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Iraq Inquiry

Not at the moment, because a lot of Members will wish to speak. The Franks inquiry was characterised by wide and lengthy consultation by the Government of the time with the Opposition parties. That led to broad agreement on the nature, scope and composition of the inquiry in advance of its announcement. In fact, in the debate on the Franks inquiry, Denis Healey, the then shadow Foreign Secretary, went out of his way to praise Baroness Thatcher, the then Prime Minister—something that we would all admit he has hardly ever done in his life. During that debate on 8 July 1982, Denis Healey said:""I must pay tribute on behalf of the other parties in the House to the fact that she consulted all of us about the procedures, the terms and the composition of the inquiry. She made substantial changes to her original intentions."—[Official Report, 8 July 1982; Vol. 27, c. 503.]" He credited that attitude with producing the widespread support that the final proposals received. In contrast, on this occasion, the Prime Minister initiated only limited consultation with Opposition parties—and then ignored most of the points that we made. Ministers therefore have no excuse for thinking that what they announced had the agreement of the Opposition. Asked last Tuesday on the BBC "Today" programme whether the Opposition had agreed that the membership of the committee of inquiry was right, the Foreign Secretary replied:""Yes but my understanding is…I was in Brussels yesterday, but the err…"" That was the transcript, but he did say yes. I hope that he will acknowledge today that in claiming that the Opposition had agreed the membership of the inquiry, he was not making an accurate statement. Let me be clear about this. On the Friday afternoon, the Conservative party was given the inquiry proposals to be made on the Monday. That gave no time for any face-to-face meetings between Opposition leaders and Ministers, or even among ourselves. Nevertheless, we made several criticisms of the inquiry proposals. Only one of them was taken fully on board by the Government. They had intended that the inquiry should be able to look back no further than late 2002, but they accepted our suggestion that the date should be put back to 2001, bringing in the period following the 9/11 attacks. However, we also argued, as I believe did others, that the inquiry sessions should be much more open, and indeed open whenever possible—the exact formulation that the Prime Minister chose to ignore but has belatedly been constrained to accept. We also called for an interim report from the inquiry in early 2010, given the unnecessary delay in its establishment and the Government's transparent intention to delay the publication of findings until after the last possible date for a general election—a manoeuvre that itself reduces public confidence in the inquiry process. An interim or earlier report would help to remedy that. That point, too, was ignored by the Government.