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Iraq Inquiry

I beg to move,"That this House, while welcoming the announcement by the Government of an Inquiry into the war in Iraq, believes that the proceedings of the Committee of Inquiry should whenever possible be held in public and that the membership of the Committee should be wider and more diverse than the Government has proposed, and calls on the Government to revise its proposals for the Inquiry to meet these and other objections raised by hon. Members and to submit proposed terms of reference for it to the House on a substantive motion for full debate and scrutiny." On a matter related to the motion, but before discussing it, may I express again the condolences of the Opposition to the families and friends of the two British hostages in Iraq, Jason Swindlehurst and Jason Creswell, whose remains were returned to the care of this country at the weekend. Their tragic deaths are a reminder that the lives of many British citizens are still painfully bound up with developments in Iraq, and that there are still three families waiting anxiously for news. This is the fourth debate that I have opened on the subject during this Parliament, and when I heard that the Prime Minister was set to announce the long awaited and much delayed inquiry, I honestly did not expect to have to do so again. This debate is different from the previous ones, in that hitherto we have been pressing on the Government the need to establish an inquiry; our debate today is in direct consequence of the Government's decision, welcome in itself and in principle, to hold an inquiry. The need for the debate has arisen from the fact that nine days ago the Prime Minister stood here and announced proposals for the Iraq inquiry which betrayed both poor advance preparation and inadequate consultation, and which as a result received severe and sincere criticism from all quarters of the House—criticism that was reflected in the reaction of people throughout the country. There was genuine disappointment that the Prime Minister had produced proposals for such a secretive, behind-closed-doors inquiry, despite the fact that both of the main Opposition parties had made representations to the Government that the proceedings of the inquiry should be much more open to public view, and it was accentuated by the fact that only the previous week the Prime Minister had talked of improving accountability and transparency. Hon. Members on the Government Benches were among those who said that they were extremely disappointed that the inquiry would be limited in its remit or that they had hoped for a new politics of openness. The points were made that the membership was too restricted, quite apart from the timing being so utterly cynical and politically motivated, and that the response of the Prime Minister to important questions such as whether evidence would be given to the inquiry on oath was, to say the least, unsure. It was the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright), who is in his place, who put it to the Prime Minister, politely on that occasion, that he should regard his statement as""the beginning of a short process of consultation, so that he can carry the whole House with him"—[Official Report, 15 June 2009; Vol. 494, c. 37.]" Since then, the Government have engaged in a series of climbdowns—a U-turn that was executed in stages as painful to watch as those of a learner driver doing a six-point turn having started off the wrong way down a motorway. The Government have performed that U-turn by getting the inquiry chairman himself, Sir John Chilcot, to announce the changes that we have all demanded, so that no Minister has had to return to the House and admit that the Government were in the wrong. Indeed, Sir John is now busily engaged in the very process of consultation with Opposition parties and others which a Prime Minister who was doing his job properly would have carried out beforehand.