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Iraq Inquiry

With respect, Mr. Deputy Speaker, 10 minutes of most Back Benchers is more than enough, but there are odd occasions when it is not enough. The speeches of the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Mr. Mates) who has vast experience and of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short) should have been extended. They were extremely important to this debate and this 10-minute rule should give you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the flexibility to allow a moment or two for important, decisive speeches in a debate. I have now given away 30 seconds of my time, but I thought that that was worth saying. The Government just do not get it. That is evident again this evening from the languid complacency with which the Foreign Secretary spoke, which led the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) to say that he felt that the Foreign Secretary's heart was not in it. It is evident from the period of time when there was not a single Government Member on the Front Bench and from the body language of the two Ministers who now are on it when the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood was speaking. They were sneering and nudging, utterly oblivious to the fact that her speech will be listened to and read by millions tomorrow and given real weight, while what they have to say will be treated, if they are lucky, with derision. The Prime Minister's initial prospectus for this inquiry proved that the Government just do not get it. When, in 2005, I was elected as the first left-of-Labour Member of Parliament in England for 60 years, I was elected because of Iraq. The Labour party's membership has halved because of Iraq. Millions of Labour voters have left them and new parties—some of the left and some of the right—are proliferating and strengthening, in substantial part because of Iraq. That has happened not directly, but indirectly because of the poison that the Iraq question has caused to pulse around the British body politic. The lack of credibility of the British political class has also been the result of Iraq. The Government still do not get it. If they did, they would have used this opportunity for a grand catharsis, to turn the page and finally leave Blairism behind and call for the kind of inquiry that has been repeatedly demanded in the House this evening.