House of Commons

Thursday 13th June 2013 Commons Chamber

Thursday 13 June 2013

The House met at half-past Nine o’clock

Prayers

Thursday 13th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

Thursday 13th June 2013 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

1. What steps he is taking to increase exports.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

Our ambition is to double exports to £1 trillion by 2020. This ambition was reflected in the 2012 autumn statement, when UK Trade & Investment was allocated an extra £140 million to enable it to double the number of small and medium-sized enterprises supported from 25,000 to 50,000 by 2015.

[Andrew Selous]

The Government have made an excellent start, with exports to Brazil up by half and to India by more than half and those to China almost doubled, yet still only one in five SMEs exports. Were we to get that up to one in four, we could wipe out our trade deficit, so what efforts are the Government making to engage with the four out of five SMEs which currently do not export but whose products and services would be attractive to overseas markets?

[Vince Cable]

My hon. Friend analyses the problem correctly: we have to make a major effort in big emerging markets, which we have neglected in the past. We have identified 20. I have been to the majority of them, leading trade missions, as have my colleagues. With reference to raising awareness, for example, in May, a few weeks ago, we had 80 events across the country identifying 3,600 businesses with interests in emerging markets, and there is a greatly increased tempo of activity in the field through the establishment of chambers.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

What has the Secretary of State learnt from the experience in Germany, where the state-backed investment bank makes export finance one of its priorities and one of its objectives? Does he think there are lessons there for this country that could improve access to export finance to address the problem that he has just set out?

[Vince Cable]

The Germans do indeed have a very good system of export support and trade finance. They do many of these things well. Partly in response to that, in the earlier period of this Government I introduced a new range of short-term trade finance products that we had not had before. They are now picking up a substantial amount of interest, and in the Budget the Chancellor announced £1.5 billion for medium-term—three to five-year—export credit guarantees, which are now being implemented.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

In the Secretary of State’s assessment, what would be the implications of a Brit EU exit on the export sector?

[Vince Cable]

I am going to Luxembourg tonight. I hope that by the end of tomorrow we will have to agreed to launch those very important negotiations. This is potentially the biggest trade deal that has been accomplished for many years, and it will have major implications—positive implications—for British exporters, particularly in sectors such as cars.

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State’s answer to the very pertinent question posed by the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) smacked of complacency. His response did not mention the fact that figures published last week showed that the value of exports has fallen by 1.3%. The CBI also said last week that the trade figures were “unsatisfactory”, with

“still a long way to go. The Government needs to do more to help raise exports to the fast-growing economies.”

Does the Minister agree with the CBI’s assessment? Is he satisfied with the Government’s performance in boosting trade so far or does he think he needs to raise his game?

[Vince Cable]

The game has been raised very considerably over the past three years but the hon. Gentleman is right. The figures on exports are not great and the reason is simple: half our exports go the European Union, where output is declining. It has a major economic crisis. Exports are growing rapidly to emerging markets. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) cited the figures and I will repeat them: 28% growth in the past year to Russia, 16% to Brazil and 16% to China. That does not suggest that we are not trying.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

3. What steps he is taking to improve consumer protection.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

Yesterday the Government published our response to the recent consultations on consumer rights and, alongside that, a draft Consumer Rights Bill. This will help consumers and their advocates understand their rights when things go wrong.

[Damian Hinds]

A constituent of mine paid £20 for the previous day’s congestion charge, rather than £12, having found an authentic-looking site at the top of Google’s listings. The ownership disclosure was out of sight on the landing page, below the fold. What can be done to protect against such intermediary internet rip-offs?

[Vince Cable]

As many of us know from our constituency work, there are a large number of consumer rip-offs. The purpose of this legislation is to provide for much stronger redress, particularly in internet trade, which is growing rapidly—we have had the most rapid growth of any country outside Finland—and we must bring consumer legislation up to match it.

[Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)]

Glasgow’s Evening Times reported this week that one in five Glasgow citizens is currently using payday loans to try to meet everyday costs. What measures do the Government propose taking in their new legislation to protect consumers and, in particular, control the rollover of payday loans, which is often the nub causing people to go into serious debt?

[Vince Cable]

A great deal is happening on the payday loan front. The Office of Fair Trading is coming to the end of its investigation, which will result in action that is appropriate to the competition authority. Responsibility will shortly pass to the Financial Conduct Authority, which has more powers and can be more active in that field. We are looking, in particular, at how we can deal with misleading and dangerous advertising in that area.

[Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)]

At my surgeries I have met residents who have come to see me because they are anxious about having been ripped off or having been victims of mis-selling. What will the proposals do to help them get their money back?

[Vince Cable]

They will considerably improve the rights of redress, and there is a whole series of specific measures in the Bill, which will be debated at length, on how to achieve that. When we aggregate all the redress elements, we estimate that it will probably be worth something in the order of £4 billion over 10 years to consumers.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

In June last year the Government announced a crackdown on cowboy builders. The DCLG website states:

“The measures will also ensure that householders have a financial safety net in place… if… self-check installers fail to finish work properly or if they can’t be chased through the courts.”

Around 85,000 complaints about cowboy builders are made to the OFT every year. Will the Secretary of State tell the House how many people have benefited from that Government scheme in its first 12 months?

[Vince Cable]

I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman exactly how many, but I am happy to write to him about that. I launched the scheme and am therefore interested in seeing how successful it has been. Over the years we have all met constituents who have had appalling experiences with rogue builders. The existing system operating through trade standards has not been totally effective. This kind of branding will, we hope, bring more cowboy builders to account.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

4. What recent assessment he has made of the performance of the car manufacturing sector.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)]

The UK automotive industry is in great shape: last year UK car production increased by 9% and car exports exceeded imports by value for the time since 1976. The new automotive investment organisation, which we are announcing today, will build on that strong performance, which has already attracted more than £6 billion in global investment over the past two years.

[Neil Carmichael]

I thank the Minister for that impressive description of the current state of the British car industry. What measures is he taking to ensure that we have sufficient skills, particularly in engineering, to develop the components industry in the car sector as well as recognising the need to provide new technologies?

[Michael Fallon]

Addressing the skills challenge and increasing the supply of engineers is critical for the automotive industry and others. It needs attention in schools, where the Department for Education is investing £135 million in science and maths education, and from industry itself. I hope that more car companies will follow Nissan’s lead in taking up the employee ownership pilots.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

As a west midlands MP, I join the Minister in welcoming the success of the British car industry, which is a tribute to the industry, its work force and trade unions and his Department under both Administrations. Is it not extraordinary that other Government Departments do not back the British car industry, especially the police, who are buying more and more foreign vehicles? Will he talk with the Home Secretary to get her to back British industry? It might even help her leadership ambitions.

[Michael Fallon]

They may not need that much help.

The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point about procurement by public authorities. He has been to the Department recently to discuss the matter with me and I have written to him about it.

[Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con)]

In South Staffordshire we are seeing the construction of a £500 million new engine plant for Jaguar Land Rover. However, one of the great constraints on the automotive sector is the need for more engineers coming through our university system. What more can the Government do to encourage more engineers to drive forward our wonderful automotive sector?

[Michael Fallon]

We are encouraging more children to take up science subjects and to study maths earlier and for longer, and to be more aware of the high-value, highly regarded careers that are available in engineering. We are urging companies to open up their premises to more visits from schools, particularly in connection with the See Inside Manufacturing initiative that we are launching again this October.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

5. What steps he is taking to ensure that small business suppliers are paid promptly by large businesses and by government; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)]

I have written to all the FTSE 350 companies urging them to sign up to the prompt payment code. Signatories must pay their invoices on time to maintain membership. Three quarters of FTSE 100 companies are now signatories, and over 1,400 large companies have signed in total.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Last year a Federation of Small Businesses report showed that 40% of small businesses had faced problems with payment from Government agencies and quangos. Will the Minister make the prompt payment code mandatory for all public sector organisations and consider budget cuts for persistent offenders?

[Michael Fallon]

There is now a statutory obligation for all public bodies, including the NHS and local authorities, to pay invoices within 30 days.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the Minister agree that paying small and medium suppliers on time is part of the broader responsibilities of the large company? Will he look at the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012, which is making a real difference for small and medium-sized enterprises and their relationships with taxpayer-funded local authorities and health authorities? Will he try to ensure that large companies pay taxes and have a broader responsibility to the community in which they sit?

[Michael Fallon]

That goes a little wider than the original question, but I agree with the hon. Gentleman. There are large companies sitting on large amounts of cash, and it is not right that smaller businesses in their supply chains should have to wait longer than 30 days to be paid promptly.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

6. What recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of his Department’s budget for medical education and research.

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

The Government are committed to well-funded medical education and research and to maintaining long-term funding in these areas. In 2013-14 we will spend £330 million on health education and £630 million on health research.

[Valerie Vaz]

I thank the Minister for his answer. However, the chair of the Medical Schools Council has said that any move of this budget to the Department of Health poses a significant risk of undermining Britain’s leading position in health research and education. Will the Minister confirm that he will resist all attempts at Treasury short-termism and a move of the budget to the Department of Health, as this area is a driver of growth and a global strength for the UK?

[Mr Willetts]

It is a global strength for the UK, and that is why we have protected the Medical Research Council’s budget in real terms. Only last week we had the topping-out ceremony at the Crick institute—the opening of the new laboratory of molecular biology. On the particular issue that the hon. Lady raises, I cannot do better than to quote the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who said the other day:

“I give you an absolute commitment that I will do nothing that jeopardises that vital basic research that the Medical Research Council undertakes, and I would always make sure that that money is not used for other things.”

We cannot do better than that.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

The Government have announced more university training places for medical students and doctors. This is a matter of some urgency given the wave of doctors who are due to come up for retirement and the fact that it takes seven years to train a doctor. Will my right hon. Friend update the House on this?

[Mr Willetts]

I know that my hon. Friend has a particular interest and expertise in this area. Of course, the number of students who come through for medical training is very carefully planned, taking account of the needs of the NHS for future doctors.

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the Minister’s answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), but perhaps I could press him to go further specifically in relation to the potential moving of the Medical Research Council’s budget to the Department of Health. He will be aware that the chief executive of the Association of Medical Research Charities has described the proposed move as a “fudge” that will threaten the independence of medical research in this country. Does the Minister still believe in the Haldane principle, and if so, will he commit to keep the Medical Research Council under his Department’s control to ensure that it remains free of political interference?

[Mr Willetts]

I am happy to give the assurance that we are committed to the Haldane principle and it is important that medical research remains subject to it. That is essential for all parts of the science family. I can do no better than repeat the Chancellor’s assurance that we will make sure that the money is not used for other things, and that if there is any change the vital, basic research that the MRC carries out is not jeopardised.

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

7. What steps he is taking to ensure that small and medium-sized enterprises take on more apprentices.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

We have made it easier and quicker for small businesses to take on apprentices by simplifying the process for employers. We have introduced an apprenticeship grant for employers. The National Apprenticeship Service has a dedicated team to provide bespoke services for small businesses and we are implementing the key recommendations of the Jason Holt review.

[Rebecca Harris]

I thank the Secretary of State for his reply. I, like many hon. Members, am dedicated to promoting apprenticeships in my constituency, particularly in small and medium-sized businesses, but they are often very busy and hard to reach, so it is difficult to get across the message about what is available. Ironically, they are often the firms that would most benefit from an apprentice. Will the Secretary of State outline the specific measures available to promote apprenticeships and any support the Department can give hon. Members in doing so?

[Vince Cable]

May I first anticipate the House’s disappointment that I am answering this question, rather than my colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock)? He is being a role model for our policy of shared parental leave and is currently nursing Humphrey Hancock, who was born a few days ago.

My hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris) has seen the benefits of the growth of apprenticeships, which is one of the Government’s big success stories. The number has grown from 500 at the beginning of this Government to 870 at the latest count. My hon. Friend is right that there are particular obstacles for small business, but companies with fewer than 200 employees already take 80% of all the apprenticeships in the country. We are trying to improve the service. One of the latest developments is the introduction of a website to make it much easier to access the NAS and its services.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

I am sure the whole House will wish Humphrey a speedy recovery.

The Opposition are not at all disappointed that the Secretary of State has stepped into the breach. Although his Department has achieved some success on apprentices, the construction industry is still falling behind its own targets. If we are to get the investment programme under way, it is vital to increase it. Will the Secretary of State give that some attention and get cracking with it?

[Vince Cable]

I will. Indeed, at the beginning of the week I chaired a meeting of the construction industry’s council, which we have put together. Its members acknowledged that skills were one of their key constraints, one of the problems being that the construction industry has been through a very deep, cyclical depression, which has had a major knock-on effect on skills. We are now working with it to boost skills, so that the upswing in the industry that we are beginning to see is not impeded by the shortage of key people.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

8. What steps he is taking to support pubs.

[George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)]

14. What steps he is taking to support traditional local pubs.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

We are currently consulting on proposals to introduce a statutory code of practice and adjudicator for the pubs sector. The consultation closes tomorrow.

[John Glen]

I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. In assessing the possibility of a code and adjudicator, will he take account of the experience of my constituents Peter and Sara Strawson of the White Horse in Quidhampton, who, like many others, though accepting the challenges of local competition and changing patterns of consumption, maintain that Enterprise Inns signed them up to a lease on a false prospectus and then, with a combined wet and dry rent footing, made their business completely uneconomic and unsustainable?

[Vince Cable]

I think we all have such examples of publicans in our constituencies and it was that kind of experience that led to the Select Committee producing four reports on the subject. It also led to our seeking a voluntary code. In view of the lack of progress, we recommended a statutory code, on which we are now consulting. We have had about 6,000 replies, which is a remarkable response. I cannot yet assess the conclusions, but my hon. Friend’s example is fairly typical of many.

[George Hollingbery]

Like too many other landlords in Meon Valley, Angela Ryan, who until recently ran the White Hart pub in South Harting, has lost her battle to continue in business after facing unsustainable rent demands, again from Enterprise Inns. Will the Secretary of State assure me that he will do everything in his power to redress the balance between landlord and owner, so that such SMEs have a reasonable prospect of continuing in business and our rural communities may retain their valued pubs?

[Vince Cable]

My hon. Friend’s example reinforces the general point that I made a moment ago. I cannot pre-judge the outcome of the consultation and we have not yet studied the responses. The Government’s overriding objective is to achieve fair treatment for publicans in respect of rent and beer prices. I think that the mechanism that we have proposed will survive scrutiny.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will be aware that there was a huge Fair Deal For Your Local rally in Parliament recently. It was attended by Members from all parts of the House who support Labour’s view that a statutory code for pub companies must include a mandatory free-of-tie option to hardwire fairness into the system. Is a fairer distribution of risk and reward an objective of the Government’s regulation?

[Vince Cable]

It is an objective of our regulation to achieve a fair distribution of risk and reward. As I have said, the precise mechanism and whether we proceed with the adjudicator in the way that we have suggested very much depend on how we analyse the consultation. The results will of course be discussed in the House.

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

Yesterday’s news about Punch Taverns’ unsustainable debt and its row with the committee set up by the Association of British Insurers shows that the securitised pubco scam is a disaster not just for local pubs but for the British economy. Will the Secretary of State listen to the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, the Federation of Small Businesses and the Forum of Private Business, all of which back Fair Deal For Your Local and the obvious solution, which is the market rent-only option?

[Vince Cable]

We have listened to those three bodies and to many other people, and we are sympathetic to their concern. However, the precise mechanism that is adopted—I am sorry to be repetitive—depends on the results of the consultation.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

9. What steps his Department is taking to help small and micro-businesses grow.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)]

I announced last week that we will extend the exemption from burdensome new regulation to firms with up to 50 staff, and that will continue after 2014. Our growth accelerator scheme has supported more than 6,000 small businesses with high growth potential. We are encouraging more businesses to exploit export opportunities, and UK Trade & Investment is on track to double the number of SMEs it supports to 50,000 by 2015.

[Mr Baron]

Although I welcome the Government’s initiatives to date, given the importance of small and micro-businesses to the economy will Ministers use their influence to push for further tax incentives to encourage growth and employment? After all, cash flow is king for such businesses and history suggests undeniably that financial payback does not take too long to come around.

[Michael Fallon]

As my hon. Friend knows, the Government are making the tax system in the United Kingdom the most competitive in the G20. In 2011, we reduced the small companies rate to 20%. More than 1 million employers will benefit from the new £2,000 employment allowance from next April and nearly 500,000 employers will pay no employer’s national insurance contributions at all from that date.

[Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)]

10. What progress he has made on making shares in Royal Mail available to its employees; and if he will make a statement.

[Kris Hopkins (Keighley) (Con)]

16. What progress he has made on making shares in Royal Mail available to its employees; and if he will make a statement.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

We are designing an employee share scheme that will honour the commitment made by Parliament in 2011 that 10% of Royal Mail shares should be reserved for employees. We are still considering the details, but it is very much the Government’s intention to make the offer attractive to employees, while balancing the overall value for money for the Government and the interests of other stakeholders.

[Michael Fabricant]

John Lewis, under the inspired leadership of Andy Street, who I should declare is a friend of mine, is synonymous with quality and service. Does my right hon. Friend agree that John Lewis, which uses the mutual model, might provide an appropriate model for the privatisation of Royal Mail?

[Vince Cable]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, we are currently considering the way the privatisation proceeds, and we have committed to Parliament that 10% of shares will go to employees. There are different ways of doing that and we have not prejudged exactly how it will occur. I remind the hon. Gentleman that this is the largest worker share ownership in any privatisation that has occurred, and it will be the largest for several decades.

[Kris Hopkins]

More than 90% of BT’s employees registered to participate in shares when the company was privatised. Does my right hon. Friend agree that everybody in this House, and outside, should encourage as many Royal Mail employees as possible to participate in and benefit from shares from a sale?

[Vince Cable]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. We wish to work with employees, and particularly the union that represents them. My colleague the Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon), and I have regular conversations with that union, and wish it to be positively engaged with the share sale process.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State tell the House how much will be paid in commission to banks or handling agencies for the sale of those shares to people who are buying things that they actually already own?

[Vince Cable]

The process will be competitive, as is right, and designed to achieve value for money for the taxpayer. As the right hon. Gentleman will know, it is practice to enclose details of those fees in the prospectus, and he will see that in due course.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

I am sure the whole House will wish to join me in congratulating all Royal Mail staff for producing a doubling of profits this year, and we send our best wishes to the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), for a speedy recovery.

The Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks, who I am surprised is not answering this question, is seen as a fire fighter in Government, but rather than putting out the fire at Royal Mail, he has lit the fuse and put the fire sale signs up. He is, of course, rushing that through to spare the blushes of his Chancellor, who is borrowing £245 billion more than he said in 2010 and is desperate for pre-election cash in the coffers. The Minister signed a letter in 2009 in which he said he was opposed to privatisation, so why are the Government now rushing a sell-off that is opposed by right-wing think-tanks, the unions, the National Federation of SubPostmasters, small businesses, the Liberal Democrats, and people up and down this country who will receive a poorer postal service as a result?

[Vince Cable]

The Opposition have a strange but perhaps rather revealing idea of speedy decision making. The process of bringing private capital into the Post Office started in 2008 under my Labour predecessor. It was one of our first pieces of legislation—I introduced it in the House, it was agreed, and we are now following through in an orderly way designed to get good value for the taxpayer and a good outcome for Royal Mail.

[David Wright (Telford) (Lab)]

11. What recent assessment he has made of the long-term prospects for high street businesses.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)]

High streets are changing and the Government are committed to helping communities adapt their high streets to those changes. We have taken action following the Portas review by lifting planning restrictions, doubling small business rate relief, and providing towns with a package of support to drive forward their local economy. I look forward to giving evidence to the Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee inquiry into retail in due course.

[David Wright]

High streets obviously need to provide a diverse offer in order to succeed, and the provision of street markets and farmers markets are particularly important to many high streets. There is a significant problem in a number of areas because we cannot get road closure orders to allow such markets to go ahead. What work is the Department doing, together with the Department for Communities and Local Government, to ensure that markets thrive, and what will the Government do to develop a market strategy?

[Michael Fallon]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman, like other hon. Members, will support his local market. I had the pleasure of supporting Sevenoaks local market last month, and there is an initiative across the country—love your local market—in which I hope he is participating. I will look into the particular point he raises about highway closures.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

In my constituency, a number of businesses in the high street have unfortunately closed. If they go into liquidation, their employees receive pay arrears, holiday pay and notice pay, if necessary from the national insurance fund. If the business just ceases trading and is eventually struck off, its employees do not get pay arrears, holiday pay or notice pay. Will the Minister meet me to discuss that anomaly in the law?

[Michael Fallon]

I would be happy to do so, but I hope my hon. Friend will not be too gloomy about the state of the high street. He will know that, in the most recent year for which we have figures, some 22,900 store-based retailers opened and 21,000 closed—more stores were set up than were closed.[Official Report, 18 June 2013, Vol. 564, c. 3MC.]

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

Is it not time that we looked at the impact of business rates on the high street, and particularly at the glacial speed of appeals and revaluations?

[Michael Fallon]

My hon. Friend will know that we have doubled the small business rate relief for the past three and a half years, which has helped more than 500,000 businesses. In the Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013, we postponed the revaluation to give businesses more certainty—a larger number of them were forecast to lose under the revaluation than would have gained.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that the prospects for our high streets would be a lot rosier if local authorities did more to encourage motorists into our town centres by reducing parking charges?

[Michael Fallon]

I agree with my hon. Friend. We must get the balance right. It is important that local authorities do not freeze trade out of their local high streets. One action we have taken following the Portas review is to encourage local authorities to look at the total local economy and ensure that there are not undue restrictions on encouraging people to come into the high street.

[Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)]

12. What support his Department is providing to female entrepreneurs.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)]

Women play an important role in growing our economy. We commissioned the Women’s Business Council to investigate how we can help remove barriers and maximise women’s contribution to economic growth. Following its excellent report last week, the Government will publish an action plan this autumn that will improve web-based support for entrepreneurs. We will work with the British Bankers Association to improve women’s awareness of the financial support available.

[Mary Macleod]

If women set up businesses at the same rate as they do in the US, benefits of up to £42 billion could be delivered to the economy. When I recently organised Start-up Challenge seminars for women in my constituency, they were full of excellent, enthusiastic and dynamic women who were keen to be entrepreneurs. What more can we do to stretch out to those women and encourage more of them to be great entrepreneurs for the country?

[Michael Fallon]

If women were setting up and running new businesses at the same rate as men, we would have an extra 1 million female entrepreneurs in this country. Despite progress in recent years, women remain less likely than men to start a business, so we have more to do.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State has recently made a number of welcome speeches in support of women in engineering, enterprise and the boardroom, but unfortunately, they are not matched by action from his Government. Why, for example, has the number of investments by the Aspire fund, which was set up specifically to support women-led businesses, fallen under his Government to a quarter of what it was under the previous Government?

[Michael Fallon]

Forty per cent. of start-up loans have been taken up by women, which is an important advance. In the two-month period from 1 March, 12% of FTSE 100 board appointments and 40% of FTSE 250 board appointments were secured by women.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

13. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of his Department’s export week campaign.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

18. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of his Department’s export week campaign.

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

Export week was launched by my colleague Lord Green in May and included over 80 events across the UK, attended by more than 3,600 businesses focusing on 20 high-growth markets.

[Christopher Pincher]

As chairman of the all-party group on Azerbaijan, I attended the Caspian oil and gas conference, where BP announced its further development of the Shah Deniz gas field. What action can the Government take with UK Trade & Investment further to expand British trade with Azerbaijan in order to address the concerns of the governor of Ganja, it’s second city, that, although German, Dutch and French companies are bidding for major infrastructure contracts there, no British companies are involved?

[Mr Willetts]

We are absolutely aware of the international export opportunities presented by major infrastructure projects and are strengthening the commercial role of our embassies in key target markets such as Azerbaijan to ensure that we secure a fair share of those contracts.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

I attended one of the 80 events, in Derbyshire in the east midlands. There were fewer than 100 people there, and not one from my constituency. UK Trade & Investment has been given additional funding. Will my right hon. Friend explain what it is spending that funding on, and why it is not reaching out? It is all right exporting from the south of the country, but we need to look to the midlands and the north too.

[Mr Willetts]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right on the importance of reaching out to businesses in her constituency and across the midlands. Indeed, we are trying to strengthen the ability of chambers of commerce located in our key target markets to communicate with small and medium-sized enterprises back home. We are specifically helping smaller companies with the cost of going to their first international trade fair, as not enough of them take that important opportunity. We are seeing the benefits, with exports to target markets up by 49% in Brazil, up 130% in Russia, and up 60% in India.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

15. What types of projects will be eligible for funding from the green investment bank.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

The state aid approval obtained in relation to the green investment bank enables it to make investments on commercial terms across the following green sectors: offshore wind; waste processing and recycling and energy from waste; non-domestic energy efficiency; the green deal; biofuels for transport; biomass power; carbon capture and storage; marine energy; and renewable heat.

[David Mowat]

I thank the Secretary of State for that answer, and I congratulate him on getting the bank operational so quickly. However, he will know that under the terms of the EU state aid clearance a number of low-carbon technologies were excluded, including nuclear supply chain and solar, and that carbon capture and storage was regarded as low priority. Does he have any intention of going back to the EU and asking for the clearance to be amended, so that the bank can more closely follow the purpose set out in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013?

