the US and in this country. On intelligence; is there any suggestion that relevant information was not supplied to the Butler inquiry and the Intelligence and Security Committee inquiry or that they did not have all the relevant information to reach their conclusions? As to the pre-planning, it is absolutely right in my judgment—and I met Richard Perle and a number of the neo cons—that we relied too much on people like Perle, who were claiming that our forces would be greeted as liberators, without any serious thought to the aftermath. Of course the dismantling of the security structures, the police and military forces—the de-Baathification—has turned out to be a mistake. So far as the law is concerned, the Attorney-General made a difficult decision. He must have consulted widely, as is normal, before it. There are equally cogent arguments on the other side. It may be that the weight of international legal opinion is on the other side, but is the committee, without any lawyers, to interpose its own legal judgment for that which has already been made? That is surely absurd. There is no legal expert on the committee. Even if there were, that decision, right or wrong, was made in good faith. As to the military, there must have been many lessons learnt and inquiries held within the Army. Much will depend on resources, on manpower and on equipment; much of it is technical. There should certainly be a military member of the committee. Much of the problem is contextual; what people knew at the relevant time. As a former chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, I received briefing from the same individual as the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister, in my judgment, honestly reproduced what he had been told. Mistakes there were, of course, but mistakes of honest judgment. The political issues include our relations with the US and the European Union; the resources, civil and military; the over-reliance on exiles, Chalabi and others; the intelligence, which was shared by most of our sister intelligence agencies who came to the same conclusion; the misreading by the neo cons of 9/11; and, equally, if perhaps not mentioned, questions of governance and whether it was prime ministerial government or Cabinet government. It was clearly a political judgment; it should be judged politically and not by a committee, whether in secret or public, of the great and the good. It is inconceivable to expect closure. I predict that the likely response will be relief for the Government, disappointment for the public and cries in unison of "whitewash", "cover up" and "charade" from the press and from those who currently criticise the Iraq war.