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House of Commons Reform

The confidence that the hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) has in the Whips and the usual channels is touching. When she has been here for a few more years, perhaps she will catch the embittered cynicism of some of us who have been here for a long time. I will be brief because other hon. Members want to speak. I challenge hon. Members to consider one point. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mark Fisher) said that there should be a balance between Government time, Back-Bench scrutiny and representing the wishes of the general public. If there is to be effective scrutiny, we often require the Executive to share information with us. If they do not do so, we are incapable of making judgments. I wonder how many hon. Members who voted for the war on Iraq would have done so if they had known what we all know now. The House was entirely dependent on the information given to it by the Executive. [Interruption.] Well, some of us voted against it. I voted against it as I believed that it was against international law because it did not have UN backing. That was a simple position to take. Many colleagues from all parts of the House felt compelled to support the Government because they genuinely believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that he could deploy within 45 minutes and so forth. Unless we work out ways to ensure that the Executive are honest and straightforward with the House, it will always be difficult to scrutinise them because we will be hobbled. I will give a simple example. When the issue is whether the nation should go to war, I see no justification for the Attorney-General's advice to the Government not being shared with the House. Either it is legal to go to war or it is not. One of the most shameful aspects of the Iraq saga, which I am sure the Chilcot inquiry will highlight, is the way in which Lord Goldsmith was effectively bludgeoned into producing advice that satisfied the Prime Minister. Independent legal advisers to the Government should be allowed to be independent. It appears that when Lord Goldsmith put in writing an opinion to Government that was hostile and said that the war was not lawful, he was punished by being excluded from Cabinet meetings until he produced an opinion that satisfied the Prime Minister. Almost the day before British troops were deployed, he said that it was lawful. As Sir Jeremy Greenstock, our permanent representative to the UN at the time, was obliged to say to the Chilcot inquiry, this was not a legitimate war, but it was legal. That is not a distinction that lawyers really understand.