[Vince Cable]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for acknowledging the progress we have made. Our first priority is to ensure that the institution makes good use of the £3 billion of Government capital that is now being deployed alongside private capital. We are making good progress in that respect—something in the order of £700 million has been committed. He raised the matter of a wider scope for the bank. He anticipates the answer; we would have to go back to the European Commission and seek state aid approval. I do not currently have any plans to do that.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

17. What the timetable is for the establishment of the business bank.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

The business bank will tackle long-standing market failures in the provision of finance to small and medium-sized businesses. I expect the business bank to be fully operational in 2014, subject to EU state aid approval. Its programmes are being operated from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills as an interim arrangement to help businesses straight away, including the £300 million investment programme launched in April.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank the Secretary of State for that answer, but in December 2012 he told this House that the business bank was already established. In fact, as he has just said, it is really operating with a re-named group of civil servants from his own Department. What assurance do we have that it will become a bank by 2014, or ever?

[Vince Cable]

I do not know whether the hon. Lady is suggesting somehow short-circuiting the whole state aid approval process. The last I heard, the Labour party was committed to the rules of the European Union. If it wants to break them, it should perhaps make that explicit. In the meantime, we operate within the rules and that means we have a team of professional people—they are not civil servants; they are from the financial sector—who are doing an admirable job and are already out in the market with a heavily oversubscribed offering which we hope to see deployed very quickly.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

19. What discussions he has had on taking forward the recommendations of Lord Heseltine that regeneration funding be devolved to local enterprise partnerships.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)]

I have regular discussions. As our response to Lord Heseltine’s report made clear, the Government will be creating a single local growth fund for local enterprise partnerships from April 2015, which will include housing, transport and elements of skills funding. The size and content of the single local growth fund will be confirmed at the spending review.

[Diana Johnson]

On 18 March, the Treasury accepted Lord Heseltine’s proposals on devolving regeneration funding to local enterprise partnerships from 2015, but in late April the Business Secretary briefed journalists that we will not be going down that road. Will the Minister tell us whether the Business Secretary backs the Government’s plans to implement Lord Heseltine’s recommendations by 2015?

[Michael Fallon]

My right hon. Friend certainly does so. It is up to local leaders in each local enterprise partnership to identify their growth priorities and to set them out in their local economic strategies, and those growth strategies might well include regeneration. The hon. Lady will know that Humber has the largest enterprise zone in England. It has already had some £50 million of assistance from the regional growth fund and is well placed to exploit the opportunities arising from offshore renewable industries, as I saw when I met the partnership there earlier this year.

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his Departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

My Department plays a key role in supporting the rebalancing of the economy through business to deliver growth while increasing skills and learning.

[Andy McDonald]

Given the importance of further education colleges, such as the award-winning and hugely ambitious Middlesbrough college in my constituency, in helping people acquire the skills they need for local job markets, will the Minister explain to the House what work his Department has done to encourage local enterprise partnerships to work more closely with colleges?

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

The Department has given a clear remit to local enterprise partnerships to work on raising skills in their areas. It is obviously important that they work with further education colleges, and in our legislation in 2011 we removed much of the red tape and regulation that had prevented further education colleges from contributing to that.

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

T2. The Secretary of State is right to say that he cannot comment during the consultation and to urge as many people as possible to take part in the BIS consultation on pubcos by tomorrow, but does he agree that the evidence supplied to him must be accurate and honest? Given that in the past week we have had a dishonest and untruthful statement to MPs and the Select Committee from both the chief executive of Enterprise Inns and the chief executive of the lobbying organisation for pubcos, the British Beer and Pub Association—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman will resume his seat. Topical Questions must be brief. The hon. Gentleman has had one opportunity already. There is a lot to get through and there are other colleagues to consider.

[Vince Cable]

I pay tribute to the work that my hon. Friend has done on the pubs issue. He has played a significant part in influencing the House’s thinking on it. I am sure he appreciates, however, that I would get into difficulty if I started talking about serious people in the industry being dishonest and untruthful. I will not go down that road.

[Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

In the US, small business Saturday takes place immediately after Thanksgiving, on one of its busiest shopping days of the year, and celebrates small businesses’ contribution to local economies and encourages people to shop in them. It has proved to be very successful. A grass-roots movement of organisations, including the Federation of Small Businesses, representing hundreds of thousands of small businesses, has formed to make a UK small business Saturday happen later this year. Will the Secretary of State lend his support to this initiative, which aims to give a boost to the country’s small businesses?

[Vince Cable]

I will do whatever I can to boost the cause of small business. I was with the Federation of Small Businesses at the beginning of the week addressing many of those issues. In my earlier answers, I explained what we were doing for small business in respect of trade, apprenticeships and the business bank, and the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon), has talked about deregulation. It is a very wide agenda and we are delivering those aims.

[Mr Umunna]

One of the things that small businesses find most objectionable is the perceived preferential treatment that they see some large companies getting from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, in contrast to the heavy-handed treatment that small businesses sometimes receive. If HMRC is to clamp down on tax avoidance by large companies, which the Secretary of State says is a Government priority, transparency is key. Under the Companies Act 2006, large companies are obliged to disclose details of foreign subsidiaries to Companies House, but it appears that the latter is not properly enforcing these requirements. In March 2011, the Business Secretary said that he would carry out—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. What we need is a question, with a question mark—just one sentence. We have a lot to get through.

[Mr Umunna]

Why has the formal investigation that the Secretary of State promised not taken place?

[Vince Cable]

It has happened; I have conducted it. The problem is very simple: roughly 4 million accounts are registered with Companies House and scrutinising all of them in detail is difficult. I have asked Companies House—it is now doing this—to ensure that the returns of the top-350 companies are analysed in detail for errors. If there are errors, our experience so far has been that they are very speedily corrected.

[Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

T3. Does the Secretary of State welcome Stockport council’s fund to assist private businesses in setting up apprenticeship organisations and schemes? Next time he comes to Stockport, will he agree to meet some of them?

[Vince Cable]

I have visited Stockport on several occasions. It has been an excellent council over the years, and my right hon. Friend works effectively with it and on Stockport’s behalf. I always try on my regional visits to meet apprentices and small companies providing them, and I would be happy to do that next time I come to Stockport, which I think will be quite soon.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

T6. The Secretary of State will have had representations from high energy-intensive users in manufacturing, such as the chemical industry in my constituency, about rising energy prices and energy policy and their impact on its competitiveness. Has he raised those concerns with his colleague the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change?

[Vince Cable]

The hon. Gentleman and his colleagues have quite rightly raised this issue on many occasions. There is an issue of price competitiveness for industries such as steel and aluminium, and we have addressed their concerns. He will know that the Treasury has funded a compensation scheme. We have been through a consultation process. Payments will be made quickly in respect of the European Union emissions trading scheme. The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change has also made a commitment to ensuring that the electricity market review implications do not fall on energy-intensive industries.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

T4. It is one thing the Government not following through on their promises to tackle plastic waste in this country, but what on earth was my right hon. Friend doing complaining to the EU about Italy’s plans to ban or phase out the use of single-use plastic bags, and why was the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs not even consulted, given that it is one of its policy areas?

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)]

The Italian proposal would allow for only biodegradable bags, so would discriminate against British businesses that sell similar recyclable or other forms of degradable bag—for example, oxo-degradable plastic bags, with which I am sure my hon. Friend is familiar.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

T8. If the Secretary of State finds himself before the Star Chamber, will he bear in mind that unemployment in the west midlands is rising and the rate of employment is falling? Will he therefore resist any cuts that further threaten the growth potential of small businesses and research and development across the west midlands region?

[Vince Cable]

I am frequently in the west midlands; I was in Coventry last week discussing these issues with the local enterprise partnership. My understanding is that there has been rapid growth in private sector employment in the west midlands and many other parts of the country, and, as the hon. Gentleman will have seen from yesterday’s figures, unemployment is still falling.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

T7. The late payment of commercial debt regulations provide for a 60-day payment period, unless agreed and not grossly unfair. Will Ministers consider a longstop date of 90 days to give small businesses certainty?

[Michael Fallon]

I know that my hon. Friend has continued to raise the case of Mr and Mrs Langstaff in his constituency. The “Insurance: Conduct of Business” rules require insurers to handle claims promptly, and redress is available through the Financial Ombudsman Service if they do not do so. I note that a number of insurance companies have now signed the prompt payment code.

[Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)]

What assessment has the Minister made of the take-up of post-24 advanced learning loans and the potential impact on further education colleges’ finances?

[Mr Willetts]

We are absolutely committed to ensuring that such loans are taken up. We are very much looking forward to ensuring that they help to spread training opportunities for adult learning, to which we have a clear commitment.

[Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)]

I know that my right hon. Friend is aware of the concern about the future of northern museums, including the Museum of Science and Industry. Will BIS Ministers discuss with colleagues in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport how best we can protect the future of our science museums, which are so important in encouraging young people into careers in science?

[Mr Willetts]

We absolutely understand the importance of science museums and the communication work that they undertake, and of course we recognise their significant role.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

A report from Sheffield Hallam university shows that Merseyside’s local economy will lose a staggering £847 million—that is, two years and five months’ worth of economic growth—as a result of the Government’s cuts to welfare support. What discussions are Ministers having with colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions about the impact on regional growth?

[Vince Cable]

We do not recognise those numbers. There is a significant resurgence of activity in many successful companies in Merseyside, as there is in the rest of the economy.

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

The resurgence of the motor manufacturing industry has had a tremendously positive effect on the supply chain across the west midlands, but further growth in that supply chain is now being challenged by the lack of available skills. Will my right hon. Friend tell me what more he can do to address that pressing problem?

[Michael Fallon]

This is a pressing problem right across the automotive industry and other engineering industries, and it has to be attacked on a number of fronts, including through more investment by the Department for Education to encourage more children to take up science, maths and technology, and through industry itself getting more involved in the employer ownership pilots and opening up its premises so that people can see the kinds of rewarding career that are now available in manufacturing and engineering.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

I am sure the Secretary of State will have noted that, while unemployment fell by 5,000 this week across the UK, it rose in the north-east of England by 4,000 to 131,000. That means that 10.1% of our working population, and 24.9% of our young people, are now unemployed. Will he meet me and other colleagues to discuss how we can alleviate that individual suffering and unleash the potential of the north-east economy?

[Vince Cable]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that there are particular problems in the north-east of England, but they are far from new. I was in his constituency a few weeks ago when I visited Durham and Tyneside. The great potential of the north-east is that it is a major manufacturing area of the UK with a strong export intensity. If we can achieve the rebalancing of the economy, as we are determined to do, the north-east could be one of the main beneficiaries. I am happy to meet him to talk further about that.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

The Government are having a really successful run-up to this year’s G8; $4.5 billion was pledged for global malnutrition last Saturday and there has been a highly successful science summit this week. Will the Science Minister update the House with further details of the science summit?

[Mr Willetts]

We had an excellent summit of the G8 Science Ministers at the Royal Society yesterday. We agreed that new global challenges such as antibiotic resistance needed to be tackled, and we committed ourselves to the publication of research and data that are publicly funded.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

A delegation from the Confederation of Indian Industry visited the UK this week. What is the Secretary of State doing to support economic partnerships between Britain and India, and how does he envisage their driving growth in the UK?

[Vince Cable]

The Confederation of Indian Industry was in the Department at the beginning of this week to make the case for the deepening of the relationship, and that is proceeding well. Unfortunately, we are starting from a low base, as Britain’s share in the Indian market is not as great as it could be. The one really big success story is Indian investment in the UK, which is growing rapidly. That includes our largest manufacturing company, Tata, which is highly successful and a very valuable corporate citizen. We are doing all we can to develop that relationship.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Further to the question from the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech), and given the importance that this Government have placed on science, is it the Department’s intention to play an important role, in conjunction with Ministers from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, in securing the future of the three northern museums in the Science Museum Group, particularly the National Media museum in Bradford, which is crucial to the local economy in the Bradford district?

[Mr Willetts]

We understand the importance of those museums. They are the responsibility of DCMS, and that Department is well aware of the significant role that they play, particularly in attracting young people and getting them interested in science and technology.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

Earlier this year, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger), my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) and I decided to use a survey to investigate zero-hours contracts. The Secretary of State has now followed us. Hopefully I can help by asking him whether he will now look into the situation of the 37,000 people on zero-hours contracts whom the Government estimate to be working in the care sector in the north-west.

[Vince Cable]

We do indeed have anecdotes about abusive practices in that area. We also have a lot of other anecdotes to show that the system works very well for a large number of workers and companies. I am not jumping to any conclusions; I am just trying to gather the facts. I should add that the zero-hours contract system continued under 13 years of the Labour Government and that no Labour Minister thought that there was a problem with that.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for Universities and Science for his visit to the university of Worcester last week. Does he agree that the magnificent new library, the Hive, which was delivered in conjunction with local city and county councils, is a shining example of creative collaboration between universities and the local government sector, which other universities should follow?

[Mr Willetts]

It was an excellent visit, and the initiative for a new joint university and city library was indeed striking. It is an initiative from which other cities across the country can learn.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will know of the campaign launched by the Cutlers company, supported by the Sheffield Star and with wide support across the city, concerning the threat posed by the red tape challenge to controls over the use of the name Sheffield. In response to the campaign, the Deputy Prime Minister has indicated that the protected name status for Sheffield will be retained. Is that correct?

[Michael Fallon]

I will certainly have a look at that. It was a point made to me on Tuesday when I had the pleasure of addressing the stainless steel annual conference and celebrating the 100th anniversary of Harry Brearley’s invention of stainless steel.

Walsall Gala Baths

Thursday 13th June 2013 Commons Chamber

Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)

- Hansard - - Excerpts

I rise to present a petition on behalf of the users of Walsall Gala baths. A petition in similar terms has been signed by 1,938 people.

The petition states:

The Petition of the users of Walsall Gala Baths,

Declares that the petitioners do not wish to see the closure of the Walsall Gala Baths as they believe that it is important to have swimming facilities in the town centre. Especially and in particular, we do not wish to lose the only brine pool that is centrally located, well used and much appreciated for its medical benefits to many of its users.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to take all possible steps to encourage Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council to consider the objections of the local residents.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.

[P001183]

Global Food System

Thursday 13th June 2013 Commons Chamber

Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)

- Hansard - - Excerpts

I rise to present a petition that has been collected by Sacred Heart Catholic voluntary academy, in Mere close in Leicester. A similar petition, with 1,000 signatures, was presented to Downing street this morning. The petition has been organised by Catherine McMillan and Catherine Hayles and the year 6 students, who seized on the idea and pushed it through. I also want to mention the headmaster, Gerry Hirst, and the chairman of governors, Father Lally.

The petition declares:

The Petition of a Citizen of the UK,

Declares that the Petitioner believes that the food system is failing the poorest people and that the government should champion aid for small-scale farmers, especially women, to help them access markets and increase their income, bargaining power and voice in decisions; further that the government should champion checks on the power of global food companies, requiring them to report on the lobbying they do and their impacts on human rights.

The Petitioner therefore requests that the House of Commons does all it can to encourage the Government to take such action.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.

[P001184]

Business of the House

Thursday 13th June 2013 Commons Chamber

10:30

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Andrew Lansley)]

The business for next week is as follows:

Monday 17 June—Second Reading of the Pensions Bill.

Tuesday 18 June—Motion to approve a European document relating to the reform of the common agricultural policy, followed by motion to approve a European document relating to enhanced co-operation and a financial transaction tax and documents relating to economic and monetary union, followed by motion to approve a European document relating to the European elections 2014, followed by a general debate on Sudan. The subject for this debate was nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Wednesday 19 June—I expect my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to update the House following the G8 summit, followed by Opposition day (3rd allotted day). There will be a debate on the topic of the economic and social importance of regional arts and the creative industries, followed by a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.

Thursday 20 June—A general debate on carers, followed by a general debate on the east coast main line franchise. The subjects for these debates were nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

The provisional business for the week commencing 24 June will include:

Monday 24 June—Second Reading of the Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill.

Tuesday 25 June—Opposition Day (4th allotted day). There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.

Wednesday 26 June—I would like to remind the House that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will make a statement on the spending review, followed by Second Reading of the High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill, followed by motions relating to the hybrid Bill procedure.

Thursday 27 June—Business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 20 June will be:

Thursday 20 June—A debate on the sixth report of the Justice Committee on interpreting and translation services and the Applied Language Solutions contract, followed by a debate on the UK contribution to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

[Ms Eagle]

In the light of recent revelations about the Chair of the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change, may I welcome your decision, Mr Speaker, to write to the Chair of the Standards and Privileges Committee? It is surely right for you to ask whether Chairs of Select Committees should have commercial interests in those sectors covered by their Committee— but it is not just MPs who can have an influence on Government.

I understand that on Tuesday evening, the Prime Minister’s Australian election guru, Lynton Crosby, addressed the Tory parliamentary party, with the Chief Whip and the Prime Minister in attendance, on his strategy for the general election. He is having a clear influence on Government, but we do not know who Lynton Crosby’s corporate clients are. We do know, however, that his company, Crosby Textor, has long lobbied lucratively for big tobacco. We know, too, that plain packaging for cigarettes suddenly disappeared from this year’s Queen’s Speech, despite strong hints that it would be included. So does the Leader of the House agree with me that for the sake of transparency, lobbyists at the heart of No. 10 should publish their interests and their client lists? We have already had one scandal involving prime ministerial appointments at No. 10; surely we do not need another.

I understand that Government meetings have already taken place to discuss the contents of the lobbying Bill. Labour has been offering cross-party talks to find a solution for three years. Why does the Leader of the House not take up our offer? Will he will arrange for pre-legislative scrutiny, and when can we expect to see the Bill?

At the Coming Year in Parliament conference on Tuesday, the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) jumped the gun by announcing that on 5 July the first private Member’s Bill to be discussed would be the EU referendum Bill tabled by the hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton). [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] I thought they might like that, Mr. Speaker. Normally it is the job of the Member promoting a Bill to decide on the day for Second Reading, but the cat is now well and truly out of the bag. Will the Leader of the House confirm the obvious—that the Bill is actually a Conservative party handout?

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Yes!

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, but let us see what the Leader of the House says.

Will the Leader of the House also assure me that the hon. Member for Stockton South will at least be consulted on the parliamentary strategy that Conservative party managers will be pursuing in his name? Is not the real purpose of the Bill to persuade the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay and 100 of his colleagues to stop writing letters to the Prime Minister? Does this not show that his party is more concerned with pursuing partisan interests than with pursuing the national interest?

Over the last week, we have seen a bleak picture emerging of an increasingly divided Britain. New figures from Public Health England reveal that thousands more people are dying prematurely in the north than in the south. The shocking variations show that someone living in Manchester is twice as likely to die early as someone living in Wokingham. Moreover, a report published by the TUC this week shows that wages have fallen by nearly 8%. This comes at a time when prices are rising and people are suffering unprecedented cuts in their living standards. The regional differences are shocking, with the north-west and the south-west seeing pay packets shrink by more than 10%. The Chancellor used to say “We’re all in this together”, but those figures, added to his millionaires’ tax cut, make that statement laughable. Will the Leader of the House schedule a debate on divided Britain, to take place in Government time?

This week, the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) added his request for a leadership contest to the growing pile in the 1922 Committee’s files. Likening the Tories to passengers in an aeroplane, he said that they could either “do something about” the Prime Minister or

“sit back, watch the in-flight movies and wait for the inevitable.”

I have been wondering what movies members of the Cabinet might be watching while waiting for the inevitable to arrive. “Eyes Wide Shut”, perhaps? “Clueless”? “Les Miserables”? Or perhaps they have just been instructed to watch “The Wizard of Oz”.

Luckily for the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary took the opportunity to lecture him about his “motives and values” last night, and his fellow Bullingdon boy Boris Johnson rushed to undermine him by calling him a “girly swot”. As a self-proclaimed “girly swot”, I remind the Mayor of London that being called a woman and clever is not an insult. Indeed, is not the truth that if the Prime Minister had a few more “girly swots” in the Cabinet, he would not be in the mess that he is in now?

[Mr Lansley]

I thank the shadow Leader of the House for her response. Let me begin by echoing her expression of support for your letter to the Chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee, Mr. Speaker—not least because I think that we in the House of Commons want consideration of the relationship between Members’ interests and their responsibilities to proceed on the basis of advice from the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and the Standards and Privileges Committee, whose task is to secure those standards in the House. However, I also think it important for all of us in recent weeks to have recognised the importance of understanding not only what the rules say, but the spirit behind those rules. I think that if every Member of Parliament lives by the spirit as well as the letter of the rules, we will avoid what might otherwise be excessive and unduly intrusive rule making on what Members should and should not do.

The hon. Lady asked me about a number of matters relating to the Conservative party. I remind her that I am here as Leader of the House, and I speak here on behalf of the Government. Lynton Crosby is not in the Government or an adviser to the Government; he is an adviser to the Conservative party, and I am not therefore responsible here for his activities.

We will make announcements in due course on the introduction of the lobbying Bill to reform third-party influence in the political system. As the hon. Lady will know, the aspects of it relating to a register of lobbyists were the subject of earlier scrutiny with the benefit of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee response, which was not wholly supportive of the original proposals. That has given the Government an opportunity to consider these matters further, and that is the basis on which we will make further decisions and bring this Bill forward.

What the hon. Lady said on the EU referendum Bill might have led people to get things slightly wrong. My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) is in charge of this Bill, and nobody thinks otherwise. As far as the business is concerned, I am looking forward on, I think, Wednesday of next week to having full details from the Members in charge of all the private Members’ Bills of what their intentions are, including on the timing of the Bills.

The hon. Lady raised a point about Public Health England. The data it has used serve to illustrate the tragic divide in terms of mortality between different parts of the country, and they are, essentially, the same data that we inherited in 2010; there is, effectively, no difference. What is deeply worrying, and what is at the heart of this, is that there is not just a divide between, for example, Manchester and Wokingham; there is also a divide between Manchester and Birmingham. The simple fact is that more can be done in many parts of our country to reduce premature mortality and morbidity.

When I was Secretary of State for Health, we sought to address that through the establishment of Public Health England and especially the transfer of public health resources into the hands of local authorities. The hon. Lady did not welcome the increase in resources for local authorities, relative to those that were previously deployed by primary care trusts, to support public health preventive measures. Putting that money in the hands of local authorities will enable them to make an impact on what we know makes the biggest difference to health, which is lifestyle. It is not just about how much we spend on NHS services, because Wokingham gets the least cash per head from the NHS budget, but it has some of the best morbidity and mortality outcomes. It is also about trying to make sure we change people’s lifestyles. On that we are agreed. There are basic things like the social grading of health, relative deprivation, the extent to which people are in work, the extent to which they have good parenting, the quality of education, and the quality of environment. Those are the things that make a difference, and that is, I hope, where our local authorities will use these powers to very good effect.

May I gently thank the hon. Lady for enabling me to announce one of next week’s Opposition day debates, and also say that I hope that, for the benefit of the House, the Opposition will give the House a little more notice of such debates? Next week, for example, Members should be able to see on Tuesday’s Order Paper what the subjects for debate will be on Wednesday. That was not the case this week, and I hope the Opposition—I say this in the spirit of co-operation that we are often able to enjoy—will in future be able to make that possible.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. As usual at business questions, a great many colleagues are seeking to catch my eye, but I remind the House that after this exchange there is to be a statement by the Economic Secretary on the Royal Bank of Scotland, followed by a debate under the auspices of the Backbench Business Committee on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq war, which is significantly subscribed. Therefore, there is a premium today on brevity from Back and Front Benches alike.

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

We are in the middle of a consultation on the draft environmental statement for High Speed 2; the Department for Transport is defending itself in the Court of Appeal on HS2; the Information Commissioner has decided that it is in the public interest for the Major Projects Authority’s report in detail on HS2 to be published; and there is an adverse National Audit Office report on the financing of aspects of the project. Surely introducing a preparation Bill giving unlimited spending power at this stage is premature. Will the Leader of the House seriously consider rethinking the provisional business on 26 June, and putting off Second Reading of the Bill until we have satisfactory outcomes to those four matters?

[Mr Lansley]

I know how strongly my right hon. Friend feels, not least on behalf of her constituents, about this matter and I know that she will assiduously examine the legislation as it comes through. I remind her that Second Reading of the High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill is exactly that: it is about giving parliamentary authority. I believe the official Opposition share the view that such projects should be enabled to go ahead, and the spending authority the Bill provides will enable that to happen. Given the importance that we all attach to HS2 as a project for long-term economic growth in this country, I think it is important that the House proceeds on the basis I have outlined.

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

Now that the Backbench Business Committee has reconvened, will the Leader of the House work with us to redesign the e-petitions system, so that it becomes much clearer who is being petitioned and what an e-petition can realistically achieve?

[Mr Lansley]

I again congratulate the hon. Lady and all the members of the Committee on their re-election, which is a vote of confidence in the Backbench Business Committee. One of the things I hope we can achieve—not least in planning in this Session for subsequent implementation—is a petitions process that builds on the success so far. My predecessor in the Parliament, my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young), was able to introduce, through the Government e-petition system, a measure that has dramatically improved the public’s perception of how Parliament responds to the issues that matter to them, as evidenced in the 10th audit of engagement published by the Hansard Society. There were negative aspects outlined in that audit, but one of the positive aspects was that more of the public feel that Parliament is debating the issues that matter to them. The hon. Lady is right, however: we have a Government petitions system and some parliamentary scrutiny of that, but I think the public want to know that they are petitioning Parliament, while at the same time engaging an active response from Government, and I hope we can agree that.

[Chris Kelly (Dudley South) (Con)]

The whole country was shocked and appalled at the grotesque and evil murder of Drummer Lee Rigby. May we have a statement on what financial provision is being made by the Ministry of Defence for his widow and son?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend asks a question with which Members across the House will sympathise. I am glad I can assure him that the widow and child of Drummer Lee Rigby will receive financial support, as do the families of all those who have died in the service of this country. That may include a widow’s pension, a bereavement grant, payments via the armed forces compensation scheme, a survivor’s guaranteed income payment and child payments. I hope that reassures my hon. Friend and others.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

On 3 July, I will be hosting a dinner at the Birmingham botanical gardens celebrating 60 years of continuous representation by women MPs of Birmingham, Edgbaston —a record not equalled by any other constituency in the country. May we have a debate in Government time on how all the political parties can promote greater participation by women, because we are still far from achieving parity?

