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Iraq Inquiry

First, I draw attention to my declarations of interest and apologise to the Government and Opposition Front Benchers for not being able to be here for the opening speeches. I am grateful for your tolerance, Mr. Deputy Speaker, in allowing me to speak in the debate. I was at a meeting with a charitable foundation that could not be changed. My apologies to the House for that. May I say at the outset that I fully support, and have always supported, the idea of a full, public inquiry? My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), who is not in the Chamber right now, pointed out that on two occasions in 2003, we tabled motions calling for, and we voted for, a full inquiry based on the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921. A tribunal held under that Act is not allowed to refuse the public, including the press,""to be present at any of the proceedings of the tribunal unless in the opinion of the tribunal"" and solely in its opinion,""it is in the public interest"" to do so, for various reasons. My right hon. and learned Friend made that clear at the time. We also had on the Order Paper, in July of that year, a motion calling for just such an open inquiry, so although there is now debate between the Government and my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench about whether the terms were those of the Franks inquiry, we called for a full, public inquiry. I hope that that is established once and for all, and that we get away from this rather silly game-playing about what one group called for and another group did not. I speak today as a continuing supporter of what we have done in Iraq. I find that position perhaps a little more lonely these days than it was originally, but it is always best to be honest with oneself and one's colleagues. I remain of the opinion—this does not affect my reasons for why there should be an inquiry—that ultimately, when we look back, we will recognise that what happens now in the middle east will have been dramatically affected for the better by what we did at the time. Of course, that is not to say that everything is therefore forgiven; that is the point of the inquiry. The British public have, for various reasons, come to lower their belief in and respect for politics. They feel to this day that they were never quite given the truth about what we were doing and why we were in Iraq. The question is not whether we should have gone to war, but how the British public came to understand the reasons why we were in Iraq, and so could give their consent or not. That is the importance of the inquiry. It is time—we should have done it earlier—to clear the way on that, to get at least some closure for all of us, and to start rebuilding politics. We are suffering from the need to do so, as a result of other issues that have been around us in the past few weeks. As my right hon. and hon. Friends have mentioned time and again, and as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) said categorically, the Prime Minister in his announcement last week made some very clear statements of limitations to the inquiry. That is the problem. Since then, in the past seven days, we have seen those statements unwind in front of our eyes. That is an important factor, because the issue is not just about the inquiry. We have a crisis in this Chamber. We have so given away the idea that we Back Benchers, rather than the Front Benchers, should control what is done that we have handed everything over to the Executive, whatever party is in power. I think that we are beyond the point where we can play party politics. The fact is that we should have sat down and considered the matter properly, and we should have come to the conclusion that in this day and age, it is not feasible, as the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) said, for us to hide anything away from the public. If we have learned anything at all in the past three to four weeks, we have learned that, now, anything other than openness simply will not wash. The days of deference and respect, and the belief that politicians behind closed doors will always come to the right decision, will no longer wash with the British people. The only way for us to clear the air is to have the inquiry fully in public. The default mechanism of the inquiry should be, "Everything in public, unless," and the "unless" needs to be reasoned. I am concerned that we are leaving it to somebody who is not elected to make a decision about what the inquiry will do, which is fundamentally wrong. Have we in this House so lost a sense of ourselves that we do not want to put an elected Member of Parliament on a committee of inquiry into a war that we voted for in this Chamber, and for which all of us, myself included, have to answer? Why do we not have a politician, or two politicians, on the inquiry? Why are we so ashamed that we give way to a baroness? Whatever her credentials—my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea mentioned them—she is not elected. We are elected. We are the ones who have to be accountable to our electorate. Why are we not on the committee? We have nothing to be ashamed of. We should be on the committee because it would give it a cutting edge. I hope that the Government will think again about that. It would be an opportunity to rebuild respect in Parliament if somebody from this place went on that committee and made a statement about the passion that Parliament feels on the issue. That is very important. Beyond that, I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend and other learned Members who have said that the composition of the committee is simply not good enough. Three issues need to be looked at by the committee. The first is the reasons for the war. The hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes), the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, wants to take the inquiry much further back in time, and there is an argument for that, but I have to say that the number of people whom he wanted to be called might mean that it went on for another 15 years, and I do not think that we want to go down that road. That is a little caveat. The political reasons for the war are critical and need to be looked at. That is why we need politicians on the committee. The second issue that needs to be considered is the military, its equipment, and whether there were sufficient resources for the task. Without a member of the military, or even someone who was recently in the military, it will be impossible to reach a proper conclusion. Witnesses are not good enough; we need some interpretation on that committee. That is why a military person or ex-military person should be on it. The last issue is the aftermath and reconstruction. On that issue, we should perhaps draw on people from the Department for International Development and others who were involved. I remember that when I was Leader of the Opposition, we had a debate or two about the plans for the aftermath. The composition of the committee is not good enough. We need to reinforce it from the House and from the military. My second point is about the oath. We need to take back the power to set up an inquiry that has the power to take evidence under oath. I would be happy to give such evidence—everybody should be. The public now believe that unless something is said under oath, it is not necessarily to be trusted. We must do everything we can to make sure that the inquiry's findings are demonstrably evidence that can be trusted, otherwise there will be more cries that it has not worked. Before closing, I make the point to my colleagues that in all this, we should default to openness. Without that, we will not have credibility. The issue is as much us and our weakness in this place as it is the inquiry. It demonstrates to us more than ever before that we need to draw back powers to the Chamber, the House and the Back Benches so that once again we stand as the elected representatives of the British people, so that their anger, fear, vexation and concerns can be represented in the Chamber. The terms of an inquiry should not be dictated by an Executive who may have political motives for deciding that it should or should not take place in certain circumstances. I hope the Government will rethink the matter. Ultimately, we must allow the British people to decide whether the war in Iraq was worth while, whether it should have been undertaken, and whether that was done for the correct reasons. If they can reach a good conclusion on that, respect for politicians will rise and we will have reached a point where we can close the issue and move on. Like justice, politics cannot just be done. It must be seen to be done.