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Iraq Inquiry

I remember being here on 15 June, when the Prime Minister made his statement on Iraq. I felt angry and upset, and I told him and colleagues that a secret inquiry was not acceptable. Why did I say that? The previous Thursday, I attended a seminar held under the Chatham House rule with my friends for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) and for Newport, West (Paul Flynn) and other colleagues in the Public Administration Committee. A galaxy of stars were there: Lord Hutton, Lord Butler, Geoffrey Howe, Lord Hurd, and the Conservative academic and constitutional expert, Lord Norton—people like that. The seminar concluded and, because I know how things work, I came across from that seminar in Portcullis House and tabled a question in the Table Office. My question to the Prime Minister was whether he""will make it his policy to consult…the leaders of opposition parties represented in the House and…the Chair of the Public Administration Select Committee before announcing…the terms of reference and…the composition of an inquiry into the Iraq war"?—[Official Report, 18 June 2009; Vol. 494, c. 452-453W.]" I got a big raspberry a few days later, on Monday. To this day, I do not know what persuaded the Prime Minister to take the line that he did. If he had consulted with colleagues in all parts of the House, consensus would have emerged and we could have gone forward. What are we trying to establish? We are not trying to put Tony Blair's head on a pikestaff. We are trying to establish the truth. In the Public Administration Committee's report, which Members will have read, we go on to say that apart from establishing the truth, we want to""ensure that the executive can be held properly accountable for its decisions and conduct in relation to Iraq."" That is what we wanted. We were trying to get consensus on the establishment of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into Iraq because we knew that, until very recently, the Government did not want to act. They did not want an inquiry into Iraq—it was a radioactive issue. That is why we, as a Select Committee, came forward with our proposals. No. 10 and the Government knew exactly what we were doing. They knew about the seminar and the meetings we were having, but despite that we got the crass statement from the Prime Minister on that Monday. What did we want as a Select Committee? In our report, we called for a debate and a free vote in the House of Commons on the proposal for an inquiry. I will vote with the Government today if Ministers can tell me that there will be an early occasion when they put a substantive motion before the House on the inquiry's terms of reference. That motion should set out its membership, composition and so on—in other words, all the matters of concern that have been raised in the debate. If I get that assurance in an hour or two's time from the Front Bench, then I will vote for the Government: if not, I will vote with the Conservatives. I have one or two other points to make that have been prompted by what has come up in the debate. Clearly, we need evidence to be given on oath. Until the Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) spoke, I did not appreciate that the inquiry as currently constituted may not have the power to require people coming before it to swear an oath. That needs to be cleared up. My friend the Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) spoke about the legal advice. Of course, we did not get the full legal advice until 2005, two years after the conclusion of the war. The minutes of the crucial Cabinet meetings of March 2003 need to be released, but so do the notes that were also taken at those meetings. I have discovered that two sets of notes are taken of what is said at Cabinet meetings. They are, presumably, distilled into formal Cabinet minutes. We need all that information. It is absurd that an inquiry into our biggest military engagement since the second world war does not feature a senior military person. I was completely gobsmacked to read that the head of the Army, General Dannatt, had not even been consulted by No. 10 on the terms of reference. We should also encourage civil servants who feel that they have something new to say to step forward, and we should give them all the protection that they need to speak candidly and truthfully. I say that because the PAC held a sitting on leaks and whistleblowers back in March, at which a Foreign Office diplomat, Carne Ross, appeared before us. He was our man at the UN for four and a half years and is an expert on the middle east and Iraq. Talking about the experience of many people in the civil service—in the bureaucracy—he said:""There are many other people involved who have yet to tell their story…There are many documents that should come to light."" That was said by a civil servant on the edge of great things who resigned from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office because of what he felt was mendacity on the part of the Government.