[Mr Lansley]

I am glad that there is to be such an opportunity, and may I say, at the risk of flattering the hon. Lady overmuch, it is not just that Birmingham, Edgbaston has been represented by women but that it has been very ably represented? That will get me in trouble at the next election.

The hon. Lady makes a fair point. The subject has been discussed in business questions before and the shadow Leader of the House has rightly raised it. I hope that there will be opportunities for such a debate. Perhaps the Backbench Business Committee will consider it, if the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) and other Members invite the Committee to do so.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

May we have a debate on the mis-selling of interest rate swap products by the commercial banks and, specifically, on why tailored business loans have not been included in the Financial Standards Authority—now the Financial Conduct Authority—review, despite there being similar products and similar evidence of mis-selling, which has been hugely damaging to small businesses up and down the country?

[Mr Lansley]

I will, if I may, take the opportunity to talk to my right hon. and hon. Friends at Her Majesty’s Treasury about that and, through them, to the Financial Conduct Authority, which, as my hon. Friend says, is undertaking investigations. But it is important for the House to recognise the degree of concern of consumers about this matter, and I hope that I get a decent reply.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

May we have a debate on why demand for food banks has tripled over the past year and on what is likely to happen in this coming year?

[Mr Lansley]

One of the reasons is that this Government permitted the advertisement of food banks in job centres, something the previous Government did not do. Giving people access to information should not in itself be regarded as wrong.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend resist a futile debate on the subject of Mr Lynton Crosby not only because he is, to anybody who knows him, a man of unimpeachable integrity, but because he is not a Government employee, not a civil servant, not paid out of public funds, not subject to the ministerial code and not subject to the civil service code, unlike the special advisers appointed by the Labour party who were empowered to give instructions to civil servants, instead of Ministers?

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend who, as Chair of the Public Administration Committee, demonstrates that he understands these points extremely well and is able to answer the shadow Leader of the House’s point better than I could.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

Will the Leader of the House consider a debate on pension contributions in Northern Ireland? It is well known, as per my early-day motion 176, that people in Northern Ireland who were aged 14 and 15 and working between 1947 and 1957 paid national insurance contributions, but that these did not count towards their pension, as this is calculated by taking account of contributions made from the age of 16 upwards.

[That this House recognises that people working in Northern Ireland at ages 14 and 15 between 1947 and 1957 paid national insurance contributions but that these do not count towards their pension as this is calculated by taking into account contributions made from age 16 only; acknowledges that this impacts Northern Ireland disproportionately as the working age in Great Britain changed from 14 to 15 in 1947, 10 years before it was changed in Northern Ireland; and calls on the Government to look at measures to address this discrepancy.]

I have taken this matter up with the Northern Ireland Executive, who say that it is not their responsibility and that it is a matter for the Department for Work and Pensions. There is an issue of equality here that deserves a debate in Parliament.

[Mr Lansley]

I am interested in the point that the hon. Lady makes and will, of course, ask my hon. Friends at the Department to respond to her. It may also be something that she wishes to raise with them at DWP questions on 1 July. She will understand completely that the Pensions Bill—I have announced the debate on that— includes the creation of the single-tier pension, which will be transformative in terms of people’s expectations of a secure income through the state pension in retirement.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Has my right hon. Friend seen my early-day motion 239 regarding the obscene behaviour of Thames Water, which has increased its profits and charged the consumer inflation-busting prices, but does not pay its corporation tax?

[That this House is disappointed that Thames Water, despite having an annual turnover of £1.8 billion, making a £549 million profit and awarding its chief executive a bonus of £274,000 in the last financial year, did not pay any corporation tax due to paying off debts to holding companies; notes that Thames Water increased its customers' bills by 6.7 per cent last year; further notes that Thames Water plans to increase water bills by a further £80 this year to pay for the Thames Tideway Tunnel; believes that Thames Water's 13 million customers should not pay more for water bills to make up for its bad financial management; and calls for Thames Water to pay tax on the real value of its profits, to stop bonus payouts until then, and for profits to be handed back to consumers for lower prices.]

May we have a statement on that, and will my right hon. Friend lobby the Treasury to introduce a windfall tax on greedy water companies and to pass the money raised back to the consumer?

[Mr Lansley]

I have seen the early-day motion to which my hon. Friend refers. He knows, as hon. Members will understand, that HMRC is vigilant in ensuring that companies, including Thames Water, pay the taxes that they are legally obliged to pay. In this context, I would add one further point that it is important to bear in mind. The benefits from investment relief and tax relief enjoyed by water and sewerage companies to encourage infrastructure investment are passed on to customers through lower bills via the regulator Ofwat’s five-yearly price reviews. Those reviews, if they are also vigilant, can ensure that those benefits do reach consumers.

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

May we have a debate on loan sharks and the increasing number of payday loan companies that are springing up in our communities, and an explanation of why the Government are failing to control them? Could it be that one of them is bankrolling the Tory party?

[Mr Lansley]

No, I do not think the hon. Gentleman is right about that at all. The evidence is to the contrary. The Government are serious about this. That is why we announced in March a strong action plan with immediate and longer-term measures relating to evidence of abuse of payday loans, which is not to say that such short-term loans are wrong, but they must not be abusive or harm consumers. One of the things that we therefore wait to find out is whether the Office of Fair Trading intends to refer the matter to the Competition Commission.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Is it possible to have a debate on capping welfare spending? I personally believe that the best way to do it is to cap benefits at the level of the average wage in this country, but it appears that others in the House believe that pensioners should be the ones who are capped. Pensioners in my constituency are very concerned to hear that.

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We must take measures to ensure that we are fair. We have seen in the latest data that people in work, including and perhaps specifically in the private sector, have had very limited increases in their pay. Working-age benefits should therefore reflect such constraint. The Labour party, however, appears determined to allow welfare payments to balloon. The Opposition did not support us on that cap on welfare benefits, and their view appears to be that all the constraint on spending should be borne by pensioners. If they were to abandon the triple lock and do it that way, it would mean a £234 cut in the basic state pension. There are 11.5 million pensioners in this country who will be aghast at the thought that that is the proper policy to pursue.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

On fairness and wages, the Institute for Fiscal Studies confirmed yesterday that post-2010 a significant fall in average real hourly wages has occurred, so may we have a statement from the Chancellor on why he thinks that since April 2013 average earnings, including bonuses, have shot up by 5.8% in the financial sector? Maybe the Chancellor could tell us whether this has anything to do with the top rate of tax being cut from 50p to 45p in April.

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman should know that the broadest shoulders are bearing the greatest burden and that in every year of this Parliament the richest people in this country have been paying an increasing proportion of the overall tax burden. He should also know—the Chancellor will, I know, take every opportunity to make this clear—that we are therefore focusing the help that we can give on those with lower incomes, which is why 24 million basic rate taxpayers will be £700 better off next year than they were under Labour, specifically as a result of the measures to increase the personal tax allowance.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

May we have a debate on the British overseas territories? Quite rightly and reasonably, the Prime Minister wants all the British overseas territories to sign the OECD convention on tax transparency and information. It would be wholly unreasonable for countries such as Bermuda to frustrate this commitment to greater tax transparency. Surely overseas territories cannot claim the privilege of being British and then fail to co-operate on tax evasion.

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, with the G8 summit happening in the days ahead. I hope the Prime Minister will be able to report to the House next Wednesday on that, and I hope he will be able to report on unprecedented co-operation internationally in eliminating tax evasion and reducing abuse and avoidance of tax internationally through international mechanisms. I hope that will include British overseas territories. I know that Bermuda has reiterated, including this morning, its wish to form part of what is an unprecedented international effort to tackle international tax avoidance.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

In a week when we learn that three of the science museums in the north are under threat, may we have a major debate on the overweening, unhealthy dominance of London and the south-east, which is sapping the life-blood out of the other cities and other regions in this country?

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman was here last week and will have heard some of the exchanges on that point. Colleagues on both sides of the House have set out how strongly they feel about the contribution made by some of our national museums, particularly those relating to science and technology, railways and coal mining. Of course, his persuasion and influence no doubt encouraged Opposition Front Benchers to choose the contribution of the creative arts in the regions as the subject for the Opposition day debate next week.

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

As we approach the first anniversary of the wonderful London 2012 Olympics, may we have a debate on what more can be done to strengthen the position of sports facilities and playing fields in the planning system? The Hyde Park Olympic Legacy Group in my constituency is campaigning to retain a field but finding it frustrating, so this is an issue that we should discuss.

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I hope that we are all actively pursuing the sporting legacy. I know that is something that Lord Coe is doing, leading from the Cabinet Office. In my area—I hope that this is true for others—we are working together, through the sports partnerships, to try to maximise the sporting legacy of the Olympics and Paralympics. My hon. Friend raises an interesting point about access to facilities. I think that some of our legislation, including that relating to assets of community value, will make a considerable difference. He will have an opportunity to raise the matter when Ministers from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport answer questions next Thursday.

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

Recently there have been a number of examples of damaging conflicts between police and crime commissioners and chief constables, the most worrying of which has been in Gwent, where the PCC effectively sacked the chief constable. May we have a debate in Government time on whether it is appropriate for PCCs to involve themselves in operational police matters?

[Mr Lansley]

I am sorry to hear about the case in Gwent, although I do not know the circumstances and cannot comment on it directly. In my county, I am pleased to say, the police and crime commissioner and the chief constable are working together very effectively. It is clear that that should rest on the chief constable and the police service understanding that the police and crime commissioner has a democratic mandate to set priorities and strategy and allocate resources, and they should respect that. At the same time, police and crime commissioners, like the police authorities that preceded them, should respect the police’s responsibility to take charge of operational matters.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

With the sixth fastest household growth rate in the whole country, the borough of Kettering has many new residential developments that have unadopted roads. There is effectively no legal mechanism whereby the local authority can force developers to develop the roads to an adoptable standard. Unless they are adopted, there are no parking controls, no proper street lighting and so on. May we have a statement from the Department for Transport on the legal mechanisms it could make available to local authorities to get roads up to adoptable standards?

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who makes an interesting point. In my constituency, which, like his, has had many recent developments, many such roads have been adopted, so it is clear that many authorities are taking up the opportunity that exists. However, I will of course talk with my friends in the Department for Transport to secure a fuller answer for him. If he wishes to raise the matter on behalf of his constituents, Ministers will be here to answer questions on 27 June.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Today the Canadian Prime Minister is addressing hon. Members of both Houses as part of what seems to be a huge state lobbying effort on behalf of companies, such as Shell, that want to exploit tar sands at any cost and weaken the EU fuel quality directive to create a market for this dirty oil. Since tar sand oil is so incredibly damaging, may we have a debate on the cosy relationship between politicians and the fossil fuel industry, both in the UK and elsewhere?

[Mr Lansley]

For a moment there I was pleased that the hon. Lady was drawing attention to the presence in the Houses of Parliament of the Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, who will be speaking in an hour or so. I rather regret the way she then went on to speak about Canada. Canada is among our very closest friends and allies in so many ways. The Prime Minister is a distinguished occupant of that post in Canada and I think that we should welcome him wholeheartedly.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

On 17 April, my 18-year-old constituent, Georgina Woodley, sadly lost her brave battle with cancer. Hospice care for those at the beginning of life and at the end of life is extremely good, but her courageous family are now campaigning for better palliative care for teenagers and young adults. May we have a debate about this issue at the earliest convenience?

[Mr Lansley]

I am sure that the whole House will share my hon. Friend’s sadness at the loss of his constituent and express our condolences to her family. Considerable strides have been taken in palliative care, particularly in relation to teenagers. I have met the youngsters at Christie hospital and University College London hospital, which, not least with the support of the Teenage Cancer Trust, have done a tremendous amount to improve the age-appropriate character of care for teenagers with cancer. There is more that we can do, absolutely, especially in support of the hospice movement. I hope that, following up on the Tom Hughes-Hallett report, we can introduce a system where money follows the patient so that the hospices that provide care that would otherwise be provided by the NHS get the support they need to provide the very high-quality personal care that they specialise in.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Now that we have had a chance to digest the latest report on children’s heart surgery and the flawed decision making to which it draws attention, may we have a debate on the quality of decision making in the NHS as a whole? That would give us an opportunity to debate further issues such as the removal of vascular services from Warrington hospital, on very flawed evidence, and the constant pressure for a merger between Warrington and Whiston, which would no doubt take away Warrington’s accident and emergency provision.

[Mr Lansley]

I will not comment on the particular instances that the hon. Lady mentions, though I have been aware of them in the past. The previous Government used to tell us that all these decisions were being made locally, but some of the evidence shows that they were, in effect, being made on a national basis but were not accountable on a national basis. Accountability will now be much clearer. Following what my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary said at the Dispatch Box yesterday, it is clear that in future NHS England will have a responsibility for commissioning these national specialised services across the country instead of the joint committee of primary care trusts from all over England that did it in the past. That is much clearer and much more straightforward, and I hope that NHS England will demonstrate a greater degree of consistency in decision making as a consequence.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

May we have an urgent debate on the level of bonuses paid to Network Rail bosses? Is it not the case that rail bosses should not be paid large bonuses if they stand in the way of economic progress and also stand in the way of the vital need for a direct rail link from London to Shropshire?

[Mr Lansley]

Clearly, we are looking for Network Rail management to be appropriately rewarded in relation to their performance. I have nothing against bonuses if they accurately reflect the performance that is part of the contractual requirements. The job of Network Rail’s management—I think that they recognise this—is not only about the performance of the railway system as a whole but the many steps they should take through their investment programme to secure economic activity and growth, not least in some of the areas that are currently less well served by the rail network.

[Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)]

May we have a debate in Government time on the Government’s flagship policy, the big society? That will give us an opportunity to discuss the important work done by volunteers as individuals, societies and institutions. It will also give us an opportunity to discuss the astronomical rise in the number of food banks across the country, which is a cost of living issue, and more so than any Government directive. May we have that debate, because this is a stain on David Cameron’s Britain?

[Mr Lansley]

During last week’s volunteers week, I saw for myself, as I am sure that many Members will have done, very many examples of fantastic volunteering activity. These are often tough times for charities, and inevitably so, because of the economic circumstances in which we found ourselves at the end of the last decade. I hope that an opportunity for a debate will arise, but I cannot promise one in Government time. The House will consider through the Backbench Business Committee the relative priorities in providing time to debate such matters. Such a debate would enable us to see how the Government’s big society initiatives are having a dramatic, positive difference. Last week, for example, the Work and Pensions Secretary led internationally on how social investment can deliver benefits to communities.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

The House will be aware of the implications for farming of the 18 months of extreme bad weather: we expect a poorer harvest, milk production has dipped and there has been a reduction in farm incomes. Will my right hon. Friend allow a debate, preferably in Government time, on the implications for food security and farm incomes of the extreme bad weather?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is very knowledgeable on these matters and I completely understand her point, not least because my constituency has substantial arable production. I cannot promise a debate at the moment, but I am sure it would not be beyond the bounds of possibility to cover some of these matters in next week’s debate on the reform of the common agricultural policy.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House ask the Lord Chancellor to come to the House to explain his flawed policy on legal aid? He refuses to meet the chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, the Law Society is threatening legal action, the Lord Chief Justice and the Master of the Rolls are against it, and it undermines the English legal system. We need a statement or a debate in Government time.

[Mr Lansley]

I sat here with my right hon. and hon. Friends during Justice questions a few days ago when almost exactly the same point was made to them, and I heard them reply and say how often they meet the Criminal Bar Association and others and that they had done so recently. I will, of course, draw their attention to what the hon. Lady has said, but I heard them say that it is not true that they are not discussing this issue with those affected.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

May we have a debate on the current and future prospects for private sector employment? As we know, since 2010, 1.3 million new private sector jobs have been created and total employment stands at just a shade under 30 million. In my constituency unemployment fell by 79 last month and has fallen by 248 in the past 12 months. In addition, two private sector projects are set to create more than 8,000 new jobs over the next three years. All this in a constituency that is already in the top 20 for economic growth in the country.

[Mr Speaker]

Too long. I ask the hon. Gentleman to exercise a degree of self-restraint. He heard me earlier exhorting colleagues on both sides to be briefer. He should not then indulge himself in a long-winded question. He might have to wait a little longer for his next question than he otherwise would have done.

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend was taken with enthusiasm at the economic performance under this coalition Government. He is right. Many people in many constituencies will be encouraged by private sector employment growth—by the simple fact that three private sector jobs are being created for every one lost in the public sector. To be frank, the Labour party derided us when we said that we could expect that to happen. It was wrong. This bodes well for job creation and, indeed, for wealth creation in the future.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

Yesterday the Prime Minister was pressed on the issue of arming the Syrian rebels. He said that he has

“always believed in allowing the House of Commons a say on all these issues.”—[Official Report, 12 June 2013; Vol. 564, c. 333.]

However, he was not explicit on whether the House would have a vote. Is the Leader of the House able to guarantee that there will be a vote on any proposal to arm the Syrian rebels?

[Mr Lansley]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was at business questions last week, but I was explicit about this. The Prime Minister was very clear and so was I last week.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

May we have a debate on celebrating Yorkshire? It is the 150th anniversary of Yorkshire county cricket club and, yesterday, skipper Andrew Gale scored a century at Lords; the Secretary of State for Health scrapped the flawed review that was to close Yorkshire’s children’s heart surgery unit; and in my part of Yorkshire employment is up and unemployment down.

[Mr Lansley]

I am glad to have another opportunity to celebrate Yorkshire. At the invitation of my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams), I had the privilege and pleasure of meeting Geoffrey Boycott at the Yorkshire county cricket club’s 150th anniversary celebrations here at the House on Monday. I will enjoy any opportunity to celebrate Yorkshire again in the future.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Since the Government do not bother to monitor how they spend taxpayers’ money through the high street innovation fund, may we have a debate in Government time on the effectiveness of the Government’s policies on high street renewal and business improvement districts, so that we know whether all areas, including the Lifford business association area in my constituency, are getting a fair deal?

[Mr Lansley]

The Government are constantly seeking to evaluate the value for money of our expenditure in ways that the previous Government never attempted and we are delivering better value for money. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was in his place during Business, Innovation and Skills questions, but if he was, he would have heard the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon) pointing out that more retail outlets have been opened recently than have been closed. The industry is undergoing substantial structural changes, not least because of the growth of online shopping. It is important for us all to recognise that there will be an inevitable process of adaptation.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

May we have a statement on how the Government have worked to improve transparency, particularly in relation to the use of Government procurement cards?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. When we came to office, we set out to curb the profligate use of taxpayers’ money through such expenditure. We must think about how much individuals pay in tax and about how cavalierly that money has been spent, not least under the last Labour Government, through the use of procurement cards. The private office of a single Secretary of State spent hundreds of pounds on dinner in restaurants and on hotels. We have curbed all that. It is important, in so many ways, that we do not go back to the days of the last Labour Government.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister walked out of the cross-party talks on a press charter, there was nothing in the Queen’s Speech on lobbying and, although we all understand the need for international action on aggressive tax avoidance, there has been no legislative proposal in the UK. In contrast, the French Government have taken action this week to insist that companies that make money in France have to pay tax there. In the interests of a fairer and more transparent society, will the Leader of the House tell us when the Government will bring forward proper measures to tackle those three important areas?

[Mr Lansley]

I am slightly staggered that the hon. Lady says all those things. I think I am in a different world. She should pay attention to what is happening. The Government have taken unprecedented action to secure international action on tax avoidance and are bringing forward legislation on general anti-avoidance measures. I have announced that we will bring forward legislation to tackle third-party influence on the political system, which will include a statutory register on lobbying. The hon. Lady has to catch up with what is going on.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

May we have a debate on strengths and weaknesses? Five years ago, unemployment in Tamworth stood at 1,821, which was the highest in a decade. Today, it stands at 1,462, which is the lowest since before the Balls bust. May we discuss the strengths of the present Government’s economic handling, the weaknesses of Labour’s approach and the dangers of trusting weakness again?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I wish that I could have announced a debate for that purpose, but the pressures on business are such that I could not. Such a debate would have enabled us to compare the record of this Government with that of the previous Government, under whom the national debt doubled and the gross domestic product of the country fell by 6.3%, and who borrowed one pound in every four that they spent and left us with the biggest budget deficit in the developed world. In contrast, the deficit is now down by a third, more than 1.25 million more people are working in the private sector and, last year, employment grew faster in the UK than in any other G7 country. I hope that we have an opportunity to debate that contrast.

[David Wright (Telford) (Lab)]

Returning to the subject of films, people in Shropshire feel like it is groundhog day because the rail service that they had hoped would be provided to the county has been blocked. I associate myself with the remarks of the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard), who on this matter, as on many others, is my hon. Friend. May we have a statement from a Minister about the direct rail service from Shropshire to London, because it is important for the local economy and local people really want it?

[Mr Lansley]

I will, of course, raise the point made by the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) with my friends in the Department for Transport, and ask them to respond directly to all Shropshire MPs about the rail service to that area.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

The House should congratulate the European Parliament on its vote yesterday to make Governments and companies publish what they pay for oil, gas, timber and mining extraction in resource-rich countries. Coupled with US laws, it means that transparency standards cover 65% of the world’s revenues from those sources, and that may be followed by similar laws in Canada, Switzerland and Australia. Will the Leader of the House urge the Prime Minister not to miss the opportunity to show great leadership of the G8 by ensuring that the UK has an open, public register of company share ownership, so that we can lead the world in rooting out tax evasion, corruption and money laundering?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend will forgive me if I do not expose my ignorance of the precise detail of those measures. I hope that she and all colleagues know that the Prime Minister is determined that at the G8 summit, in addition to promoting trade for economic growth and measures to deal with tax avoidance and evasion, we are also concerned to promote growth and development in the context of much greater transparency. I hope that that issue will be reported positively at the G8.

[Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)]

In the context of pressure on household incomes, in Harrogate and Knaresborough we are benefiting from the fourth consecutive year of a council tax freeze from the Conservative-run borough council. We benefited disproportionately from the cut in fuel duty; I do not know whether we benefited disproportionately from the cut in beer duty, but I do know that in April, 1,833 people were taken out of paying income tax and a further 36,000 received a tax cut. May we have a debate on the actions being taken to help with the cost of living?

[Mr Lansley]

I cannot promise a debate immediately but it would be good if we could have one as that would give us the opportunity to reiterate some of the points raised by my hon. Friend, including that 3 million people on low pay will be taken out of income tax altogether by the coalition Government as a result of our changes to the personal tax allowance. The typical motorist will save £40 a year on petrol and diesel, in contrast to what the price would have been under the previous Government and the fuel duty escalator. Not least, we are also helping councils to fund a council tax freeze. Most of us recall that under the previous Labour Government, council tax doubled. We are now coming to the fourth year of this coalition Government, and that is a dramatic contrast in the impact on people’s household bills.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

May we have a statement from the Leader of the House on how private Members’ Bills work on Friday—especially for Members who are not often present on Friday—pointing out that they are for Members to introduce legislation that the Government are not prepared to introduce? Will he also point out that only one party in this House is prepared to introduce an EU referendum Bill? I am sure that the Bill from my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) will be different from the handout Bill the Conservative party published, and it will probably receive support from some brave Labour Members as well.

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend perhaps invites Members to be in the Chamber for private Members’ Bills on Fridays, and it would be jolly good if they were to attend for that purpose. On the procedure for private Members’ Bills, I will, if I may, await the report by the Procedure Committee, which has been inquiring into the matter. I hope it will soon report on the issue and give us some guidance.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

Following the earlier request from the hon. Member for St Helens North (Mr Watts) for a debate on payday loans, and given the welcome announcement from my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister yesterday about easing restrictions on credit unions in the short-term loans market and ongoing Government support for credit unions and the expansion project, may we have a debate that combines how to cut out predatory and excessive cost lenders with how to help the responsible alternative credit unions reach their full potential?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend makes a good point and in addition to the payday action plan that I referred to in response to an earlier question, it is important—as he says—that the Government have announced they will raise the credit union interest rate cap from 2% to 3%. That should reduce the losses made on loans, increase stability in the sector, and improve consumer access. The Government have also committed up to £38 million in additional investment in credit unions, which should increase access for at least 1 million more people. I hope that will do what my hon. Friend asks in promoting credit unions as an alternative.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

The headmaster of Bishop Wordsworth’s school informs me that, by the end of the current spending review period, he will receive £150,000 a year less for sixth-form provision. May we have a statement from the Education Secretary on how he is enabling excellent schools such as Bishop’s to thrive as well as providing funding for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds?

[Mr Lansley]

I know my hon. Friend has written to Department for Education Ministers—I will encourage them to respond more fully than I can now—but he knows that we have taken steps to protect funding in school budgets with a minimum funding guarantee. Announcements were made only last week, I believe, on further simplifying and protecting schools in the context of the complex structure of school funding we inherited from Labour. I hope we can go further in that regard after the spending review.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

May we have a debate on tax reform? Hon. Members are concerned about the shameless tax avoidance by the likes of Google and Amazon, and, we now learn, by the Labour party. They need to change, but we need to consider what we can do to fix things for the long term.

