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Iraq Inquiry

I think that is the case, and it will confirm to the public that everything this House did not want to know in 2003, it does not want to know now. If we set the terms of the inquiry so narrowly that it cannot carry out the rigorous forensic investigation that is required, it will be subject to the ridicule that it deserves. I remind the House of some of the inconvenient elements that were already in place in the run-up to the war in 2003. I pay tribute to many of my hon. Friends, some of whom are in their places, who at that time formed Labour Against the War. It was to demonstrate in the Chamber that there was not a consensus in the Labour party that endorsed the country being bounced into an illegal and immoral war. It was under the auspices of Labour Against the War that we brought into the Palace of Westminster several of the key international players who ought to have informed our debate. Dominique de Villepin was here, and he set out the French perspective. Scott Ritter, a former head of the United Nations Special Commission weapons inspectors, came here and set out what the inspectors already knew about the destruction of both Iraq's capabilities and its potential to deliver weapons of mass destruction. He gave UNSCOM's evidence to Members who were interested. Denis Halliday, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator, came and told us what a devastating mess we were already making in Iraq and how disastrous it would be to compound that error. On the eve of the publication of the Government's dodgy dossier, those of us who had the temerity to do so produced a counter-dossier, which was Labour Against the War's case against the war in Iraq. It set out the degree of international evidence available that contradicted all the claims that were coming out of Downing street. The inquiry therefore needs to address how, in the face of that evidence, this House could be bounced into a war of choice. A number of hon. Members have referred to the importance of the availability of the legal advice at the time. However, it is not enough to have access to the legal advice; it is also important that the memorandums and notes of meetings should be available. Two of those memorandums that have already been widely leaked have been mentioned. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) referred to the secret Downing street memo produced on 23 July 2002 by David Manning and Matthew Rycroft, the Prime Minister's foreign policy adviser at the time. My hon. and learned Friend cited the comments by the head of MI6 about the need to fix the facts around the policy. However, I was far more interested in the comments made by elected Members of this House at the meeting described in that memorandum. The then Foreign Secretary, for instance, said:""It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin."" In an attempt to be helpful, the then Defence Secretary said that""if the Prime Minister wanted UK military involvement, he would need to decide this early."" Even at that time, however, the Attorney-General said that""the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action"." In conclusion, however, the then Prime Minister said:""If the political context were right, people would support regime change. The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had a political strategy to give it the space to work."" For the Prime Minister, the question was not then, and perhaps never was, whether the war was legal. It was not then, and possibly never was, whether there were weapons of mass destruction. The question was: can we manufacture the case for a war, in order to con the country, the Cabinet and the Commons into endorsing that plan? That absence of legality and the cynical manipulation of a case for a war of choice must be the focus of the inquiry's work. The second note relates to the meeting that took place in the Oval Office on 31 January 2003, to which the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Mr. Mates) referred. He is right to question the absence from that meeting of both members of Cabinet and the UK ambassador to the US, because there were only three people at that meeting from the UK side: the Prime Minister, Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff, and Matthew Rycroft, the foreign policy aide who was the author of the memo. However, that memo said that""the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein."" That is the cynical pursuit of conditions under which it will be possible to manufacture a case for legally going to war when no legal basis for doing so exists. The inquiry must address to what extent members of the Cabinet were ever informed of those discussions. It must address whether the Cabinet knew, for instance, that the then Prime Minister was planning a war of choice in Iraq nine months before it was fought; that his objective was regime change, not the removal of weapons of mass destruction; that he had agreed nine months in advance to fix intelligence and facts around the Bush policy; and that Britain, based on the Prime Minister's approval, was colluding with acts of provocation or assassination. Those are all illegal acts. Had we had evidence that Saddam Hussein had been doing the same thing, it would have been justification for a war against him. It would also have been justification for him to be tried as a war criminal. I am not interested in the question whether the House should be judged according to the accusations of the Hague on the Opposition Benches. Ultimately, I have always argued that The Hague in the Netherlands should be the place where these questions are tried. My belief is that those who have perpetrated war crimes and acted as war criminals should be tried at the International Criminal Court. Those who say that we cannot do that now because it is too late to attribute blame ignore the fact that, for example, faced with institutional acts of child abuse, the House would never accept that we could root out that abuse without punishing the abusers. We are being asked today whether we have the courage to do this.