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is perfectly obvious that we need to ensure that we actively enforce the current legislation. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has set out to do so. Something like—[Interruption.] Thank you. If I am at all disorderly, Mr Speaker will tell me; I do not need the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) to do so. HMRC has secured something like £23 billion in total through improved enforcement measures and up to £2 billion in revenue in relation to contentious current issues such as transfer pricing in large companies. My hon. Friend makes an important point. We should not only enforce the law as it is, but look continuously to ensure that it is clear and ensures that everybody makes their contribution. Tax rates can be lower if everybody is under the law and pays the tax they are due to pay and the appropriate level in relation to their activities.

Royal Bank of Scotland

Thursday 13th June 2013 Commons Chamber

11:27

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Sajid Javid)]

Yesterday, RBS announced that the group chief executive, Stephen Hester, will step down from his position later this year. The decision was taken in the context of moving from the rescue phase to the next phase, and of focusing RBS on becoming a UK bank that provides greater support to the British economy, helping businesses and job creation here, and which can return to the private sector in a way that ensures value for the taxpayer.

As we commend Stephen Hester for the job he has done, it is worth considering how far RBS has come since the onset of the financial crisis. When Stephen Hester took over, the bank was on the edge of collapse with a broken culture, and posed a huge risk to financial stability. It had been bailed out by the British taxpayer at a cost of more than £45 billion. He brought it back from the brink, and since then has worked hard to make RBS a safer and stronger bank that is better able to support its customers.

RBS has changed substantially over the past few years. It exited the asset protection scheme last year, and non-core assets have been run down from about £258 billion in 2008 to £53 billion now; total assets of RBS investment banking operations are down from around £500 billion to £288 billion; short-term borrowing is down by more than £250 billion; its core loan-to-deposit ratio is now below 100%, which means that the core bank is funded entirely by deposits; and the core tier 1 capital ratio has more than doubled. The size and complexity of RBS has been significantly reduced, with a far greater focus on serving its UK customers. Entire business lines have been exited, and there has been a dramatic simplification, rationalisation and de-risking of the bank’s business model. That is an impressive list of achievements, and is one of the largest corporate restructurings in history. Stephen Hester has made an important contribution to Britain’s recovery from the financial crisis. I am sure that all hon. Members would like to join me in congratulating him on all he has done and achieved during his time at the bank. It is reassuring that he is staying on to ensure a smooth transition to his successor.

RBS has outlined the details of Stephen Hester’s leaving package. This is a matter for the RBS board, but I want the House to be fully aware of the terms of this package. At the point of Stephen Hester’s departure, and in line with his contractual obligations, he will receive a payment in lieu of notice representing one year’s salary and benefits. This amounts to £1.6 million. He will not receive a bonus for 2013. At the board’s discretion, Stephen Hester will keep his unvested long-term investment plan, or LTIP, awards. These will be reduced significantly through pro-rating for time of service. These awards are also subject to assessment against published performance conditions at the end of the respective performance period. Following this pro-rating and performance assessment, RBS estimates that the value of the LTIPs would be approximately £3 million at their current share price. In addition, the number of shares that Stephen Hester can receive is capped at 65% of the total, which would be just over £4 million at today’s share price. These payments are in line with his contractual terms, and the share awards will reflect payment for performance up to the point of his departure.

During his five-year term in office, Stephen Hester received one bonus out of a possible five. I also wanted to let the House know that Stephen Hester’s leaving package is expected to be worth about one third of the maximum he could have received under the contract that was agreed in 2008 by the previous Government.

RBS is now moving from the rescue phase to the next phase, which involves focusing on becoming a UK bank that provides greater support to the British economy and is prepared for its return to the private sector. The Government have always been clear about wanting RBS to become a more focused retail and commercial bank that is focused on supporting the British economy and has a much smaller international investment banking arm. RBS has already made progress towards this goal.

I expect the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, which was established last year, to report soon, but let me briefly remind everyone of what the Government have already achieved in the financial sector. First, we have introduced a brand new watchdog with powers to keep our banks safe, so that they do not bring down the economy. In April, the Financial Services Authority was abolished and the Bank of England is now in charge of keeping our financial system safe, with the transfer of responsibility for prudential regulation to a new subsidiary of the Bank, the Prudential Regulation Authority. With the authority that comes from its history and the new powers we have given it, the Bank of England is empowered to protect our financial system. We have also created a strong new conduct regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, to ensure that London and the UK have the best and most open, transparently policed markets in the world.

Secondly, we are taking legislation through Parliament to introduce a law, following the recommendations of Sir John Vickers and his Commission, that will for the first time ever erect a ring fence around a major retail bank, so that its essential operations will continue even if the whole bank fails. This will protect the high street and the taxpayer from the mistakes of the dealing floor. Following the recommendations of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, we will be making further changes on Report to further strengthen the ring-fencing regime and electrify the ring fence.

The third area of the Government’s focus has been to engender a change in the culture and ethics of the banking industry itself. As members of the House know, we asked the Parliamentary Commission to look at how to improve the professional standards and culture of the banking sector. As I mentioned, its work is coming to an end and I expect it to report soon.

Fourthly, we will give customers the most powerful weapon of all: choice, which is the most powerful tool we have to improve markets and customer service, reward good companies and penalise poor ones. We have made a start with the sale of Northern Rock to Virgin Money and we are seeing new banks, such as Metro Bank, on our high streets. This year we are taking a huge step towards making it easier for customers to move if they can get a better deal elsewhere. From this September, every customer of every bank in Britain will be able to switch their bank account from their existing bank to another one within seven days. This is real progress.

We are still mopping up the huge economic mess we inherited from the Labour party. We will not take economic recovery for granted and will continue to deliver our clear plan to deal with the problems that it left behind. [Interruption.] I thought that would get them excited, Madam Deputy Speaker. RBS has been brought back from the brink, and now is the time to move on from the rescue phase and focus on RBS being a UK bank that provides greater support to the British economy, a bank that helps businesses here, a bank that helps job creation here and a bank that can return to the private sector in a way that ensures value for money for the taxpayer.

11:35

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Opposition are very surprised that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has not come to the House of Commons today to respond to growing speculation that he has already decided the fate of the Royal Bank of Scotland. The Government’s handling of this matter has already caused widespread concern. Stephen Hester did an important job starting the process of turning RBS around, but clearly there is a long way still to go, as he has said himself, so I want to ask the Minister about the four key points on which we need urgent clarification.

First, on the departure of the chief executive, did Stephen Hester go voluntarily or was he pushed? What role did the Chancellor have in prompting his departure? When did the Chancellor set out to the chairman and the board his desire that Stephen Hester should go and is there now any role for United Kingdom Financial Investments, or has it been circumvented in the discussion on the chief executive’s role? Can the Minister explain why they got rid of the current chief executive before finding a successor? Was that really a sensible thing to do? Why have they left such uncertainty? Is the 6% fall in RBS’s share price this morning, wiping off nearly £2 billion from the value of the taxpayers’ stake, a reflection of this confusion? Can the Minister clarify reports this morning that the chairman of RBS has indicated that he will also leave if and when a new chief executive is found?

Secondly, did the chairman, Sir Philip Hampton, let the cat out of the bag when he admitted to journalists last night that the Chancellor wants a sale by the end of 2014? Sir Philip said:

“The acceleration of considering succession for a CEO role arises largely from the Treasury’s determination...where it can be returned to the private sector by the end of 2014”.

Will the Minister tell us now what the Chancellor told the chairman and the board? Is it just a coincidence that the end of 2014 would fit neatly into the Chancellor’s pre-election political timetable? Should the time scales not be driven by the best interests of the taxpayer and the British economy instead?

Thirdly, are the public wrong to suspect that this generous severance payment for Stephen Hester is just a foretaste of the wider loss that will be made for the taxpayer if they rush headlong into a pre-election fire sale? Given that Stephen Hester said yesterday that he was confident that RBS was capable of being worth more than the £45 billion the taxpayer originally paid, why is the Chancellor rushing to prove him wrong? Stephen Hester told the BBC last night that RBS was capable of being worth more than what the Government paid for the shares. Does the Minister agree? If not, why not?

Fourthly, can the Minister explain why it is sensible to intervene in the executive management of RBS rather than have an orderly process of repairing the bank and thoroughly considering the full range of future options for this institution—a process that has incredible ramifications for our whole economy? We look forward to the report from the cross-party Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards and any views it might have on this, but rather than this shambolic and uncertain approach, surely we need a clear, methodical process and a detailed exploration of how the shape and structure of RBS can best serve our economy in the longer term.

Finally, why has the Chancellor not come to Parliament to set out what is obviously a change of policy? No disrespect to the Minister, but it is his boss we need to hear from today. Should not the Chancellor set out his plans first to this House and not to the Mansion House?

[Sajid Javid]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. I will start with his final question, if I may. He asked why the Chancellor is not here. That is because I am here; I thought the hon. Gentleman would be pleased to see me. I could well ask him where his boss, the shadow Chancellor, is. If this is such an important issue for the Opposition, the shadow Chancellor might have turned up.

I was also hoping that I might get an apology from the hon. Gentleman and some recognition that the only reason we are here discussing this topic today is the previous Government’s failure to regulate our banking system, which led to more than £45 billion of taxpayers’ money being injected into bailing out a bank—the world’s largest banking bail-out.

Let me turn to the hon. Gentleman’s four questions. First, he asked about the sequence or the terms of Stephen Hester’s departure. I am pleased to confirm to him that the Chancellor has not been directly involved in meeting with Stephen Hester prior to the announcement —[Interruption.] He has not met with Stephen Hester prior to the announcement of his departure on this issue. This is a decision for RBS and its board. They have made the decision jointly with Stephen Hester and come to a voluntary agreement. The chairman of RBS, Sir Philip Hampton, asked to meet the Chancellor last week—at Philip Hampton’s request—to inform the Chancellor of the board’s decision, and that is what I would expect, given that the shareholder is the majority owner of the bank.

The hon. Gentleman also referred to the succession plans and asked whether it would have been better to find a successor in the first place. If he has looked carefully at the plans, he will note that Stephen Hester has agreed to stay on until a successor has been found or, at the very latest, until the end of this year. RBS has already begun its search process. I am confident that it will find a successor in time, but it is reassuring, as I said in my statement, that Stephen Hester is staying on in the meantime to help to smooth the process of finding his successor.

The hon. Gentleman also referred to the share price of RBS this morning. He will note that—I think I am right in saying—almost every major bank’s share price is down this morning. The stock market is down in general this morning. I suggest that the change in the RBS share price might also be a reflection of global stock markets, particularly Asian stock markets and markets in Tokyo, which, as it happens, also fell by 6% overnight.

Next the hon. Gentleman asked about the eventual sale of the bank and RBS’s comments about preparing the bank for its future return to the private sector. There should be nothing surprising about RBS having an ambition that the bank should be returned to the private sector. That is perfectly reasonable and perfectly normal. As for the Government’s plans, we have always made it absolutely clear that we have no target price when we are thinking about the return of RBS. We have no fixed timetable, and that includes the general election. Our major concern is to ensure, as the hon. Gentleman said himself, that when RBS is returned to the private sector, that is done with due regard to getting the best value possible for the taxpayer.

The hon. Gentleman also asked whether the value of the shares had been destroyed. I thought that was a bit rich, coming from him. He forces me to remind the House that when the previous Government carried out their bail-out following their failed policies and paid more than £45 billion for a stake in RBS, they overpaid by £12 billion above the share price. That amount was written off by the taxpayer at that moment, but that is something else for which we have not had an apology.

If I understood the hon. Gentleman’s last question correctly, he asked whether the Government had intervened in the decision-making process of the executive management. As I have said, those decisions are rightly made by RBS’s board. The Government’s shareholding is held through UKFI on an arm’s length basis. UKFI represents the interests of the taxpayer on RBS’s board. I remind the House that that arm’s length arrangement was deliberately set up by the previous Government; we have rightly kept it in place. UKFI reports periodically to the Treasury and provides advice, and we always take that into account when making our own decisions.

[Mr Andrew Tyrie (Chichester) (Con)]

The early work on RBS’s recovery needed an investment banker, and Stephen Hester has done a difficult job extremely well. He deserves all our thanks, and I hope that the whole House agrees with that. Does the Minister agree that, whatever further reforms of RBS are now implemented, arguing about the past—about the past price or about party politics—is not what the country wants to hear or what the economy needs in the months ahead? What we now need, as soon as possible, is an RBS that can fully support the hundreds of thousands of people who are trying to make a living in small businesses up and down the country but who cannot get the support that they need. They need an RBS that is fully functioning for the first time in many years.

[Sajid Javid]

I thank my hon. Friend, the Chairman of the Treasury Select Committee and of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, for his comments. He is absolutely right to praise the work of Stephen Hester and I agree wholeheartedly with his views on what Stephen Hester has achieved in his five years at the bank. Perhaps my hon. Friend had his work with the Parliamentary Commission in mind when he asked his second question. The approach must be bipartisan and we must keep the interests of RBS and the economy as a whole uppermost in our minds.

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

I agree that Stephen Hester did a good job in reducing the size of the bank’s balance sheet and beginning to turn the bank around, but that job was not complete at the time of his enforced departure. Will the Minister tell us more about the implications of this timing and strategy for returning the bank to the private sector? May I also tell him that, whatever else the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards has to say about this, if he was looking for a permission slip for a quick sale at a knock-down price, he will be disappointed?

[Sajid Javid]

It might help the right hon. Gentleman if I tell him that Stephen Hester himself has said in the past 24 hours that, for him, privatisation was the “end of a journey”, and that the board was looking for someone who would see it as the beginning of a journey. He has said that, for that reason, he understands the board’s decision. This is a voluntary agreement and a mutual decision between Stephen Hester and the board. The RBS board has said in its statement that it is looking forward to having a bank that is more focused on UK business and on the inevitable privatisation process.

[Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)]

A substantial proportion of the Minister’s statement dealt with setting out the generous remuneration and exit package that Mr Hester will receive. I am rather more interested in the package that British citizens will receive when the bank is returned to the private sector in order to recompense them for the different ways in which they have paid for the £45 billion bail-out. Will the Minister confirm that UKFI and the Treasury are seriously examining the idea, which I first promoted in March 2011, that all British citizens should be able to profit from the uplift in the share price when the bank is returned to the private sector?

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend is right to emphasise the absolute importance of getting the best value for the taxpayer when RBS is eventually returned to the private sector. There are many ways of doing that, and there is an open public debate on the ideas. At this point, however, it is right for me to say that while I welcome open debate, the Government are looking at the options very carefully, and we will set out a way forward after the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards has issued its final report.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

I thank the Minister for his statement and for early sight of it, and add my thanks to those of others for what Stephen Hester has done so far for the bank. RBS is planning a £175 million investment in the retail bank in Scotland and it also plans to maintain it as a global centre for mobile banking and a global payments hub. When Stephen Hester is replaced and the bank is finally returned to the private sector, will the Minister use whatever influence the Government have to ensure that those investments and those plans are maintained for the sake of jobs both in the bank and in those businesses that depend on the bank for support?

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware from the RBS statement yesterday that one reason why it has taken this step is that it believes, as do the Government, that RBS should become more focused on British business and British jobs. If the hon. Gentleman agrees with me that Scotland should vote next year to stay in Britain, that will certainly help the situation, making sure that when RBS talks about Britain, it is talking about the Britain we know today.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that Stephen Hester, who happens to be one of my constituents, was given a pretty poisoned chalice by the last Labour Chancellor when Fred Goodwin stepped down and that he has actually done an extremely good job in rescuing RBS and bringing it back from the brink? What I think most of my constituents are concerned about now is whether RBS is going to be a bank for small and medium-sized businesses, a bank for middle England and a bank for market towns such as Banbury and Bicester, helping to get SMEs and the economy moving and going forward.

[Sajid Javid]

I share the concerns that my hon. Friend has articulated. He will have noticed from my speech that I said RBS under Stephen Hester has made huge progress in becoming focused on lending to British businesses. I am confident that, because of the plans that have been set in place, that will become even more prominent in RBS’s strategy.

[Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister has said quite a bit about the end of the rescue phase, but absolutely nothing about the strategy for selling RBS back into the private sector. I remind him that the Government own 82% of the shares. There have been persistent rumours in the press about the creation of a good bank/bad bank. Will the Minister confirm or deny whether that is actively being considered, and if it is, how in those circumstances will he continue, as he stated in his statement, to protect the taxpayers’ interests?

[Sajid Javid]

The Chancellor has made it clear in very recent statements that he wants to wait for the report from the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards. It is a very important report, and we as a Government want to listen and take it seriously. After the report is completed, we will set out our plans for how we see the state banking sector going forward.

[Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)]

As someone who has worked in ABN AMRO and RBS, I pay real tribute to Stephen Hester, who I think was an outstanding chief executive who took the helm and leadership of RBS at the most difficult time in banking history. I am disappointed that he is leaving and I wish him every success in the future. I want to pay tribute, too, as should the House, to the staff of RBS. As we move towards privatisation, let us focus on looking at competition in the banking sector, which will deliver a much better customer service for us all.

[Sajid Javid]

That is exactly what I was talking about when I touched on the issue of choice in my statement. The introduction of seven-day switching, which will come into force in September, will help to engender the kind of competition that we want to see.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

The Minister’s statement underlined what a shambles this is, and also made it clear that there might not be a new appointment for some time. My specific question is this, however. When my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) asked about the Chancellor’s involvement, the Minister said that the Chancellor had had no direct involvement. May I ask whether he had any indirect involvement? Let me help the Minister to answer that question. Was the Chancellor asked by any member of the ministerial team or by civil servants in Whitehall, or by people in the Royal Bank of Scotland, for his view on whether this was the right decision?

[Sajid Javid]

As I have said, such decisions are for the board of RBS, which is a commercial organisation. As we all know, however, because it is a commercial organisation in which the state is the majority shareholder, with the state’s interests represented through UKFI, when RBS makes a major decision it will inform the Government.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

May I pursue the question asked by the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg)? I am not entirely sure why the Minister made his statement. If this was a completely independent decision, what new Government policy has been announced today?

[Sajid Javid]

The Government decided that a statement should be made today because the issue is important to the population at large. Given the Government’s stake of over 80% in RBS, and given that the last Government pumped in £45 billion, I think it important for the Government to set out their strategy on RBS.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

This time last year, RBS was subject to a major technical problem. As a result, one of its constituent parts, Ulster bank in Northern Ireland, lost some customers, and many customers did not benefit from full transparency. Only recently, I was told by the Financial Conduct Authority that it could not obtain answers. Will privatisation be the next stage in the rescue package?

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Lady has made a good point overall about the importance of RBS’s operations in Northern Ireland and also in the Republic, which involve lending to both small businesses and consumers. RBS takes those operations seriously, and I know that it has been thinking carefully about how it can improve them further.

[Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)]

Given Stephen Hester’s excellent career—he had previously spent two years at Abbey National and four years at British Land—and given that he has remained in such an important and high-pressure job for five years, it seems to me entirely reasonable for him to leave after completing the first phase of a major restructuring process, and to hand the business on to a chief executive who is more experienced in long-term matters.

[Sajid Javid]

As always, my hon. Friend has made a very good point. I agree with him that Stephen Hester has done a commendable job. Five years is a perfectly normal period for anyone to remain as chief executive of a major corporation, and that sentiment was reflected in Stephen Hester’s own comments since the announcement of his departure.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Minister answer one really important question about this very major change? Two banks ran into difficulties, RBS and HBOS—many of my constituents worked for HBOS—but those two banks were not run into the buffers by politicians; they were run into ruin by the group of unscrupulous, immoral bankers who ran the companies, and it was not politicians but auditors and those in the accountancy profession who never flagged that up. Let us get the record straight. Let us be honest with the British people. Let us also be honest and say “You have just sacked this banker for your own purposes.”

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Gentleman is right about being honest, of course, and in the interests of honesty, it is important to point something out. Since he seems to have suggested that the previous Government played no role in the failure of RBS and that it was just a failure of poor banking, let me remind him of what the then shadow Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley), said in 1997 when the then Government planned to change the regulatory system. He said:

“The process of setting up the FSA may cause regulators to take their eye off the ball, while spivs and crooks have a field day.”—[Official Report, 11 November 1997; Vol. 300, c. 732.]

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

While RBS has clearly had a turbulent past and taxpayers rightly want their money back, is not the really important point that RBS has gone from a bust bank under the last Government to a normal bank now, and that it has actually made a profit of over £800 million in the first three months of this year, and that business lending is up in the first quarter to over £13 billion, almost £8 billion of which was to small businesses?

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. RBS has ended what I referred to as the rescue phase. Stephen Hester successfully brought the bank back from the brink and has started to refocus it, and the new strategy that RBS has set out will focus it even more on lending to UK businesses and households?

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

The decisions made about RBS’s future represent a huge impact on the public finances, so where is the Chancellor?

[Sajid Javid]

I answered that question earlier.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

May I add to the tributes to Stephen Hester? He was very responsive to MPs’ letters and he was also very good at briefing Members of Parliament. May I also pay tribute to RBS staff, however, who across the country and worldwide have been working in very difficult circumstances, and may I urge the Minister to make sure that in this transition period towards privatisation a lot of focus is put on them?

[Sajid Javid]

I agree. We have talked about Stephen Hester and the role he has played in bringing the bank back from the brink, but that would not have been possible without the dedicated staff that RBS has had, and we must never forget the contribution they have made in repairing the bank.

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

It is clear from the Minister’s statement that the Chancellor has sacked the chief executive. Can the Minister assure the House that there is no gagging clause in the chief executive’s contract when he leaves with his package of £5 million that will stop him setting out his own views on when RBS should be sold?

[Sajid Javid]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was listening to the statement I made. If he was, he would realise that the RBS board made this decision.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

As the Minister knows, I think the sooner the Government get out of the banking business, the better. There has been a lot of discussion today about the price at which they should do that. What has the Minister been able to discover about the due diligence that was done on the price the Government paid to buy RBS shares in the first place?

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend raises a good point, and it is actually quite easy to find out—although I do not think the previous Government wanted to advertise it, and nor do I think the current Opposition want us to continue highlighting it—that when RBS was bailed out, the then Government overpaid by over £12 billion and wrote that off at that time. They did the same in the interventions in Lloyds bank and Northern Rock, and, as we know, all this was a direct result of the previous Government’s failure to regulate our banking and financial system properly.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

The Minister referred in his statement to the regulatory role of the new Prudential Regulation Authority. What mechanisms have the Government and the Bank of England put in place to ensure that the PRA does not suffer from the “revolving door” disease, which afflicted its predecessor, the FSA?

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Gentleman raises a good point. That was a problem at the previous regulator, the FSA. When the PRA was set up, its head, Andrew Bailey, prioritised the issue, making sure that he hires the best people and that they are rewarded accordingly, to make sure they can do a good job in looking after the interests of the taxpayer.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Given that the taxpayer had to buy the bank and, shamefully, was forced to overpay by £12 billion, may I urge the Minister not only to privatise it as soon as possible, but to consider people’s shares, so that the taxpayers who paid for it have something to show for it?

[Sajid Javid]

I remind my hon. Friend of something I said earlier, which is that we are looking at future plans for the state-owned banking sector but think it prudent to wait for the report from the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards; however, I will take his representation on board.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

One can tell when this Government have something to hide: the Chancellor runs for cover and a junior Minister is sent out to make a statement and deny absolutely everything—rather unconvincingly, if I may say so. Does the Economic Secretary not understand that my constituents are still spitting with fury about the fact that they are paying the price for the mistakes made by bankers? If the dash for cash, which he has been touting around the Committee Rooms and the City of London for the past few weeks, goes ahead, yet again, bankers will make more money, brokers will make more money, and the taxpayer will lose out.

[Sajid Javid]

If I remember correctly, the hon. Gentleman was a member of the previous Government, not just a Government Back Bencher, so he was involved in decision making and presumably supported the action that the then Government took on banking regulation. I wonder whether he held those views back in 2007, just before the collapse of the British banking system, when the then Chancellor said in his Mansion House speech:

“I congratulate you Lord Mayor and the City of London on these remarkable achievements, an era that history will record as the beginning of a new golden age for the City of London.”

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Will the Economic Secretary reconfirm that Stephen Hester’s exit package, while undoubtedly generous, is just one third of the amount that he could have got under the contract signed by the last Labour Government? Also, given that Her Majesty’s Government hold, on behalf of all our constituents, 80% of the bank, will he ensure that the terms of the contract for the new chief executive reflect Stephen Hester’s actual remuneration and not the theoretical remuneration put in place by the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown)?

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I can confirm that, under the terms to which the previous Government signed up in 2008, when Stephen Hester was appointed, his exit package could have been three times greater. That again highlights the Labour party’s utter confusion on this issue.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The Minister spoke of the importance of RBS becoming a bank that provides greater support to the British economy. I could not agree more, but rather than flog it off, would not a more effective way to achieve that aim be to maintain the bank in the public sector and to direct investment into projects that will genuinely benefit the public and the economy—into small businesses, affordable housing and home insulation—which will also create hundreds of thousands of local jobs?

[Sajid Javid]

Respectfully, I have to disagree with the hon. Lady. I think the Government have no long-term role in owning any part of the banking sector.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Last but not least, I call Geraint Davies.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

This announcement has already helped to wipe £2 billion off taxpayer-held share value, so will the Economic Secretary consider a staged sale of RBS, in chunks, to maximise the return? Will he also consider keeping a residual shareholding, to maintain influence so that the ambition we all share can be met that RBS continues to focus on small and medium-sized enterprises, rather than runs off, as it has before, in ways that are not in the interests of the British economy?

[Sajid Javid]

First, the hon. Gentleman should know that share prices go up and down, often with the general direction of the market. If he is really concerned about shareholder value, presumably he was against all the changes that the Government he supported made during their time in office, which led to the true destruction of taxpayers’ money. The Government believe that the strategy RBS has set out and made clear yesterday—a bank that is more focused on the UK economy and working with British business, with a smaller investment bank—is the right one, as is the strategy of getting a CEO who can see that process through for the next few years. We think that that will lead to value creation.

Point of Order

Thursday 13th June 2013 Commons Chamber

12:09

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Thank you for taking this short point of order; I do not want to delay the main debate. It is a question of the accuracy of the record for the public and for Parliament, and I am indebted to Brian Simpson MEP, an agriculture spokesman, for unearthing the facts. On a matter as vital and sensitive as bovine TB, and related issues, it is important that we deal with the evidence and the facts.

The UK Government’s position has been that field trials for the cattle vaccination in the UK are prohibited under EU law, thus preventing the development of a cattle vaccine in the UK. However, recent statements from the Commission for the Environment and Rural Affairs Committee report published on 5 June show that clearly this is not the case. Field trials can be allowed without a need to amend existing EU legislation if certain criteria are put in place. Moreover, according to the Government’s statements, the Government were told last year to come forward with a programme for the field trials. However, nothing has yet been published. Finally, even though the Secretary of State has made clear that this will take 10 years, the Commission has said that that is indicative only and that the timetable could be compressed.

Madam Deputy Speaker, can you give me advice as to how we can set the record straight and get clarity on such an important issue for farmers and the rural community?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

I agree that this is an important issue but I must tell the hon. Gentleman something that I think he already knows: that is not really a point of order but a point of debate. He has got his points clearly on the record today and I am sure that he will find other parliamentary opportunities to explore them. It is not a matter for the Chair and it does not require a ruling.

Backbench Business

Thursday 13th June 2013 Commons Chamber

Iraq War (10th Anniversary)

Thursday 13th June 2013 Commons Chamber

12:11

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War.

I would like to thank the Backbench Business Committee for enabling me to secure this debate, which has the support of colleagues across the House. It gives us a chance to reflect not only on the Iraq war but on Parliament’s role in that war. It is a debate that I believe our constituents would expect us to hold as we pass the 10th anniversary of the US-led invasion.

All of us will have in mind today the 179 members of our armed forces who have lost their lives in this conflict. I pay tribute to them and to their bravery, and my sympathy goes out to their families for their terrible loss. Other service personnel have suffered physical and mental trauma as a result of the war which, for many, will be with them for the rest of their lives. We also have in mind the many hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children who were killed during the war or who have died since in military operations, bombings, acts of terrorism or through sickness and disease.

Possible estimates of the number of Iraqis killed in the invasion and occupation of Iraq vary wildly. A Lancet survey between March 2003 and June 2006 pointed to over 650,000 excess deaths, while an Opinion Research Business survey put deaths as a result of the conflict at over 1 million up to 2007. The Iraq Body Count, or IBC—an independent US-UK group—reports 112,976 documented civilian casualties and points out that further analysis of the WikiLeaks Iraq war logs may add 12,000 civilian deaths to that the number. The IBC has always said that its number is an undercount because proper records have not been kept by the coalition forces, a fact that tells its own story.

Whatever the true number, there is no dispute that there has been a grave civilian price, one that continues to be paid and threatens to get worse. For most of us today, this 10th anniversary of the invasion is largely history, but for the people of Iraq it is a state of continuing war. Iraqis are being hit by almost daily attacks, with tensions growing between the Shi’a Muslim majority and the minority Sunnis, raising fears of a return to the worst level of sectarian violence. Just this week we have seen harrowing reports of at least seven people killed in a single day in a wave of bombings and attacks in central and northern Iraq. Last month was the bloodiest since June 2008, with over 1,000 Iraqi civilians and security officials killed, according to the UN.

It is a grim understatement to say that the Iraqi people do not have security. There are deep concerns about human rights, massive corruption, unemployment and miserable basic services, such as electricity and water supplies. But even if Iraq finds a way out of its current difficulties, as we all fervently hope it will, there is the legacy of the last 10 years of warfare and terrorism as well. Part of that legacy is the deeply disturbing cases being taken to our High Court, involving more than 1,000 killings and acts of torture committed in Iraq by UK forces. We must have public scrutiny of the systemic issues arising from these cases and look to reform the training and oversight of our armed forces.

What of our own country? Do we feel more secure? Is the terrorist threat diminished because of those 10 years of bloodshed and chaos? In fact, the contrary is true. According to the former head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, the Iraqi invasion increased the terror threat in Britain, radicalising a generation of young British Muslims and substantially increasing the risk of a terrorist atrocity on UK soil. A major unprovoked attack without UN authorisation took place with dire consequences. These terrible and deeply troubling outcomes add real substance to the argument that this was the biggest foreign policy failure of recent times.

As an individual, I opposed the war in Iraq because it was my view that the burden of justification for undertaking a major unprovoked attack had not been met. I joined the anti-war protest in February 2003, which saw between 1 million and 2 million people marching in London, the biggest political demonstration in history. In successive polls by different and reputable agencies, around two thirds of British citizens say the Iraq war was a mistake.

Ultimately, Parliament was responsible for that decision to go to war. It was MPs in this House who questioned, debated and voted on the decision, both on 26 February and 18 March 2003. But if this war was a mistake, what should Parliament do now? If it were a public body—a school, perhaps, or a hospital or local authority—we would expect an admission that things had gone wrong and a pledge to learn the lessons so that it could not happen again. That, I believe, is at the heart of today’s debate. Not a blame game or resignations; not heads on platters or humble pie; not a chorus of “I told you so.” What I want to focus on specifically is the role of Parliament. How was it that, with some very honourable exceptions, parliamentary scrutiny failed? How was it that the intelligence could be so misinterpreted and misused? How was it that facts clearly in the public domain were ignored or dismissed?

These are not academic questions. Their relevance and consequences are all too real today. We cannot simply leave them to others to answer. The Hutton inquiry and the Butler inquiry had their own terms of reference. Hutton’s remit was the death of Dr David Kelly; Butler’s was a panel, handpicked by Tony Blair, that was insufficiently independent and held far too many hearings in private. Shamefully, we still await the results of the Chilcot panel fully five years after it was established, while battles continue over declassifying material. I know of at least one freedom of information battle that is still being had with the Foreign Office; the sticking point is not national security, but national embarrassment.

All of these processes can play a useful part in revealing some of the truth of what happened in the lead-up to the war and beyond. But it is not the job of these men, however eminent or well intentioned, to stand in judgment on Parliament. Parliament is sovereign, and must remain sovereign even when it comes to considering its own failures and necessary reforms. As parliamentarians in 2013, we can and must ask, and answer, whether sufficient evidence was available in the public domain to allow Government Back Benchers and Opposition MPs to both question and oppose the Government’s case for war in 2003.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I have always found that hindsight in politics is a great thing and makes things a lot easier. The hon. Lady should look at the evidence that came not from the Government or the security services, but from Hans Blix in his final report. I had the honour of meeting him in New York the night before his final report was published and he clearly said to me and to Bruce George—a right hon. Gentleman at the time—not that Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction, but that he needed more time, with full co-operation, to determine whether Saddam did.

[Caroline Lucas]

I can only ask why, then, did we not give Hans Blix more time? I, too, have met Hans Blix and I, too, have heard him say that were the weapons inspectors given more time, they could have established the answer without the bloody war that happened.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady recall that the weapons inspectors were not allowed to go back to Iraq because of the decision of the British and US Governments in January 2003?

[Caroline Lucas]

I absolutely recall that and I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. It was in the interests of this country for the weapons inspectors not to go back into Iraq so that the Government could make that case.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Last night, I looked at the notebook that I had at the time. [Interruption.] No, it is in my own handwriting. What it said is not that Hans Blix needed more time, but that he needed more time if he was going to get full co-operation from Saddam, and at that time he clearly was not.

[Caroline Lucas]

I disagree with the hon. Gentleman and I will come to other quotes from Hans Blix, who made it clear that to a great extent Saddam Hussein was co-operating and that with more time we could have avoided the war.

We as parliamentarians have the role and the job of scrutinising the available evidence that was in the public domain. I entirely take the point that hindsight is a wonderful thing. The point I want to make is that plenty of information was in the public domain.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady not only on securing this debate, but on the manner in which she is presenting the case. Following on from what the former loyal Minister of the previous Government in the Ministry of Defence said, it is not a question of the benefit of hindsight. Many Members of the House, both on the Opposition Benches and, in some honourable cases, on the Government Benches, scrutinised the evidence at that time and came to the conclusion that it was unwise in those circumstances to proceed with engaging in military action in Iraq.

[Caroline Lucas]

I am particularly grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention because I will shortly pay tribute to those hon. Members who did stand up in this place, who did scrutinise and who did ask the right questions. The fact that they came to the conclusions that they did demonstrates that the evidence was there. Unfortunately, there was a will not to look at some of it.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

Before the hon. Lady goes on, may I say in respect of Mr Hans Blix—I have made this point outside the House—that there is a profound disconnection between what he is saying now and what he said at the time? What he said at the time, and he repeated it in a book in 2004, was that he thought that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and posed a threat. I know of no provenance whatsoever for the claim that the inspectors were prevented from continuing their work in Iraq by either the US or the UK in January 2003.

Moreover, the final reports from Hans Blix complained about a lack of co-operation, the inability of inspectors to interview scientists from Iraq inside or outside Iraq, and the continuing intimidation. The final report that he made, which I had to force him to publish, on 7 March 2003, catalogued in 29 chapters of 170 pages the unanswered questions that Mr Blix thought Saddam had to answer, even at that stage, about all the chemical and biological weaponry that had been known about in the past and which Saddam had failed to explain. That is where Blix was at the time. My last point is this—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

No. Will the right hon. Gentleman please sit down? I am trying to be very tolerant to facilitate the debate but there are lots of Members who want to participate, and making a speech on an intervention, however important the point, is not acceptable. Therefore the right hon. Gentleman will have to wait to make the rest of his points.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) for his intervention. Obviously, he has a great deal of information from that time.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady also acknowledge that there was a huge amount of foresight on the part of people who were opposed to the war, not entirely on the existence of weapons? Many nations have weapons of mass destruction. What was totally implausible was the suggestion that Saddam Hussein would use those weapons against America and against the United Kingdom in a way that would be suicidal and guarantee own defeat. We know what the reasons for the war were, and they were in the mind of George Bush.

[Caroline Lucas]

I welcome that intervention. We need to recognise that a threat is made up of the capability to use weapons and also the intention to use them. What Hans Blix made very clear at that point was that there was not, as far as he could see, any intention to use them. What he wanted to find out was what else there was.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Caroline Lucas]

I will give way shortly. Let me make a little more progress.

I keep coming back to the importance of MPs—ourselves—scrutinising the decision-making process that took place at the time. In that context, I was surprised and disappointed when, back in March this year, the Foreign Secretary, for whom I have a great deal of respect, wrote what was intended, I think, to be a confidential letter to members of his party, telling senior members of the Government that they should not be drawn on the controversial issues that drew the UK into the Iraq war. They should, he suggested, wait until Chilcot had reported, but that of course might not be until the next election—who knows? We are still waiting after five years, and in any case, Chilcot does not have a monopoly on the issue, and I doubt whether he or his team would want one.

I turn now to what went wrong. There is plenty of evidence that shows that the case for war set out by the Blair Administration in 2003 was deeply flawed. Intelligence was misused, concerns expressed by experts were suppressed, and the legal and political position was misrepresented. From this arises the belief among many journalists and members of the public as well as Members of this House that they were misled into supporting the war in Iraq. In fact, when one reads the documents and listens to the testimony, it is hardly far-fetched to call it a conspiracy.

In brief, Tony Blair decided to join the US in invading Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein. He knew that the British people and their representatives were dubious about the wisdom of this, to say the least, so he used every opportunity to twist the evidence to isolate his critics and encourage his supporters. Britain was indeed spun into war. This is the foundation of the familiar position that many former war supporters now take. Often they will say, “If I had known then what I know now, I would not have supported the war”, but is that enough? Does that really explain what happened?

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

In 2005 I went out to Iraq. Then, even senior military officers were questioning the legality of their being there and having gone in. So it is not simply a matter of us doubting it. They were unsure of the legal position as well.

[Caroline Lucas]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. It would really help me to chair the debate if Members made brief interventions and stayed on their feet while they were doing so. I know the hon. Lady is being very generous in giving way under some considerable pressure, but I am sure she will bear in mind the length of time that she is speaking and the others wishing to participate.

[Caroline Lucas]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I was saying that many people will say that if they had known then what they know now, they would not have supported the war, and I said that that was not an adequate justification, precisely because of those Members of Parliament who were not taken in by the spin. Members of Parliament could have known then much of what they know now. A vast amount of the evidence available now was in the public domain then. We know this because of those hon. Members who did see through the lies and the deceptions, who asked the right questions, who trawled through the documents, who stood up in Parliament and said that the war was based on a false prospectus, and many of those hon. Members are in the Chamber today.

Let me give an example of three others, starting with an hon. Member who is no longer in the Chamber, the former Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak, Lynne Jones. She saw that Tony Blair and the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) made the misrepresentation of the French position a centrepiece of their efforts to win the vote on 18 March 2003. As one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, France had the power to veto a second UN resolution. In an interview on 10 March 2003 President Chirac indicated that, as things stood, France would use its veto in the unlikely event that a second resolution authorising military action got the necessary majority of nine members of the Security Council.

I quote from the transcript of the interview. Chirac says:

“My position is that, regardless of the circumstances, France will vote ‘no’ because she considers this evening that there are no grounds for waging war in order to achieve the goal we have set ourselves, i.e. to disarm Iraq.”

But by selectively quoting the words “regardless of the circumstances” when describing the French position on authorisation of the use of force, proponents of the war blamed France for blocking military action against Iraq, no matter what evidence emerged of a breach of resolution 1441. Tony Blair even included the selective and misleading quote in the motion in support of military action that was put to the House on 18 March 2003. [Interruption.] I want to finish this section. The importance of the inclusion of this misrepresentation in the motion was huge. Some MPs have stated that it alone changed their minds on whether or not to vote to go to war.

Giving evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, the right hon. Member for Blackburn suggested that President Chirac’s use of the phrase “this evening” did not describe the French position on the evening of the interview, thereby indicating that this could change in the future, but was simply an introduction to what he was going to say that evening. He put that argument to the panel by specifically stating the order of Chirac’s phrasing, down to where a comma is used. However, the transcript shows that he did not give the phrasing in the right order. The phrase “this evening” came after “regardless of the circumstances”, but he said that it came first, changing the meaning of Chirac’s words to suit the argument. The right hon. Gentleman said:

‘I know there has been some textual analysis of the use by President Chirac of the word “Le soir”, but I watched him say this and I took this as no more than saying, “This evening”, comma, and then he announces, “France will, whatever the circumstances”, he says, right?’

Well, that was not right. In fact, the transcript shows that Chirac explicitly ruled in the possibility that military action might be needed, stating in the same interview that if the weapons inspector reported after more time that they were unable to do their job, war would be inevitable. To quote directly, he said:

“But in that case, of course, regrettably, the war would become inevitable. It isn’t today.”

The French position, then, was that progress was being made on the weapons inspections and that France was therefore opposed to replacing the existing inspections process with an ultimatum that would lead to war in a few days’ time. The phrase “regardless of the circumstances” was not helpful, and it was unfortunate that Chirac used those words, as they were easily taken out of context. However, that does not detract from the responsibility of those, including Tony Blair and the right hon. Member for Blackburn, who—I argue—misinterpreted, and continued to misinterpret, President Chirac’s interview of 10 March in order to blame France for the failure to obtain a second UN resolution. The reason that it was not possible to obtain UN authorisation for the use of force is that there was no evidence showing Iraq to be an active and growing threat; it was not because of French intransigence, as UK Ministers said.

Hansard shows that Lynne Jones was ridiculed when she tried to raise the misrepresentation of Chirac’s interview in the House, but the fact that she raised it shows that there were hon. Members who bothered to get the transcript of what was actually said before the vote and that it was not necessary to accept the interpretation being given by the Government at face value. It was not a detail; President Chirac’s words were placed at the heart of the motion that Parliament debated and voted on.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I got on well with the former Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak, who was a very good Member of Parliament, but I think that the hon. Lady is reading far too much into this in order to support her conspiracy theory speech. On the same visit to New York, I also met the French ambassador to the UN, and it was quite clear that there was no way the French would vote for a resolution that endorsed action, and they were working with the Germans, who took the same position. It is not the case that the French were somehow up for negotiation.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but the point is the issue of when they were going to accept intervention—

[Mr Jones]

They never were.

[Caroline Lucas]

Well, I have seen the evidence from Chirac and the way it was treated when it came to the Chilcot inquiry, and I think that it is perfectly plain that Chirac’s intervention was deliberate misinterpreted. The words were taken in the wrong order and made to mean something different. [Interruption.] We can trade our beliefs across the Chamber, but the bottom line is that there was evidence out there that would have led Members to suspect that what they were being told at that point was not necessarily the case.

[Mr Straw]

First, the transcript, and indeed the video, were available to all Members on both sides of the House, so they could make their own judgments on it, and the vast majority made the judgment that we made about what had happened. Secondly, what we were seeking in the second UN resolution was not war, but peace—I was desperate for it—by an ultimatum that included six tests, which were drafted by Hans Blix, by the way, and they were tests that Saddam could easily have passed had he wished to do so.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but I will move on.

I want to talk about the former Member for Livingston, Robin Cook. Reading his resignation speech makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, because it is all there: the reasons why the war was unnecessary and unjustified, the critique of the Government’s position and the exposure of the misinformation and deceit. It was delivered with eloquence and with the authority and credibility of a former Foreign Secretary and member of the 2003 Cabinet. Yet his warnings were heeded only by the 23% of MPs who voted to oppose the war. How could that happen?

The right hon. Member for Blackburn said earlier that the transcript of what Chirac had said was in the public domain, and that is precisely my point. Given that the evidence was there, how is it that more MPs did not come to a different conclusion? The answer, which I will make in greater detail later in my speech, is that they were whipped massively through a system in this House that means they give up their responsibility to make their own decisions. My point is that that kind of whipping on a vote of such importance and conscience is not the right way forward.

There are many potential explanations for why Robin Cook’s warnings were heeded by so few, but most come down to the idea that Members perhaps trusted the view that there was a subplot to the invasion that the Government could not be open about, that perhaps the Government knew much more about the risk Saddam posed to the UK than they were able to say, and that perhaps the conditions were right for establishing Iraq as a democratic, pro-western state. In some cases, Members were taken to one side and given off-the-record briefings.

But I think that the answer is much more simple: too many Members put loyalty to their leader and to their party above their own judgment. They swallowed their private doubts, accepted what they were told and voted accordingly. That misplaced trust crossed party lines. It is deeply regrettable that the tradition of loyalty meant that hon. Members such as Robin Cook were not heard. It is also regrettable that the Tory leadership supported the war so unquestioningly. Perhaps there was a feeling that that level of deceit was simply inconceivable when it came to an issue as serious as war. Yet now we know that it was not.

Returning to the “If I had known then what I know now” defence and looking to the future, we can perhaps conclude thus: no Member of this House should ever take on trust the case for war. They must listen to all sides with open minds, even to the refuseniks and the usual suspects in case this time they might just be on to something. They must look at the sources themselves and ask themselves and their leaders the tough questions: is there an alternative, and what if it goes wrong? There is plenty more evidence of the fact that there was material in the public domain that should have enabled more hon. Members to make a more informed decision.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Does the hon. Lady not agree, then, that one lesson we can learn, and perhaps agree on in this debate, is the need for a war powers Act that would mean Parliament must be consulted and must vote specifically on any military action undertaken on our behalf?

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, because that is exactly the point I want to make. There should a mandatory vote of this House on issues as important as going to war. Moreover, and critically—this is the burden of what I am saying today—that vote must be a free vote based on conscience. We cannot allow ourselves to be taken along by the rhetoric of party leaders or to be bullied by party whipping and therefore, in a sense, to abrogate our responsibility to make our own decisions.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

The hon. Lady mentioned the Conservative party. I was there and know what was going on in the party. The atmosphere was very relaxed. Although there was whipping, we were allowed to vote against it. Someone resigned from the Whips Office but immediately rejoined. I voted against it. We formed a judgment. I am afraid that most of my colleagues believed the Prime Minister and took the view that Iraq was a threat, but no pressure was put on Conservative MPs.

[Caroline Lucas]

Clearly I do not have the inside information that the hon. Gentleman has, but I have heard many a different story told elsewhere.

In conclusion, I said at the start of my speech that the justification for the debate is that Parliament must accept that it made a mistake in 2003 and set out how it will prevent such a mistake from happening again. I believe that it comes down to the acceptance of one principle: there must be a limit to party loyalty, and even of loyalty to the leader of a party. Loyalty is in some way an admirable quality. There are times when it is right to bite one’s tongue, go along with the majority, set aside one’s opinions and accept the judgment and experience of others. But there are also limits. Committing our country to war, asking our young men and women to fight and accepting that men, women and children will die in our name must be beyond the sway of party loyalty.

I would like to see the end of the royal prerogative on war and the establishment of a constitutional convention that votes on war are not subject to party whipping. I know that some Members might dismiss that suggestion, but it is a serious one and I urge hon. Members to consider it carefully. Of course informal whipping would have taken place anyway, but it would have been different. Taking away the formal obligation to vote according to the party line would have pushed more hon. Members to look at the evidence for themselves and vote accordingly. It would have given their constituents more power and leverage and put more responsibility on the shoulders of each Member. Scrutiny would not have been dulled by loyalty in the same way.

Like the issues of capital punishment and abortion, committing troops to war is a matter of conscience, and MPs should be, at least formally, free from the heavy hand of the Whips. This principle is relevant now as we grapple with the terrible situation that is unfolding in Syria. Members should demand not just a vote on whether we arm the rebels but a genuinely free vote. If Iraq teaches us one thing, it is that if MPs are to vote on grave matters of conflict, for that vote to be meaningful it must be the view of their own conscience, not their party’s line. As individual constituency MPs, many of us have constituents who have died in Iraq—who have lost relatives there. It is no answer to them to say that on a serious matter like this we did not challenge the case and satisfy ourselves that war was justified and unavoidable.

In future, when we are faced with a decision about whether to go to war, we simply cannot have a situation where the Government of the day tell the story and we take what they say on trust. MPs have to do the work themselves. In any future vote, we and our successors must establish, to our own satisfaction and on evidence that we have seen and heard ourselves, that the case for war has been made. Three lines on a Whips sheet are not enough.

12:40

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in this important debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on securing it.

It has been 10 years since we invaded Iraq, yet the experience still casts a long shadow, and lessons from the period are still relevant today. Perhaps the most important lesson is that the war threw into stark relief the importance of basing our foreign policy decisions on firm evidence. The intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s WMD and his links with al-Qaeda, which was used to varying degrees as justification and a pretext for hostilities, was infamously described by Tony Blair as “extensive, detailed and authoritative”. In reality, it was anything but. We now know that we went to war on a false premise; there were no WMD. The British intelligence community failed to approach the Iraqi material with its customary thoroughness and consequently allowed space for the Government to mould the evidence to suit their purposes, with disastrous results. Indeed, sections of the intelligence community became the mouthpiece of Government rather than their ears and eyes, and that must never be allowed to happen again.

We learnt only the after the event the extent to which No. 10 and Foreign and Commonwealth Office spin doctors were on the inside of the drafting process for the September 2002 dossier and strongly influenced it. The then chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, John Scarlett, was in regular touch with Alastair Campbell. A unit within the FCO, the communications information centre, promoted the case for war. This resulted in possibilities becoming probabilities and indications becoming judgments. One spin doctor wrote the first full draft of the dossier, at John Scarlett’s invitation, a full day before John Scarlett produced his own first full draft. This evidence has come out only subsequently, often having to be extracted like teeth from the Government through freedom of information requests and other means.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

I agree with the points that the hon. Gentleman is making. Is not the biggest criticism of this whole sorry episode that having made the decision to go to war, the Government spent more time falsifying information to make the case for it than planning for the subsequent occupation, which has been a complete catastrophe?

[Mr Baron]

I certainly think that the post-war reconstruction was a shambles that led to a serious civil war and many casualties.

I have highlighted the detail with regard to the role of spin doctors and the FCO in the drafting of the dossier because that detail is important. When Tony Blair recalled Parliament, we were encouraged to believe that the dossier accurately reflected the assessments of the intelligence community. We now know that this was inaccurate. The dossier upgraded or exaggerated assessments made by the JIC, while intellectual ownership of the dossier did not reside with the JIC alone. Indeed, the final dossier was not even approved by the whole JIC. Yet that September we were led to believe that the account was that of the intelligence community, and that was a false impression.

[Andrew George]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very important point. Parliament needs to be reassured that we can get back to evidence-based policy making rather than policy-based evidence making, which appears to be the direction in which the civil servants went. We need an independent civil service that is capable of independently providing politically neutral evidence on which Parliament can assess these matters.

[Mr Baron]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. For many of us, the lesson from all this is that we must be wary of Government spin when we are addressing foreign policy issues, in particular; instead, we must focus on the evidence.

Bringing this up to speed, I suggest that in the case of Iran, for example, no intelligence service, whether American, British, Israeli or any other, has yet been able to publicly produce any hard evidence, as opposed to circumstantial evidence, that the Iranian leadership has decided to build a nuclear weapon or is taking that course. Nevertheless, that has not prevented our policy makers from painting a very different picture, and tensions are running unnecessarily high as a result.

The Iraq war is also a reminder that interventions often produce unintended consequences that can turn out to be counter-productive to our interests. A woefully inadequate post-war reconstruction ushered in a vicious civil war, as other Members have outlined. Studies estimate that many hundreds of thousands died in Iraq as a result of the invasion. In fact, Iraq became a honeypot for extremists worldwide. In a bitter irony, al-Qaeda only gained a foothold in Iraq after Saddam’s downfall and then proved difficult to eradicate. Minorities suffered as well. The Iraqi Christian communities, resident for centuries, have suffered immeasurably in the wake of the invasion.

[Mr Leigh]

I have since visited the Christian communities and heard the harrowing tales of what has happened to them. Is not what happened in Iraq a lesson for future action in Syria?

[Mr Baron]

My hon. Friend and I are very like-minded on this. We have a very bad track record of considering the consequences of our actions in relation to minorities within these countries. Syria is a good example, in the case not only of the Christians but of the Alawites.

Today, Iraq looks into the abyss because of economic failure, sectarian violence and political turmoil and corruption. Prime Minister al-Maliki, having centralised power, is a tentative supporter, to say the least, of President Assad, and a new wave of sectarian unrest seems imminent. That is one example of how unintended consequences can come back and bite us when we do not think these things through carefully.

Furthermore, there is little doubt that the removal of Saddam Hussein fundamentally altered the regional balance of power. We tend to forget in this House that we supported Saddam Hussein in Iraq’s attack on Iran. At that time, there was an approximate balance of power in the region. In effect, by taking Iraq out of the equation we ourselves created a regional superpower in the shape of Iran, the consequences of which we are still living with today.

I also suggest to the House that the invasion ignored the lessons of history. Interventions have a tendency to support, reinforce or have an embedding effect on the existing regimes. Looking back at history, communism, for example, has survived longest in those countries where the west has intervened militarily, such as China, Vietnam, Cuba and Korea. Meanwhile, the neo-con dream of establishing a sort of liberal democracy in Iraq lies in tatters. Democracy is taking root in north Africa, in regions where the west has put in very little support, not in Iraq or Afghanistan, where the cost to the west, particularly to this country, has been very high in terms of lives and treasure.

Meanwhile, as we have heard, our intervention has radicalised elements of the Muslim world against us, not only in regions of the middle east, but on the streets of this country. Scandals such as Abu Ghraib reinforce this alienation. As has been mentioned, Dame Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, said that the invasion “increased the terrorist threat” and

“spurred some British Muslims to turn to terror.”

We are still living with the consequences of this radicalisation, as very sad recent news has highlighted.

One scratches around for positives from this period. Perhaps there are a few. If al-Qaeda was one of the reasons for the invasion, it is now abundantly clear that the Iraq war was a 19th-century colonial-style solution to a 21st-century terrorist threat. There is no point invading countries if we are chasing extremists and terrorists. Instead, our efforts against international terrorism must be much more nimble and nuanced. They must reflect the flexibility of the terrorist threat itself, focusing on intelligence and operations, supporting friendly Governments in their anti-terrorist endeavours and applying properly resourced special forces. Indeed, there are encouraging signs that we have learned lessons from that period. We must also better focus international aid on the poverty and grievances that al-Qaeda and others have all too readily fastened upon in the past.

Perhaps—I am coming to an end—there is a more general lesson to be learned. We failed at the time to carry the international community with us, and in doing so I would suggest that we lost the moral high ground. The view adopted by the US and the UK at the time was that might is right. This sets a dangerous precedent. The coming decades will see the emergence of at least regional superpowers—or even global superpowers—that might be eager to flex their muscles. Our invasion of Iraq will make condemnation of any future aggression by others less effective. The invasion showed international law to be no guarantee of sovereignty or, indeed, security. This in itself may have encouraged some countries to seek other guarantees.

If there is a positive, it is perhaps that this war may have served to lay to rest, once and for all, the view that the British electorate would instinctively support politicians advocating intervention or war. I would suggest that Blair was never trusted thereafter. As our Prime Minister considers possible responses to Syria, he would be wise to reflect on that. In conclusion, let us hope that these lessons have been learned, for the sake of future generations.

12:53

[Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

I apologise to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, both Front Benchers and all hon. and right hon. Members that I will not be able to be here for the winding-up speeches.

I begin with a caveat over the word “anniversary.” In my lexicon an anniversary is something to be celebrated. There is nothing to be celebrated about the Iraq war, the most disastrous foreign policy certainly in my lifetime and possibly in the history of this country.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on obtaining this debate and I heartily agree with many things she said. I have another caveat, however, in that I think she is much too harsh on Members of this House and, indeed, the electorate. Whether individuals supported or opposed the Iraq war, it is not the case that it was not a central topic of discussion, not only in this Chamber, but throughout the whole Palace and certainly throughout the whole country. I think she was a little unfair in a similar way to that in which my Government’s spokesman, rather more unfairly, dubbed all those who were opposed to the idea of a war in Iraq —this is just one example—as knee-jerk anti-Americans. There was also enormous pressure from the press that this war should go ahead, but it is not true that we did not examine, read or question the evidence on a cross-party basis. It was the major topic of discussion.

I do not want to rerun the arguments about all the dodgy dossiers and half-truths, which are now well and truly in the public domain, as they should be for what was undoubtedly a most immoral and possibly illegal war that, as the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) has detailed cogently, is still continuing.

I endorse the point made by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion about how important Parliament is in such situations and how totally its powers can be wiped away by the Standing Orders and mores of this place. I agree entirely that that should change. If there is anything positive to be taken out of the morass of the Iraq war, it is surely the lesson that we must never, ever go down that road again.

My current concern is for both the present and, partially, the future. Syria could so easily become yet another disaster for this country’s foreign policy. I pay tribute to the Prime Minister, although I would have liked him to have been more categorical on the possibility of arming one of the sides in what is essentially a civil war, which would be a total and unmitigated disaster. To give President Obama his due, despite his pronouncements about drawing lines in the sand—such statements are all too easily made by politicians, statesmen and powers—and even though the red line that he defined has apparently been crossed, perhaps in a minor way, with the use, we are told, of sarin in Syria, there is clearly no move on the part of the United States to engage its troops and weaponry in Syria, which is to be welcomed. It is a scandal and an absolute disgrace that Russia, one of the permanent members of the Security Council, is completely abdicating her responsibilities in relation to this war, but that does not relieve us in this Chamber, in this country, from accepting the realities of the desperate tragedies that we created by going into a benighted war.

I have had occasion to say in this Chamber and will say again that if we are going to spend money on armaments, that would be another complete and unmitigated disaster. There is a desperate, overwhelming need for even more humanitarian aid to support those countries on the borders of Syria that are carrying the biggest burden, including Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, all of which have a major part to play in that part of the world. We should be supporting them, not opting for sides.

My major concern, in concert with the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay, is what I perceive to be a movement to try at some point to encourage the western powers or other allies to engage in a similar conflict in Iran on the basis, as far as I can see, having read the evidence, of an entirely spurious argument that Iran is not only desperate to make a nuclear weapon, but even more anxious to use it. That is totally off the wall, if one reads the existing evidence.

I have sketched out some of the lessons that we must learn from the gross intrusion that was the Iraq war—that living example of how power can corrupt absolutely. We have learned that if a great power attacks a smaller power, it will win. Desperate and terrible though the results of that are, the true tragedy is that nobody ever sat down and asked seriously, “How are we going to win the peace?” That is the most overwhelming lesson. However, the same thing is happening with regard to Syria. If we arm one side in that civil war, what will we do when the bullets run out—although they never will—and when the bombs stop falling?

We pay lip service to the diplomatic way of solving such problems, but we do not push it to the extent that we should. I remember clearly the news, on the day before the Iraq war turned to shock and awe, that 52 British ambassadors had written a letter to the Government saying, to paraphrase, “Don’t do it.” Not only this country, but all western nations, have a wealth of experience of the middle east. It has always been a tinderbox. At the moment, it is more than a tinderbox. What is happening in Syria to absolutely innocent civilians is utterly untenable. We can surely do better than we are doing.

For me, that is the screaming message that comes out of the disaster of the Iraq war. It is desperately easy to kill, to wound, to maim, to destroy, but how does one rebuild? It is the responsibility of those who take such decisions to have a plan for how peace, prosperity, justice and democracy can be established or restored. I have yet to read a detailed plan anywhere or by anyone as to how western nations that intrude upon other nations, as we did in Iraq, will do that. That is the most important step forward for the 21st century.

Desperate enmities have been created. The Iraq war was not the exclusive cause of those, but it was certainly a major player. As the hon. Members for Basildon and Billericay and for Brighton, Pavilion have said, those enmities are being played out on our streets by a minority of people, but we have also unleashed that horror on the world. It is our bound and duty—this House has an important part to play in this—to say that if anybody goes down that ridiculous—no, that is to make it much too banal—that desperate road, there must be a terminus at the end of the road that will produce, without any qualm whatever, the supposed desired result. That has not been brought about in Iraq, even though we were told that that was the main reason why the major power and its little assistant went into that war.

I say again, if any value has come from that disastrous foreign policy, it has to be that we have learned how never, ever to do it again.

13:03

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mark Simmonds)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on securing this debate and on her passionate introduction, in which she put on the record her strong views. Clearly, there is still significance and passions are still aroused 10 years on.

I also congratulate the other two hon. Members who have spoken, my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) and the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson). I agree strongly with my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay about the importance of removing the fundamentals that give support to al-Qaeda and other terrorist organisations. He will be well aware that the United Kingdom has done that not just in Iraq, but in other conflict states, with a particular focus at the moment on Somalia and Mali.

More broadly, the United Kingdom has contributed directly towards reconstruction in Iraq. We have helped to provide vaccinations for millions of children, improve access to safe water for more than 1 million people in southern Iraq and provide additional electricity equivalent to that used by a city the size of Leeds. We have also trained tens of thousands of teachers and approximately 20,000 policemen and women.

The hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn was right to point out that this matter was a significant part of the lives of those of us who were Members of Parliament in 2003, and that it exercised both ourselves and our constituents. I would suggest that it was almost the only point of debate at the point in time when the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and others were deciding what they should do.

As the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion set out in her opening speech, the decision to go to war in 2003 was one of the key foreign policy decisions of the last decade. As I have said, I and other Members who were in the House at the time will remember it for ever. However, it is important to state at the outset that the policy of this Government is not to comment on the decision to go to war ahead of the report of the Chilcot inquiry. I will therefore not do so here, but will look at the future of Iraq and the UK’s relationship with Iraq.

[Caroline Lucas]

I am grateful to the Minister for his reference to the Chilcot inquiry. Can he advise us when we might expect to see the report and whether he is aware of machinations in the background on issues of declassification that are holding it up?

[Mark Simmonds]

If the hon. Lady will be patient, I will give the House an update on the Chilcot inquiry.

The decision to go to war has had long-lasting implications not only for Iraq, but for the region, the United Kingdom, our allies and international relations more broadly. Those implications are not necessarily yet clear, but they will be debated for many years to come. There were also more immediate implications. One hundred and seventy-nine British armed forces and Ministry of Defence personnel lost their lives in Iraq, as did a number of British civilians. We must also never forget the loss of life suffered by the Iraqi people. It is right that now, 10 years on from the start of the war, we remember all of them. We must also remember those who were wounded in the war and those who lost loved ones.

[Mr Leigh]

Those of us who opposed the war are often told, “If you’d had your way, Saddam would still be there.” Surely we are entitled to say that so would hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, because they would still be alive.

[Mark Simmonds]

I understand the point that my hon. Friend makes. I say to him that the tragic loss of life, wherever it occurs, needs to be remembered. We must also bear in mind the huge disparities between the estimations of the number of Iraqi civilians who lost their lives. There needs to be better analysis of that. It must also be said that the vast majority of Iraqi civilians who lost their lives did so in terrorist incidents, not in military action.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The Minister must be aware of the massive refugee problem that the war created. There are still 450,000 Iraqi refugees living in Jordan. Palestinian refugees who went to Iraq from the Gulf states were expelled from Iraq after the invasion. The refugee crisis in the region is enormous as a result of that war and the Syrian war. Does he have any comment to make on that?

[Mark Simmonds]

The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the plight of refugees and displaced people. He will be aware of the significant contribution that the Department for International Development makes to support displaced people’s camps. The only long-term solution is to create stability and security in the middle east to enable people to return to the countries from which they originated.

[Paul Flynn]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mark Simmonds]

If I may move on, I want to make a few comments about the Chilcot inquiry because it has been one of the consistent themes in the speeches of Members so far and I am sure that other Members will comment on it as well. It is vital that we learn the lessons of the conflict. That, of course, is the fundamental and primary remit of Sir John Chilcot’s Iraq inquiry.

[Mr Baron]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mark Simmonds]

I want to make a little progress and then I will give way.

The inquiry is a complex and substantial task and it is considering an eight-year period. When he set up the inquiry, the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), described its scope as “unprecedented”, and Sir John has said that its final report is likely to exceed 1 million words.

The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion asked when the process will be completed and the report published, and the short answer is that it is up to Sir John and his team. The inquiry is independent of the Government, although I assure the hon. Lady and other hon. Members that the Government are co-operating fully with it. Indeed, the Foreign Office alone has made some 30,000 documents available, which gives a further idea of the scale of the work. Those doing the inquiry have indicated that they intend to begin what is called the “criticism phase” of their work this summer. That will give individuals who may face criticism in the report the chance to make representations to the inquiry. Thereafter, the inquiry and Sir John will have to assimilate those representations into the final report. I do not have a definitive time scale for when that final report will be published, but it is essential that Sir John Chilcot and his colleagues do that work in a thorough and professional way.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

That is absolutely right and it is important that John Chilcot gets all the information required for the report. He will have seen the remarks by David Owen that hint at collusion by Tony Blair and the Prime Minister’s office to ensure that private correspondence between George Bush and Tony Blair will not be available to the inquiry. Can the Minister say that that will now be made available and that we will be able to see the private correspondence between Tony Blair and George Bush?

[Mark Simmonds]

Let me be clear with the hon. Gentleman. The debate about the private correspondence between Tony Blair and George Bush, and the Cabinet minutes from the time, concerns their public publication. The Chilcot inquiry has seen both sets of documents, which I hope goes some way to assuage the hon. Gentleman’s concerns.

[Paul Flynn]

The inquiry is already two years late given the date it originally promised to report and, as the Minister says, it is an important report. Had the United Kingdom not joined the war, Saddam would still have been removed and the war would have gone on because our support was not needed. The crucial point— I do not know whether the Minister has confirmed this—seems to be what Bush and Blair cooked up in 2002, because the decision to take the United Kingdom into the war was probably taken then. That is the essential point—not why the war took place, but why the United Kingdom was dragged into it by Tony Blair.

[Mark Simmonds]

That is part of Sir John Chilcot’s remit, and we must wait for the report to come out before the UK Government will comment on that.

[Mr Baron]

Is my hon. Friend at least able to accept that we went to war on a false premise and there were no weapons of mass destruction?

[Mark Simmonds]

No, I am not prepared to comment on that. As I said, the current Government will not comment on the process that led to participation in the Iraq conflict until after the Chilcot report has been published.

[Andrew George]

Even if the Government are not prepared to concede that point, does my hon. Friend agree that the issue raises questions about the capacity of Parliament to scrutinise the evidence? Even if we accept the evidence from the time at face value—although a lot of us were very sceptical of it—the only thing it concluded was that Saddam had the ability of potentially reaching UK assets in Cyprus within 45 minutes, and that was all. Was that really sufficient evidence for Parliament to decide that we should go to war?

[Mark Simmonds]

Those are all matters that Sir John Chilcot will be looking at, and I am sure my hon. Friend would prefer there to be an independent inquiry looking at what happened, rather than a Government inquiry. We have made a conscious decision not to comment on the decision to go to war until the inquiry has reported, but as I have said, I recognise that it was a decision of huge significance.

[Mr Baron]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mark Simmonds]

I want to make a little progress and I will be happy to give way later. We must not get into a position of prejudging the inquiry’s conclusions, but I am sure that—quite rightly—that will not prevent other Members of the House from having a full and frank debate as they put their views on the record this afternoon. I would also find it helpful to hear the views of Members on where Iraq might be in 10 years’ time, as well as reanalysing events that took place a decade ago. We should look forwards as well as backwards.

The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion rightly set out some of the enormous challenges that Iraq still faces. Most visible and acute is the terrorist violence that continues to kill all too many people all too regularly, and I discussed that when I visited Baghdad in January—indeed, when I was in Baghdad a series of car bombs went off. In the past three months we have sadly seen an increase in such attacks, and the UN estimates that more than 1,000 people—mostly civilians—lost their lives in May alone. We continue to condemn utterly such acts, and almost all the Iraqi people believe that such violence has no place in their country’s future.

There are other longer term difficulties, and many fundamental political issues remain unresolved with no settled agreement on how power is to be shared. Ethnic and sectarian divisions remain, often exacerbated by those elsewhere in the region—particularly in Syria, as others have mentioned. Over the past six months, those factors have led to protests in west Iraq, and to disputes between Iraq’s political leaders that have prevented them from taking the decisions the country needs. That political deadlock holds back Iraq’s stability, and in turn its development. As has been rightly pointed out, public services and standards of living in much of Iraq remain poor, and corruption and bureaucracy are also problems that must be faced. As we consistently point out, Iraq’s human rights record remains a source of concern, from the Government’s increasing use of the death penalty to the recent removal of licences from some media stations.

[Mr Baron]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. He is being generous, for which he is to be commended. May I take him back to the Chilcot inquiry? Probably like a lot of other Members, I have submitted evidence to that inquiry and we wait to hear its results. One thing Chilcot cannot do, however, is manufacture WMDs from his report. Given that the main pretext for war was WMDs, will the Minister at least accept the prima facie case that we went to war on a false premise because there were no WMDs?

[Mark Simmonds]

My hon. Friend makes the same intervention as five minutes ago. It may be that the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) wants to contribute to the debate and address that point, but I am not going to.

[Paul Flynn]

rose—

[Mark Simmonds]

I will make a little progress but I will be happy to give way to the hon. Gentleman a little later if he still insists.

My point is that the challenges Iraq faces are not the whole story. Although the level of violence is unacceptably high, it is noticeably lower than at its peak during the very dark days of 2006-07. Life across much of Iraq, particularly in the south and the Kurdistan region, is peaceful for most people most of the time. Three democratic national elections have been held since 2005 with another due next year, and in April, 8,000 candidates contested provincial elections across most of the country. Two further provinces will vote next week, and the rest in September.

Iraq’s economy has been transformed. According to the World Bank, its GDP has increased from approximately $19 billion in 2002 to roughly $116 billion in 2011. It is now forecast by the IMF to grow by 8% in each of the next five years. That growth will hopefully turn Iraq into one of the success stories of the next decade, and mean that people no longer see it as a post-conflict state, but as a key emerging economy.

The International Energy Agency world economic outlook predicts that Iraq will be responsible for nearly half the increase in global oil production over the coming decades, and its production could double by 2020. The hydrocarbons potential represents a huge opportunity to drive economic growth for the good of the maximum number of Iraqi people, if used responsibly and properly.

[Paul Flynn]

We went to Iraq to defend ourselves against non-existent weapons of mass destruction. We are now being prepared to go to war in Iran to protect ourselves against non-existent Iranian long-range missiles carrying non-existent Iranian nuclear bombs. The Minister cannot postpone the Government’s responsibility and say that we must wait for the Chilcot report, which will be produced this year, next year, some time or never. They must take a decision on Iran, possibly in the near future. Should we not be informed of the truth of what we did in 2003?

[Mark Simmonds]

The hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to hear that he will not tempt me away from the well considered Government line on the Chilcot inquiry. I will not get into the details of the decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003. His point on Iran has been made by other hon. Members. I acknowledge and respect his perspective and views, but the international community has serious concerns about Iran’s nuclear programme. The Government continue to believe that the twin-track process of pressure and engagement offers the best hope of resolving the Iranian nuclear issue. We are not advocating military action against Iran, but all options should remain on the table.

To return to the positive side of Iraq, the Iraqi Government’s task is to build on that progress and make the most of the opportunities, ensuring that Iraq’s economy is booming, and that that translates into a better life for normal people throughout the country. Improving the country’s security, which has been fully under Iraqi control for 18 months, is vital, but the Iraqi Prime Minister and other political leaders need to find an inclusive political process to resolve the underlying tensions that, I acknowledge, remain, and therefore to reduce the space within which the extremists operate. In that context, I welcome the holding of last Sunday’s Cabinet meeting in Irbil, which I hope sends a signal of serious intent to improve relations between the Federal Government and that of the Kurdistan region.

No doubt many hon. Members will want to raise Iraq’s relations with the region. Increasingly, Iraq has been making progress on rebuilding its relationships with countries that were once adversaries. I was particularly pleased to note that the Kuwaiti Prime Minister met Prime Minister Maliki in Baghdad only yesterday. That is another sign of the increasing warmth of relations in the region.

The UK will continue to support Iraq as it faces those challenges. Indeed, the relationship between our countries is increasingly strong. That is true at the Government level. Four UK Ministers including myself have visited Iraq in the past nine months. We visited not only Baghdad, but Irbil and Basra—my right hon. Friend Lord Green, the Minister for Trade and Investment, visited Basra. We have relationships in the Defence Ministries—a meeting took place in London only this morning. I can assure the House that UK Ministers press the Iraqi Government and Ministers on a range of issues, including their plans to improve security.

Our relationship is strongly increasing on a commercial level. Exports were up significantly, and not only in the hydrocarbon sector. There are opportunities in sectors such as education, health care, infrastructure and financial services. The UK Government are doing what we can to help. For example, when the Foreign Secretary was in Iraq in September, he agreed we should set up a UK-Iraq ministerial trade council, which was launched in February by my colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), who has responsibility for the middle east.

We have opened a new visa application centre in Baghdad, and encouraged Iraqi Airways to schedule direct flights from London to Baghdad for the first time in more than two decades, which it has done. All of that will help to cement the closer ties between the UK and Iraq at individual level. Hon. Members will be aware of the large and significant Iraqi diaspora in the UK. Iraqi students are keen to study here, and we are even beginning to see British tourists return to the Kurdistan region.

Many other hon. Members wish to speak, so I shall draw my remarks to a conclusion. I hope those links continue to strengthen. It is right for us to look forward to the future of Iraq even as we look back on the events of 10 years ago. As I have said, the Government have not come to a conclusion and will not comment until we see Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, to maintain internal security, which is vital to restoring the Iraq economy and keeping civil peace, we need to ensure that external actors in the region do not participate in stirring up ethnic conflict within Iraq?

[Mark Simmonds]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to make that point. When I was in Baghdad in January, there was significant concern across the political spectrum and the religious divides in Iraq about Syria, and about the potential spillover into Iraq. It is right that the international community, and the British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, focus on using all the levers they have to try to find a lasting political solution to the challenges in Syria.

Iraq is undoubtedly a country of great potential, with an economy that is expanding at 8%, but it has challenges. The UK wants to assist in resolving those challenges for the benefit of the maximum number of Iraqi people in the minimum time scale.

13:25

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) for securing this important debate. She spoke powerfully and with great eloquence and passion. The hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) have said, essentially, that we need to learn profound lessons from the decisions made at the time of the Iraq vote 10 years ago and what has happened since. It is clear that the events and considerations of the Iraq vote set the context for the House’s current foreign affairs discussions on, for example, Syria and Iran. In that respect, at least one lesson has been learned.

I pay tribute to all those who died in the conflict in Iraq, remembering in particular those 179 British troops, who have been mentioned, who died in the service of their country. They served in profoundly difficult and dangerous circumstances, and we owe them a profound debt of gratitude.

The discussion has touched on the various and profound issues relating to the vote back in March 2003, and hon. Members have referred to the Chilcot inquiry. I am grateful to the Minister for the update he has provided today. We will consider the outcome of the inquiry very closely.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

My hon. Friend will have heard earlier interventions on the need for a war crimes Act in this country. The vote on Iraq was unprecedented, but the royal prerogative prevails, so the Prime Minister could take the country to war without a parliamentary vote. Does my hon. Friend believe it is now time for a war powers Act?

[Ian Lucas]

One often forgotten point is that the vote was unprecedented. The then Prime Minister and my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), who is behind me keeping an eye on me, deserve great credit for that. There was intense debate up to 2003, and the vote was important.

[Pete Wishart]

The hon. Gentleman did not vote for the Iraq war. What part of the case for war did he not agree with? Several people said there was a solid case, but what made him vote against war?

[Ian Lucas]

The hon. Gentleman has beaten me to my next paragraph—I was about to mention my position in respect of the March 2003 vote, which I remember very well indeed. The Minister said that little else was in the minds of Members of Parliament at the time, and there was certainly little else in my mind. I made the decision to cast my vote against the Labour Government, the first of only two occasions when I have done that—I was right the other time, too—and I will explain why.

In 2003, I sat through the entire debate on the Back Benches, but was not called. It was only in 2006 that I had the opportunity to speak and explain why I had made my decision. I had an advantage then, because the weapons inspector Hans Blix had spoken following the end of the Iraq war. He said—this is very important—that in March 2003 his belief was that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. I believed, and still believe, that the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, also believed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. It was on that basis that those who voted in favour of the war made their decision.

My decision was not made on the basis that I opposed any intervention, but that the weapons inspectors needed more time. I looked at all the evidence, thought long and hard, and decided that it was right and appropriate for me to vote against the war. I do not regret that decision and I never have. It is important to recognise that 139 Labour MPs made the same decision. Some suggestions that MPs were sent down the wrong path by representations made at the time could be put in a misleading way. Many of us made the decision on the basis of all the evidence we had at the time, and we made the correct decision.

[Paul Flynn]

I recall those days of great turmoil well. Does my hon. Friend think it is a matter of regret for this House that the three Committees we had to oversee these matters—the Intelligence and Security Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Defence Committee —were cheerleaders for the war and did not act with the kind of independent scrutiny that they perhaps should have?

[Ian Lucas]

I cannot pass judgment on the work of the Committees, because I have not looked in great detail at the position they took at the time. I am sure that the vast proportion of hon. Members will have made their decision honestly and in the way that they thought was right.

We know that the decision was important not just to Members of this House, but to an enormous number of people outside. It had a profound impact on British politics. As the Leader of the Opposition has said, the war led to a fundamental loss of trust in the Labour party, and it is right that the Labour party should acknowledge that. Those who knocked on doors in the subsequent general election were made well aware of that, which is one of the great qualities of our democracy.

[Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend not just on the position he took 10 years ago, but on the way he is presenting his case today. A number of Labour MPs took the same decision. Indeed, if it had not been for the votes of the Conservative party and others, the motion would not have been carried. Has he given consideration to the suggestion that votes on war should be matters of conscience, and not be whipped?

[Ian Lucas]

The 2003 vote was whipped and I still did what I thought was right. Members of Parliament should always do what they think is right.

[Mr Straw]

May I echo the point made by my hon. Friend and by the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) that it was a whipped vote in name only? The vote was perfectly open. Given the extent of the rebellion on both sides, people were able to make their own judgments. Inside the Government, there was a clear expectation that anybody taking the Queen’s shilling would vote with the recommendation of the Cabinet, but it was open to Ministers to resign—two did, very honourably. Others chose to stay.

[Ian Lucas]

I think that votes on important matters in this House always have consequences. This vote had consequences for those MPs who did not support the Government on that particular occasion.

[Paul Flynn]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Ian Lucas]

May I make a little progress? I think I am getting stuck.

Regardless of individual positions taken by Members across the House at the time of the invasion, all of us agree that 10 years on we need to reflect on the consequences of the conflict and on the procedures that led to the vote, and to draw important lessons for the future.

As I touched on earlier, the Iraq war casts a long shadow over the House, setting the context for debates on foreign policy and, in particular, current debates on the middle east. Ten years on, the effect of the intervention on Iraq itself is that the negatives still outweigh the positives. There has been a protracted period of internal conflict within Iraq. As the Minister said, terrorist attacks continue, with people killed in Baghdad only this week.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for the tone he is adopting. It is refreshing to hear such personal thoughts from the Front Bench. I am concerned about what we did once the decision was made and we took responsibility for Basra. My concern, which I put to Clare Short, was why a diktat had gone around the Department for International Development to say that the war was illegal and that the Department should not have any involvement or take any responsibility. Does he agree that that put huge pressure on our armed forces, who created an umbrella of security but were unable to progress with governance and reconstruction?

[Ian Lucas]

The position of the troops following the war was one of the issues that weighed on my mind. It is always important to pay tribute to our troops. Following the vote, we asked them to serve and it was important that we supported both them and Iraq, so that it could develop and rebuild. The tragedy is that that did not happen. We need to focus on that issue and learn from it.

The massive instability in the middle east currently is caused partly by the Arab awakening and the response to it, but also by the perceived increased reluctance of the west to get involved in the region. I believe that the roots of that reluctance are the events in Iraq in 2003. There are, however, some positives. It is right to acknowledge that Saddam Hussein and his sons are no longer in power. None of us in this House mourn the passing of that dictatorship. That was brought home to me this week. I returned last night from a visit to the Iraqi region of Kurdistan, as a guest of the regional Government. It was my first visit to Iraq. In Barzan, I met victims of Saddam Hussein, including women who had lost husbands, their faces still etched with grief 30 years on. There is no doubt in the minds of Kurds—the victims of Halabja and the Anfal—that the 2003 intervention was justified. I also visited the Domiz refugee camp, where the Kurdistan regional government, working with UNHCR, has provided refuge to 150,000 fleeing Syrians, mainly Syrian Kurds. For someone who voted against the Iraq war, this was an important visit.

We must all today accept that foreign policy is made in the long shadow of the Iraq war—that cannot be denied—but it should inform, not paralyse policy. Intervention took place in Libya, authorised by the UN, backed by the UK Government and supported by the Labour Opposition. The consequences there are still unfolding, only serving to confirm the lesson of Iraq: that winning a military victory in the short term is merely the start of any process of building a stable and functioning democracy. Ten years on from the Iraq war, I saw earlier this week that in parts of Iraq we have the beginnings of a new democracy. Prime Minister Maliki visited Erbil on Sunday, as the Minister said, to work through issues and disputes that have arisen between the different parts of Iraq. A political process is going on to resolve those difficulties, and that is progress, but there are still massive challenges in Iraq and we must not overstate the progress made.

The international community is most effective when it works collectively, through the UN, to take necessary action. I hope and pray that the next decade will be defined by the kind of international co-operation that was regrettably absent in Iraq.

13:42

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) for securing this debate, and it is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas), who made an extremely moving speech.

I was not in the House for the 2003 vote, and I certainly do not want to focus on it today; I am far from sure that I would have made the right decision. In fact, I think I would have been on the wrong side in 2003. It was not until I was stuck in Iraq in 2003 that I saw what a mess it was. I want to reflect briefly, therefore, on the lessons we might be able to draw, not so much from the decision to intervene, but from the questions about how we got stuck there and why we find it so difficult to acknowledge our failure.

The starting point for any discussion of Iraq has to be an acknowledgment that it was a failure and a scandal. However we look at the costs and benefits of what happened there, it was probably the worst British foreign policy decision since the Boer war or the first Anglo-Afghan war of 1839. Never have the British Government made a worse decision. By that, I do not mean that had I been in the House I would have voted differently. In fact, I suspect that I would have voted in favour of the war, wrongly. I hope, however, that this is an opportunity to reflect on what Parliament is, what the Foreign Office is, what the military is and how Britain as a whole—or at least the British policy establishment—could get something so wrong.

This matters because there are many similarities between what we did in Iraq and what we are doing in Afghanistan, and many similarities between those things and what we occasionally think of doing in Mali or Syria. At the base of the problem is our refusal to acknowledge failure, to acknowledge just what a catastrophe it was, and the House’s refusal to acknowledge how bewildering it was, how little we know and how complicated countries such as Iraq are. Sitting in Iraq for 18 months from the middle of 2003 to 2005, I found myself facing, in a small provincial town called al-Amara, 52 new political parties, many of them swarming across the border from Iran and many of them armed.

Nobody in the Foreign Office or the military, and certainly nobody in the House, would have been able to distinguish between Hizb-e-Dawa, Harakat-Dawa, Majlis Ahla, Hezbollah—which turned out in the Iraqi context to consist of two men with a briefcase—or any of the other Shi’a Islamist groups that emerged. None of us in the British policy machine predicted in January 2005 that 90% of the votes in the south of Iraq would go to only three Shi’a Islamist parties. Everybody in the foreign policy machine then predicted that it would be different at the end of 2005, and we were all wrong again. Why were we wrong? We were wrong because we did not have the right relationship between politicians, diplomats, soldiers and the local reality of these countries. We have not got it right yet.

We have not got it right because it is not realistic today—as it was not realistic at the time of the Boer war or the first Anglo-Afghan war—to expect people in Parliament to be experts on the internal politics of Iraq. What really began to go wrong after the invasion, beyond the decision about WMD, was all to do with micro-relationships in Nasiriyah and al-Amara and in the relationships between the different grand ayatollahs in Najaf. These are not things that anyone in the Chamber, however well briefed, can pretend to understand or judge. Instead, we have to rely on the military, the Foreign Office and the intelligence agencies, and there the problem starts. The problem starts because the entire structure of our organisations—their incentives, their promotions, their recruitment, how they interact with policy makers, politicians and Ministers—does not help us ever to acknowledge failure. In fact, these institutions are designed to trap us in these countries.

Careers are made by people going out for short tours. I remind the House and those in the Foreign Office that the initial tours in Iraq were for six weeks, extended to three months, then to six months. The idea—that people living in heavily defended compounds, moving around in armoured vehicles, generally unable to speak a word of any local language, unable to interact with an Iraqi for more than half an hour or an hour at a time, except if surrounded by heavily armed men and operating through translators, could really get a sense of whether Iraq was stabilising or what, to use the Minister’s words, Iraq would be like in 10 years—was of course misleading. The advice and challenge that they could provide to the Government, therefore, was not good enough.

It is not good enough that not a single senior British diplomat formally recorded on paper their opposition to what was happening in Iraq. Many of those who were inside the system now say that they made private comments, that they were worried, but nobody, from the political director downwards, formally objected on paper to the Prime Minister.

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

Was that not compounded even further by the American Administration, where if someone questioned what was going on, either strategically or tactically, they were sent back to the states, their future career very much in question?

[Rory Stewart]

That is a very good point, and perhaps it is a way for me to wrap up my analysis of the Foreign Office. Of course, this is not a uniquely American problem. Within any British civil service Department, there is no great incentive to admit failure. When I look back at the reports I wrote stuck in al-Amara and Nasiriyah, I find it extraordinary how every week, I claimed great success. Every week, I would write, “We’ve hired another 300 people into the police. We’ve held a new sub-district election. I’ve just created 3,000 jobs. We’ve just refurbished another set of clinics and schools.” To read report after report, week after week, it looks as if the whole thing is getting better and better. In retrospect, I know differently, of course. When I began, I could go into the bazaar to get an ice cream, but by the end, I was stuck in my compound with 140 rocket and mortar-propelled grenades flying at the compound, and we had to abandon it and retreat back to a military base, essentially surrendering Nasiriyah, a city of 600,000 people, to the insurgents.

The situation is not helped by the way we talk about it in Britain today. We do not really think very much about Iraq. We do not think very much about what exactly Iraq is doing with Iran or Syria at the moment, why exactly Iraq got involved in dubious banking transactions to bust sanctions on behalf of the Iranian Government or why exactly our great ally, al-Maliki, appears to have been allowing trans-shipment of weapons from Iran into Syria. Why do we not think about these things? It is because we are not very serious. At some level, this country is no longer being as serious as it should be about foreign policy. Our newspapers are not writing enough about Iraq. The Foreign Office is not thinking enough about the failure. The military is not thinking enough about these things. Unless we acknowledge that something went wrong in Iraq and that something went deeply wrong in Afghanistan, we will get ourselves stuck again.

What do we do about it? We need to reform. It cannot be business as usual. We cannot just go around pretending it was all fine. We cannot simply blame Blair and Bush.

[Pete Wishart]

Is not the reason for us going to war in Iraq actually quite simple? Prime Minister Tony Blair had some perverse obligation to George Bush, and that is why we went in.

[Rory Stewart]

The hon. Gentleman has raised exactly the point that we need to talk about. We believe that somehow it is all the fault of Blair and Bush—this is the myth that has entered the national consciousness. My experience as someone inside the system is that we have to look much more deeply at ourselves. We need to look at the Foreign Office, the military, the intelligence services and Parliament. These people, Blair and Bush, do not operate in a vacuum; they operate in a culture that did not challenge and shape the debate sufficiently. It is not realistic for Blair or Bush to know deeply about these situations and it is simply a constitutional convention, of course, that the people who make the decision are the Blairs and the Bushes. However, if we look at what got us trapped on the ground in Iraq—at why, for example, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) found it difficult to get out of Iraq or why President Obama found it difficult to say no to the surge—it is because these people are part of a much bigger system.

The reform of that system is threefold. First, we need radically to reform the way in which the Foreign Office operates. The Foreign Secretary has begun; we need to go much further, thinking all the time about the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan. We need to focus on people with deep linguistic and cultural expertise. We need to ensure that we change all the bureaucratic mechanisms. The core competency framework for promotion in the Foreign Office needs to be changed. The amount that people are paid for learning languages in the Foreign Office needs to be changed. The posting lengths need to be changed. The security conditions for the Foreign Office need to be changed, because unless we begin to understand deeply and rigorously what is happening on the ground, it is difficult to challenge the Blairs and the Bushes.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for making such a powerful speech, but when it comes to whether it is right or wrong to blame Bush and Blair, I think he is being a little too generous in his assessment of them. He is giving the impression that they were sitting waiting to hear what the evidence was, when it seems clear—certainly in the case of Bush and maybe in the case of Blair—that they had already made up their minds. They already had an agenda.

[Rory Stewart]

I am sure that much of that is true. I am not here to defend that decision—it was a terrible, catastrophic decision—but I think it is dangerous to put the whole blame simply on Blair and Bush, because the implication is that if we do not have Blair and Bush around, we will never get in these messes again. We will get in these messes again because we have not created the proper Government policy structures required to think these things through—not just to avoid the decision to invade, but above all to get out more rapidly once we have made a bad decision.

Military reforms—you have very kindly given me some time, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I do not have enough to talk about this today—involve accepting that the military have too much power in the policy debate. That is not the military’s fault: they are filling a vacuum. The military feel that the Foreign Office is not taking the lead and that somebody needs to do something. I saw that all the time on the ground in Iraq. I remember a major-general saying to me, “The diplomats and aid workers aren’t doing anything, so we”—the military—“need to take those things over,” but that is not the military’s job. It is extremely dangerous, because its puts generals in positions where they make optimistic predictions about their capacity to sort things out, albeit without a detailed understanding of the politics or the reality of those aspects of governance or diplomacy.

We in Parliament need to look at ourselves—it is on this that we need to conclude. The hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) was exactly right to ask us to look hard at how the Select Committee on Defence, the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Intelligence and Security Committee got this wrong. What reforms have we introduced to those Committees to ensure that we do not get it wrong again? How do we as Members of Parliament operate in a very complicated world? It is not realistic for any of us in this Chamber to understand exactly what the difference is between Harakat-Dawa, Hizb-e-Dawa and Hizb-e-Dawa Islamiya. Everybody is learning desperately from briefs, trying to sound plausible, but there are 200 nations in the world. Ministers are busy. Politicians are busy; they are worrying about their constituents. They are not deep experts on these issues. We therefore need to create a system that we can rely on in the Foreign Office, the military and the intelligence services. We in Parliament need to know how to question those people, how to listen to them and how to promote people who disagree with us. We need in Parliament to learn how to look at which civil servants got it wrong and hold them accountable, rather than promoting, as we did, almost everybody who was implicated in the Iraq decisions.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

rose—

[Rory Stewart]

I am coming to the end.

Finally, we need above all to learn—I feel, as a new Member of Parliament, and with all deference to this House—a lesson of humility.

13:56

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I am very pleased that the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) has been able to secure today’s debate. It is timely, obviously, and it is important that we should have plenty of time to talk about this issue, even 10 years down the line. She made a fine and impassioned speech and set the tone for the debate.

I do not always see eye to eye with the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas), who speaks for the Labour party, but I must say that he made a very fine speech. It was a balanced speech, it came from the heart and it was refreshing to hear such a speech from the Front Bench. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), who speaks with great knowledge about things diplomatic and military. They are things that I know very little about—I will place that on the record now, lest it becomes too obvious later on.

[Paul Flynn]

Does the right hon. Gentleman follow the significant point made by the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) about the unimportance of being right on these decisions? Those who sided with error saw their careers flourish, while those who were right and objected to their Ministries saw their careers wither.

[Mr Llwyd]

That is absolutely right, obviously. That is a feature of the system that we are all embroiled in at the moment, imperfect—greatly imperfect—as it is.

I want to start by quoting something that was said recently:

“I let Parliament have the final say on me decision to go to war. I made statements, answered questions, took part in debates. But in the end there was a decision that had to be made: on the basis of the information available, to decide whether to join the US coalition and remove Saddam; or to stay out. I decided we should be in. The job of the Prime Minister is to make such decisions based on what he believes is in the interests of the country.”

Those words are taken from the end of former Prime Minister Blair’s statement to the Chilcot inquiry—an inquiry that, as we have heard, has so far failed to report, despite almost exactly four years having passed since it was first announced in this place by the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown). As I shall briefly outline today, I have reservations about the Chilcot inquiry, which I suspect was as flawed and compromised from the outset as the then Government’s decision to go to war.

Let me nail one other myth. The Liberal Democrats are very pleased to go around saying that they were the only party to vote against. We voted against, the Scottish National party voted against and many Members of other parties voted against. We were described as jellyheads and all kinds of things.

[Martin Horwood]

I do not recall us often saying that we were the only party to vote in that way. I am happy to acknowledge publicly the support of Plaid Cymru and the other parties that stood alongside the Liberal Democrats in the Chamber in opposing the war. Is not the truth that the most chilling words were those of Tony Blair in the recent BBC documentary, when he said that he had reflected that it was time to remake the middle east? Did not the combination of that kind of messianic leadership and the enormous momentum towards war mean that no amount of political or even expert diplomatic advice would have changed their minds?

[Mr Llwyd]

I am very pleased to agree with the hon. Gentleman. He has made a good input into the record.

Between 2002 and 2003, my then Plaid Cymru colleagues Adam Price and Simon Thomas and my hon. Friend the Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams), along with our colleagues in the SNP, were unanimous in our opposition to the incursion into Iraq and, on 18 March 2003, we voted against the invasion. We did not believe then, and nor have we ever believed, that the dossiers produced by the then Government displayed any credible threat from Saddam Hussein’s regime. In the words of Mr Blair that I quoted a moment ago, the former Prime Minister said that he had let Parliament have the final say on whether we should go to war, but the motion on which Parliament voted asserted:

“That this House…recognises that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and”—

crucially—

“long range missiles, and its continuing non-compliance with Security Council Resolutions, pose a threat to international peace and security”.—[Official Report, 18 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 760.]

The motion was flawed in several regards, so we were meant to vote on a flawed motion in any event, quite apart from the fact that the evidence did not stack up to create a credible or immediate threat from Saddam’s regime. Thus the basis on which Mr Blair led Parliament to decide was a false premise. The jury is still out on the extent to which Mr Blair and the Cabinet knew that the claims were counterfeit.

On the day after the House voted for the invasion, the Prime Minister said:

“We want to ensure that any post-conflict authority in Iraq is endorsed and authorised by a new United Nations resolution”.—[Official Report, 19 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 932.]

There were of course those of us who argued even then that the Government were not acting under the endorsement of an existing UN Security Council resolution, because as Sir Jeremy Greenstock admitted, there was no automaticity in resolution 1441 and our incursion into Iraq was therefore illegal under international law.

On 24 November 2004, an impeachment motion was tabled in the name of myself, the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier), Douglas Hogg QC and the First Minister of Scotland. The motion had been supported, in writing or otherwise, by 24 Members of this House, but it was never called for debate. However, the Impeach Blair campaign had the support of the Stop the War Coalition, the Green party, Frederick Forsyth, Terry Jones, Brian Eno, the late Harold Pinter, the late Corin Redgrave, the late Jimmy Reid and, last but by no means least, the late—alas—Iain Banks.

With hindsight, and following debates on this topic, that one sentence of Mr Blair’s seems almost to override all else: he had decided that “we should be in”. He had made that decision without a second UN resolution, when most of the world was against the incursion. He had decided that the UK would lend its support to President Bush’s war on terror, whatever the cost. Let us be realistic; Bush had the might to do this in short order in any event. He wanted a cloak of legitimacy, and that is how he lured Tony Blair in to support him—and at what a cost it has proven to be.

Today, Iraq is the state fifth most at risk of terrorism in the world, and the eighth most corrupt. It is a country marred by car bombs and corruption. Under the Shi’a Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, power is divided along ethnic lines. Economically and physically, the country has been all but destroyed. In a poll published in September 2011, 42% of Iraqis said that they were worse off as a result of the invasion, compared with only 30% who thought themselves in some way better off.

The war has arguably resulted in the other members of the so-called axis of evil, Iran and North Korea, obtaining nuclear weapons, and the risk of terrorism at home has definitely increased. We have heard quotes from Eliza Manningham-Buller and others on that subject. There is no basis for claiming that al-Qaeda had a real presence in Iraq before 2003, but the war itself has established one. The human cost has also been devastating. Between March 2003 and the end of UK operations in May 2011, 179 UK armed forces personnel died as a consequence of operations in Iraq. Of those, 136 were killed in combat. I join other Members across the House in paying tribute to them. Whatever foreign policy decisions are arrived at in this place, they always do their best and carry out their duties bravely. I respect them for that. The question of whether the war was lawful or otherwise is our problem.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I accept everything that the right hon. Gentleman is saying, but does he not agree that there also needs to be some reflection on the treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, and on the many atrocities that were perpetrated on ordinary Iraqi people by occupying troops in that country?

[Mr Llwyd]

Absolutely; the hon. Gentleman is quite right. He also voted against the war and took part in the debates at the time. We have not even touched on that important subject in today’s debate, but I hope that, if he catches the Deputy Speaker’s eye, he will develop that theme. It is vital that it should be brought into the debate.

According to the Iraq Body Count project, an unofficial survey of Iraqi civilian casualties, between 113,000 and 123,000 civilians have died as a result of violence in Iraq since March 2003. According to the same source, 883 civilians died in May 2013—the highest number of civilian deaths in any month since April 2008. That is the ugly legacy of this war.

Let me tell the House that it gives me no satisfaction whatever to stand here today and say that we who voted against the motion were proved right. The damage to Iraq, has, as they say, already been done. However, many unanswered questions remain about our descent into war in the spring of 2003. I want to quote from the words spoken by the then Member for Blaenau Gwent, Llew Smith, who said:

“We…need to know whether Ministers simply proved to be very bad judges of geopolitics, stubbornly refusing to listen to the millions who marched against the war…or—worse—deliberately distorted the evidence, cherry-picked the details that suited their case for invading Iraq, and pressed the Attorney-General to provide an opinion that endorsed a political decision already taken two years earlier to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam.”—[Official Report, 9 March 2004; Vol. 418, c. 1426.]

Personally, I have little doubt that the evidence was indeed distorted, as the decision to go to war had already been made months, if not years, before a motion was ever put before the House. I saw proof of this dating from 2002, and I will return to that point later if I may.

On 9 March 2004, I opened a debate calling for the advice of the Attorney-General on the legality of the war in Iraq to be published in full. I said during that debate that Treasury counsel would have received instructions when they were advising the Attorney-General, and that, had counsel been ill informed or misled in those instructions, the advice would have been flawed ab initio. I said that it was of the utmost importance to establish whether the instructions given by the Attorney-General contained reference to the now infamous 45-minute claim. Had these instructions contained such references and had counsel accepted them as valid, the whole basis of that advice would obviously have been flawed. I made it clear in the debate that the ministerial code holds no bar on publishing such advice. In fact, the code states:

“Holders of public office should be as open as possible about all the decisions and actions they take. They should give reasons for their decisions and restrict information only when the wider public interest clearly demands.”

I argued at the time and I argue now that it is in the wider public interest on going to war that disclosure should be made, for heaven’s sake. What is more, I set out the precedents for publishing the advice of the Attorney-General—including, for example, the Belfast riots and the Archer-Shee cases. I cited the opinions of five distinguished international lawyers who each had differing views about whether the war in Iraq had been legal, but who were unanimously in favour of publishing in full the advice of the Attorney-General. One of these, James Crawford, who was then—and still is, I believe—professor of international law at Cambridge, observed:

“If the war was conducted in private, there would be every case for hiding the advice. If it’s going to be fought with public funds, in public and expending the lives of members of the public, then it should be published”.

Another, Lord Archer, QC, said that the Attorney-General’s arguments constituted

“the most important legal opinion given in the last quarter of a century.”

To this day, however, that advice has remained unpublished.

Interestingly, that debate was tabled by us in Plaid Cymru and our friends in the Scottish National party. What I think was then a joint group of nine secured a vote of about 285, as I recall, so there clearly was some concern around, and I am pleased that we brought the matter to the fore.

As I have outlined before, in 2002 I was sent documents from an unknown source which put me in no doubt whatever that Mr Blair had been determined to go to war with Iraq from the very outset. The documents had with them a note saying that they were top secret documents, some British and others appearing to emanate from other intelligence sources—American, I believe. The documents showed me that as early as 2001-02, discussions were being held about toppling Saddam, in which mention was made of the term “regime change”—which we all know is unlawful in international law.

Soon after I received the memorandums, my then colleague, Adam Price, and I were visited by two senior police officers from a special section of the Metropolitan police. I did not have the documents in my personal possession at the time, so I was unable to surrender them to those police officers. When the Chilcot inquiry was established in 2009, however, I decided to hand over the documents. I searched for them, found them and handed them over to the inquiry. I took them down to Victoria street and handed them over to the secretary of the inquiry, Ms Margaret Aldred.

Several months went by without my receiving any response to my submission. Nine months later, following a number of unanswered letters, I was finally granted the courtesy of a reply. As a result of this treatment, I had my misgivings about the secretariat of the inquiry, which I set out in full during a Westminster Hall debate on the issue on 25 January 2011.

Suffice it to say here that I discovered that Ms Aldred, the gatekeeper for the inquiry, who had previously acted as the Cabinet’s deputy head of foreign and defence policy secretariat, was put forward for her new role, in which she would inquire into the actions taken in that same foreign and defence policy, by the Cabinet Secretary himself, Sir Gus O’Donnell. The potential conflict of interest was breathtaking. I discovered that in her previous role, Ms Aldred had regularly chaired the Iraq senior officials group. Let us not forget either that it was the Cabinet Office, for which Ms Aldred had worked previously, that drew up plans for regime change and that it was the Cabinet Office and the Joint Intelligence Committee and its staff that produced the “dodgy dossier”. Her hands were hardly clean for that particular job. Thanks to the detective work of Dr Chris Lamb and others, we further discovered that this appointment had not followed the procedures set out in the civil service code and was neither open nor indeed transparent. I countered that her appointment to this role obviously made it questionable whether the inquiry was a Cabinet Office subsidiary. In the continued absence of the Chilcot inquiry’s report into the war, I am unable to comment further on this issue. But let us not hold our breath, folks.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

By way of a parallel and supporting point for the case that the right hon. Gentleman has just made, when I was a Back-Bench Member of the Education Committee in the last Parliament, there was an independent inquiry led by Lord Sutherland. I found out that the personal secretary to the permanent secretary at the Department for Education was one of the tiny number who made up this “independent inquiry” team. In fact, when we looked at the report in Word, we could see who authored certain parts of it. It was frightening to discover that the author of the section that exculpated the Department from all responsibility for the SATs fiasco was none other than the former personal secretary to the permanent secretary at that Department.

[Mr Llwyd]

There we are—another unhappy coincidence. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, which shows that this kind of conduct may be prevalent in this place. Clearly, going back to what was said by the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border, we need to look more into the procedures of this place and to challenge them; otherwise, we might be in throes of a similar disastrous position again. There is a still a catalogue of unanswered questions.

In a memorandum from Mr Blair to his chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, dated 17 March 2002, which was unpublished until the Chilcot inquiry, Mr Blair says of the problems in Iraq:

“The immediate WMD problems don’t seem obviously worse than three years ago. So we have to re-order our story and message.”

Why, then, did he tell Parliament mere months later that Iraq’s WMD programme was growing? The re-ordering to which Mr Blair referred in his memo was his decision to focus on Saddam’s monstrous nature. He went on to say:

“A political philosophy that does care about other nations—eg. Kosovo, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone—and is prepared to change regimes on the merits, should be gung-ho on Saddam.”

There can be little wonder, then, why Hans Blix was denied the further two months he had requested to continue his weapons inspection in Iraq. His testimony would not have been necessary.

I noticed that when we began this debate, the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) was firing off interventions at a rapid rate at my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion. If his points were so valid and so worthy of consideration, it is a shame that he did not stand his ground and make a speech, as we are all doing.

Mr Blair began this same memo to his chief of staff by saying:

“I do not have a proper worked-out strategy on how we would do it…I will need a meeting on this with military folk.”

“It”, we can surmise, refers to military action. Mr Blair had evidently decided, even in March 2002, that “we should be in”—despite the fact that, as I have said, regime change is unlawful under article 2, paragraph 4 of the United Nations charter.

What is all the more deplorable is the fact that Mr Blair’s deception in the run-up to the vote in March 2003 had disastrous consequences for post-invasion Iraq. Military plans were not constructed properly because they were not properly discussed. In his evidence to Chilcot, Mr Blair admitted that only 14 of the 28 meetings he held with key figures to discuss the possibility of war were in fact minuted. The most compelling documents, of course, have not been made public. The still classified material includes the exchanges between the former Prime Minister and President Bush.

In March 2005, I visited Iraq, going to Baghdad and Basra. During the visit, which was arranged by the Foreign Office, I had the opportunity to meet local politicians and women’s groups as well as national politicians and trade unionists in Baghdad. It was obvious that while there had been great efforts to plan for war, there had been little or no effort to plan for the peace. There were open sewers and people were complaining—I presume that the Foreign Office approved of our meeting these people. They were saying openly that they used to have electricity, running water and a decent sewerage system, but that they had nothing of that kind now. I am led to believe that, in many instances, that remains the position. We have left the country in a terrible state.

We met several senior military officers. It is interesting that they were prepared to confide to someone like me, who could hardly be described as a renowned establishment figure, their concern about the lawfulness of their being in Iraq in the first place. They were greatly concerned about whether the war was legal. I gave them my opinion, for what it was worth, but I also told them “You are doing your duty, as you are trained to do. Any question of illegality is not on your desk, but on the desks of people like me—the politicians back at home—so please do not divert your attention to that and put yourselves in harm’s way.” However, I respect the fact that they were asking those questions then; it demonstrates the feelings that were around at the time.

Saddam, as we knew, would be overthrown in days, or weeks at the most. The Americans could have done it themselves. The only plan for peace was to allow some limited western-funded repair of the Iraqi infrastructure to be carried out by American companies in which the neo-cons advising Bush had considerable financial interests. There is no interest now in returning Iraq to anything resembling a 21st-century country. Shame on them!

In February, Caroline Hawley, the BBC’s Baghdad correspondent between 2003 and 2005, wrote this in the New Statesman about her recent return to Iraq:

“Iraq remains a troubled place. During my recent visit, I saw little of its restored oil wealth being spent on badly needed social services. The nation, collectively traumatised, has only three child psychiatrists. The ubiquitous checkpoints and blast walls fail to stop…many bombers. Iraqis complain of rampant corruption. Nouri al-Maliki’s Shia-dominated government is seen as increasingly autocratic and its relations with the country’s Sunnis continue to sour. That Iraqis now seem to be fighting on both sides of Syria’s war…doesn’t bode well.”

As we teeter on the brink of entering yet another conflict in the middle east, I urge the Prime Minister and his Cabinet to learn from the obvious mistakes of our recent history. Mr Blair decided that we should go in; the history books will be the judge of why.

14:22

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), who secured the debate. I am very pleased to be participating in it. I also pay tribute to those on both Front Benches, who gave us an evocative, and also reflective, perspective on the war. I agree that this is not an anniversary but an analysis—an analysis that is crucial for the future of foreign policy, for people’s trust in Government, and for the institutions surrounding the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development.

I pay tribute to our soldiers, and also to the civilians in Iraq who have lost their lives. I was pretty horrified by the fact that, for the first couple of years, the Americans in particular seemed to have no interest in counting the civilian casualties. It struck me as extraordinary that we, who had entered the country on behalf of the civilians of Iraq as, in many respects, their advocate against their authoritarian leader, did not pay enough attention to what was happening even to count the number of those civilians who had lost their lives.

I became involved in Iraq in 1993, just after the ejection of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. My responsibility was to travel around the capitals of Europe highlighting Saddam’s human rights abuses. Halabja has been mentioned; I was there, showing videos of people’s suffering. I was in and out of Kurdish police stations where the police showed videos of torture to their prisoners before embarking on torture themselves. This was a brutal, disgusting regime. Saddam Hussein’s authoritarianism ran through the veins, and created fear in every single household in Iraq.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The hon. Lady is right to highlight Iraq’s appalling human rights record during that period, but will she reflect on the fact that Britain was selling arms to Iraq throughout it? Even after Halabja, Britain took part in the Baghdad arms fair of 1989, and continued to supply weapons right up to the start of the Gulf war.

[Laura Sandys]

That is evidently true. I am in no doubt about our relationship with Saddam Hussein, or about our relationships with many leaders around the world. Those relationships involve big ethical issues. What I am highlighting is human rights abuse, the brutalisation of a country by a man and his family, and the fact that such a small group of people were able to hold Iraq in so much fear.

It was against that backdrop that I was explicitly, and very vocally, opposed to our invasion of Iraq. I do not claim to be a great expert on Iraq like my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), but I had a little more insight into Iraq—its dynamics, and the interrelationship between the different communities there—than most people, and I felt at that time that the debate was extremely superficial. It was group-think. It was very binary. It was us and them. It was evil people and good people. As can be seen throughout the international foreign affairs perspective, the “cowboys and Indians” analogy works very poorly except for those who are sitting on the very outside.

I was a member of the Conservative party at the time, although not a member of the House of Commons, and I recall the cacophony. Does anyone remember how many times Richard Perle came over and appeared on television shrieking with fear and anticipation of our untimely demise? There were the neo-cons, and there were some colleagues who adopted quite a shrill tone. I was very concerned about the war and I wanted us to get rid of Saddam Hussein, but to do so by means of other mechanisms. I wanted Iraqi solutions to the Saddam Hussein problem. However, I found myself being accused of being anti-war, accused of being a pacifist, and accused of walking away from trouble. Well, those who know me are aware that it is unusual for me to be seen to be walking away from trouble.

The question of weapons of mass destruction was a fascinating aspect of the situation. Many Members have explained the whole issue of Hans Blix and the inspectors; however, those who, at the time, kept saying “But Saddam Hussein is not standing up and saying he has no weapons of mass destruction” did not understand enough about the regime itself. None of them understood the position that Saddam was in. At that moment, just before the war, he was extremely weakened—weakened internally. The republican guard had started to create a fair amount of tension in his regime, although the special republican guard was still on his side.

Saddam Hussein—the man of terror, the man of weapons of mass destruction—could not stand up and say “I do not have these weapons.” We were asking him to do something that would have constituted, in a sense, the disarming of every element of authority that he had. We were asking him to do something that he was not going to do, although many of us knew—and I worked with military intelligence during the war—that the weapons did not exist, or at least had an extremely limited capacity.

[Ian Lucas]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, first for giving way, secondly for her kind comments, and, thirdly, for making a powerful case for the importance of an Opposition holding a Government to account in relation to events in the middle east. Is that not a very important lesson for this Government?

[Laura Sandys]

Opposition on an issue such as this can come from all sorts of different directions.

It was frightening to see how the group-think had emerged and how, for example, the issue of 45 minutes to London arose. Do we remember that claim? The Evening Standard front page was in many ways a motivation, a call to action, and I was told by friends, colleagues and people who I would say are less than colleagues, “Laura, your position in being against the war is putting families in London at risk.” The debate became really quite vicious. It was not friendly, and it was not constructive in respect of understanding Iraq per se and—I say this having worked in the defence sector myself, and having worked in academia in the defence sector—understanding the potential and the possibilities of ballistic missiles.

What was fascinating about that whole 45-minutes-to-London claim is that No. 10 said afterwards, “Oh, we didn’t endorse that leak, wherever it came from,” but did they question it or contest it, saying to the Evening Standard and the other newspapers, “This actually is wrong”? That was an omission that allowed untruths to permeate the debate and created a very toxic environment, in which, as the hon. Gentleman rightly said, an opposition needed to thrive.

[Pete Wishart]

The hon. Lady is absolutely correct about the untruths and all the other issues she has raised, but how come they were so easily accepted by the Opposition? The right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), who was then Leader of the Opposition, was probably more enthusiastic about this war than Tony Blair was.

[Laura Sandys]

The hon. Gentleman will have to ask them. I was not a Member of this House at the time. However, lots of people from very different political perspectives—people on the right, the left and across the board—were against the war, and there were also people from all the parties who felt it was the right thing to do. I would also say this to the hon. Gentleman: I have seen some of the videos, and I have spoken to people who were tortured by Saddam Hussein, and I can see why people right across the board might have found the humanitarian motive extremely compelling.

One of the gravest failings was mainly constructed in America: the lack of planning post-Saddam and for the future. From my perspective, that was extraordinary. I was part of the “red team” working with military intelligence, and we met three times a week in the run-up to the Iraq war and then during the Iraq war. The minute the so-called conflict stopped, we were all disbanded because we were not needed—because there was no need for anybody with any expertise in Iraq, because the roses were going to be thrown on to the tanks and the Americans and the Brits were going to be embraced in every street, and there were going to be parties and we were going to have liberation right across the board. That naivete was, as has been said, in many ways a result of the lack of opposition and the lack of questioning of every element of the implications of this intervention.

I have subsequently heard that there were two opportunities for our armed forces to support the Iraqis to topple Saddam: as we arrived in Kuwait as part of our preparations for war, and as we were arriving close to Baghdad. At both times, leaders in the republican guard—not the special republican guard—approached the allies and said, “Can we instigate a revolt against Saddam? Then we will invite you in to support us.” That has received very little coverage and created little interest, but, from what I understand, there is truth in it, and I would be interested to see some of the papers to get to the bottom of it. We were there, and if our objective was to get rid of Saddam Hussein, we should have understood that it was important to do that in conjunction with the many forces and interests within Iraq that wanted to get rid of that brutal dictator.

My final point is that we must learn the lessons of history. I suspect my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border, and many other Members, would agree with me on that. We went into Iraq in 1917 and had a very difficult and torrid time, and many of the issues we faced in 2003 were identical, both in intention and implication. We must make sure that we do not end up across the region with three countries: a Sunni country, a Shi’a country and a Kurdish country. My group at King’s college at that time was explicit about that, and we see the same issue arising again now in relation to Syria. If we end up with those sorts of conflicts arising over the next few years, we will have to see our invasion of Iraq as being the first step in causing some deep fragmentation, some great destabilisation and some great global challenges, faced as a result of this decision on Iraq, which was not well thought through.

14:36

[Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on securing this debate from the Backbench Business Committee, and for her forceful, eloquent and moving opening speech. It is difficult to say the same of the Minister, who, constrained by the unpublished Chilcot report, chose to say, in almost half an hour, very little of substance, although he did give what I thought was a distinctly Panglossian view of the improvement in the state of Iraq, grossly overstating the case.

There has, however, been a great degree of honesty and frankness from all Members, which is extremely refreshing. I particularly congratulate in that context my colleague on the Front Bench, my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas), and although it is always invidious to pick out one person, I thought the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) gave a remarkable speech, making what I think, in my lengthy experience, must be a unique statement in this Chamber: that we should be more willing to admit our own failings. It is true that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, but that is not a doctrine we normally find expounded here.

I want to go over some of the fundamentals. Now, 10 years on, the facts cannot seriously be held in doubt, and they are stark. The United States went to war in Iraq because of oil and because American control of the middle east region was considered important for their foreign policy, as clearly set out in the Project for a New American Century document published by the Bush election team in September 2000. As we now know from then US Treasury Secretary O’Neill, that war was planned from the very first day of the Bush Administration, and 9/11 simply provided the pretext for launching it.

The United Kingdom went to war because President Bush wanted UK support. I do not think there is any doubt that at the Crawford summit in April 2002, the then Prime Minister Tony Blair in effect committed to providing that support, publicly pledging that he was going to stand shoulder to shoulder with President Bush. From that point on, the assessment of the intelligence data conflated analysis into advocacy, to find a rationale for the war which had already been decided on for other reasons. That, I believe, is the explanation.

The decision having been made to go to war, Whitehall provided a briefing that any rationale depended on being able to show incontrovertible evidence of large-scale—I emphasise: large-scale—activity by Iraq to obtain weapons of mass destruction, but because the UN inspectors had left Iraq in 1998, evidence was non-existent or certainly flimsy. The CIA admitted that its resources on Iraq were “thin” and the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee had already concluded, in March 2002, that

“Intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction . . .and ballistic missile programmes is”—

in words we will always remember—

“sporadic and patchy.”

The key point is that in the evidence put together in those crucial five months between the Crawford summit and the publication of the September dossier to justify the war, all the specific data were flawed. The first and central point is that the inventory of chemical and biological weapons and weapon parts that the then Prime Minister presented to the House dealt with weapons that were unaccounted for in the first Gulf war, 12 years earlier, but they were not presented as weapons that were unaccounted for; they were presented as weapons that Saddam Hussein was definitely believed to possess.

Secondly, the 45-minute claim referred to battlefield nuclear weapons, but the impression given was that the threat went much wider.

[Pete Wishart]

The case for going to war was bunkum and nonsense, but the right hon. Gentleman voted for the war. Does he feel that he was lied to, misled or duped?

[Mr Meacher]

Yes—I am glad the hon. Gentleman has given me the opportunity to say, in the spirit of honesty and frankness of this debate, that I am utterly ashamed of what I did on that occasion. It is the worst political mistake that I have made in my lifetime, but I want to say why I did it. I did it because I listened carefully to the then Prime Minister during those two crucial debates. He spoke with enormous assurance and authority, and I believed that, as Prime Minister of this country, he would have been presented with the fullest degree and comprehensiveness of UK intelligence, and he would use those data in a proper and honest manner to make the case. Perhaps I was naive to think that—I now believe that I was—but that is what I believed. I am speaking today because I am so angry at having been deceived. That experience has deeply damaged my trust in the role of Prime Ministers and in the link between intelligence and the various Departments of State and the Prime Minister, who speaks for the Government. I hope that that will be repaired in future, but the damage done has been considerable, certainly to me.

I was talking about the 45-minute claim referring to battlefield nuclear weapons. When the media took it up—the hon. Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys) forcefully recalled the Evening Standard headline—that was not corrected, even though the authorities knew very well that the wrong impression was being given.

Thirdly, the claim that Iraq tried to buy 500 tonnes of yellowcake, which is required for nuclear fission, from Niger was included in the dossier, despite its having been confirmed by a visit by the former US ambassador to that country six months before that it was completely bogus. None the less, the claim was included.

The fourth point, which is very important but which has received little attention, is that the then Prime Minister of this country claimed to the House on 25 February 2003 that the defection of Hussein Kamel, Saddam’s son-in-law, in 1995 had revealed

“the offensive biological weapons and the full extent of the nuclear programme”.—[Official Report, 25 February 2003; Vol. 400, c. 123.]

However, as we now know, from a Newsweek exclusive just a few weeks later, what Hussein Kamel actually said during his debriefing was precisely the opposite. He said:

“All weapons—biological, chemical, missile, nuclear—were destroyed.”

[Caroline Lucas]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the tenor of his speech and for putting that fact more strongly in the public domain. To clarify: that piece of information was available in February 2003. The fact that it was covered up to such an extent—not even covered up, but completely contradicted—is one of the most shocking deceits in this whole process.

[Mr Meacher]

I entirely agree. That is precisely why I feel so let down by someone who was in the unique role of Prime Minister behaving in such a way. I do not expect any Prime Minister of any party ever to behave in that way.

As the Butler report points out so poignantly, all the ifs, buts, qualifications and caveats in the raw intelligence data were dropped from the dossier, while the positive allegations were distinctly overhyped. We all know that. Sources were treated as reliable when they were clearly not, and they were not checked against the expertise of intelligence staff. Anyone who has read appendix B of the Butler report, which was excellently put together, can see set out, step by step, how the massaging and accretion steadily accumulated until we were told in the final September dossier that Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction programme was—in words that have echoed for the past 10 years—“active, detailed and growing” and that the intelligence on which that judgment was based was “extensive, detailed and authoritative”. In fact, as we now know, Blair had been told just over a month previously, by the UK intelligence community, that

“we…know little about Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons work since late 1988”.

The first great issue is accountability in relation to the Prime Minister’s own judgment, his deceitful presentation and his over-eagerness to take Britain into a war on grounds that far exceeded the evidence to justify them. One cannot take a country into a war under false pretences and then proclaim, as the Butler committee did, that no one can be held responsible.

Indeed the most striking characteristic of the Butler report is this disjunction between analysis and judgment. It is excellent on analysis and very poor, very cautious and very fearful about judgment. It catalogues a litany of failures and then pulls all its punches by declaring that, in effect, no one was to blame. I have to say that George Tenet was sacked as head of the CIA for intelligence failures over Iraq, but John Scarlett, who held the equivalent position in the UK and was equally responsible for the intelligence failures, is still recommended by the report for promotion, despite all the damning evidence in the report to the contrary. It is a very British establishment charade, when what is really needed is genuine accountability. I think everyone on all sides of the House is seeking that. But that the excuse is made that no one can be held to account and that it just somehow happened is completely unacceptable.

[Mr Ellwood]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech but, on the point about the Joint Intelligence Committee, it is the responsibility of Government to digest intelligence. The information is slid across the table and then it is the Government of the day and Whitehall who make the assessments. If the intelligence is scant, the Government need to respond on the day. Does he agree that people such as Mr Scarlett did their job? It became difficult for them when the documents were slid back across the table by people like Alastair Campbell, who were saying “You need to replicate what they are finding in America.”

[Mr Meacher]

I agree that the intelligence community can only do what it can do. There are limits to the amount of information it can provide and the politicians then have a responsibility to reflect that. I completely agree and one’s anger is not that politicians were selective, but that they said the opposite of what they were being told, which I believe is unforgivable.

There are two issues on which those responsible must be held to account. One is the presentation of the evidence to the House to agree to war. Being sinuous with the truth may not exactly be lying but it is certainly not open or honest. Presenting a seriously misleading account of the facts may not be lying either but it is certainly not truthful or straightforward. The second question is about the framework of governance that allowed this to happen. On that point, of course, it would have been much better if we had had the Chilcot report, but we still have to wait for its recommendations. I think everyone in the House agrees that it is far too long delayed and we need the report urgently.

Even 10 years on, we still have not been told the crucial evidence of the secret pledges that Blair made to Bush at his Crawford ranch in Texas some 10 months before the war began and, of course, before consulting the Cabinet, Parliament or the British people. Chilcot has seen this evidence but, as I understand it, has been prevented from publishing it, even though Blair himself, as well as Jonathan Powell and Alastair Campbell have disclosed privileged information when it has suited their case when they have given evidence to the inquiry. Being told, as we have been, that it is not in the public interest that it should be disclosed is, in my view, the strongest possible indication that it is very much in the public interest that it should be revealed.

The second fundamental dimension of this whole saga is clearly what the war achieved in the long term.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

My hon. Friend is giving a very interesting narrative of the process in government. Does he think that there is now case for legal action at an international level against those who deceived successive Parliaments in this country and in other places, which resulted in this terrible war?

[Mr Meacher]

That is why I say that we need the Chilcot report, in the light of which my hon. Friend’s point will be a serious consideration. The truth is that, in realpolitik, to the victors the spoils, with only those who are defeated paying the penalty. I take my hon. Friend’s point, which is an honest and fair one, and we should return to this when the report is finally published.

The second dimension is what the war has achieved. On this 10th anniversary, it has been said that the US won the war, Iran won the peace and Turkey won the contracts. But did the US win the war? At a cost that has been estimated at $1.5 trillion, something over £1 trillion—Joseph Stiglitz, a former member of the presidential economic council, thinks it is actually twice that level—and at a cost to the US of a death toll of 4,500 troops, 32,000 wounded and with thousands of survivors still struck down with post-traumatic stress disorder, the US completely failed to anticipate the insurgency that eventually forced it out. Moreover, the war actually produced the one thing that the US was desperately anxious to prevent; namely a Shi’a autocracy in Iraq, closely aligned with a resurgent Shi’a Iran. Even the US goal of securing control of the enormous Iraqi oil reserves, second only to those of Saudi Arabia, it was forced to forgo. If one had to pinpoint the moment when the US lost unipolar power as the world’s hegemon, it must surely be this comprehensive disaster of the Iraq war.

As for Iraq itself, it remains a bitterly divided and violent country, as others have said. It is not only the hundreds of thousands of dead and, at the height of the war, the 4 million refugees, but after nine years of occupation by US and British troops, thousands are still tortured and imprisoned without trial, health and education have dramatically deteriorated, the position of women has horrifically gone backwards, trade unions are effectively banned, Baghdad is still divided by the checkpoints and the blast walls, the electricity and water supplies have all but broken down, and people pay with their lives if they are honest enough to speak out.

In the longer term, the war has undermined the moral standing of the US and the UK across the world, not only in the middle east. It generated the al-Qaeda presence, which certainly was not there before, and it sent a clear message, which has emboldened Iran and North Korea, that the only way to deter US blackmail and attack was indeed to acquire weapons of mass destruction. It could even be said about the war without exaggeration that the greatest weapons of mass destruction were those wielded by the Americans. We saw the comprehensive and systematic demolition of Falluja, the US-led massacres at Haditha, Mahmudiya and Balad, and the biggest refugee crisis in the middle east since the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948.

My third and final consideration lies in the lessons, briefly, that can be drawn from this disaster. The chief one, as I said, concerns the governance structure that allowed it to happen in the first place. As we know, there was the mendacious, illegal and devious manner in which the US and the UK claimed authority in launching the war at all. Saddam had no involvement whatever in 9/11. There were no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, as was widely suspected by western intelligence at the time, but suppressed by the politicians. The ways used by Bush and Blair to take their countries to war were, as we know all too well, brazenly deceitful.

Much is made of the fact that there was a vote in the House of Commons, and there was, but that vote was on the very eve of war, hours before the bombing started when, with 45,000 British troops already deployed in the field, it was virtually impossible to draw back. So the first lesson is obviously that in any such future scenario—God forbid that there ever should be such a future scenario—the House of Commons vote must be at a much earlier stage in the process when war is first seriously being contemplated and at that stage the documentation must be provided to justify, or purport to justify, the war, and that must be fully disclosed to the House before the vote is taken.

[Laura Sandys]

As somebody who has so much more experience than I do in Parliament, will the right hon. Gentleman speculate what would have happened if we had voted against the war? Would we have been able to roll ourselves back? I think it was almost too late and it would have been a very big dilemma for the Prime Minister of the time to be in that position—an interesting dilemma and one that we need to resolve if we are to have votes before intervention in the future.

[Mr Meacher]

That is indeed an interesting point. It would not just have been difficult for the Prime Minister—it would have been a massive humiliation and embarrassment if that had happened. One has to ask why the vote was taken so late. Maybe—I can only speculate—it was precisely to put pressure on Members of this House for what was virtually a fait accompli, which would compel a majority of them to support it. I pay enormous tribute to the 139 MPs who voted against the war. Most were Labour Members, but some were Tories or Members from the smaller parties. They need to be given the credit and honour that they are due.

[Pete Wishart]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way and for commending the parties that voted against the war. He was just speculating on what might have happened if the House had voted against the war and whether that would have stopped it. One clear conclusion is known, because Tony Blair said that he would have resigned if the vote had gone against him. I think that was as big an incentive as any to vote against it that evening.

[Mr Meacher]

We all can have our views on that opinion.

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

I was one of the organisers of the rebellion, and it was with great sadness that I rebelled against my party and my Prime Minister. Will my right hon. Friend concede that the vote was not gifted by the Government, but hard fought for? Many of us worked for many months to obtain the vote. Indeed, there was to be an alternative convening of Parliament in Church House, at which we would have had a critical mass, and only 48 hours before the Government conceded that there would be a vote. We had enough Members to convene a Parliament to discuss the Iraq war, and the former Speaker, Bernard Weatherill, was prepared to chair it. It would have included Members from across the House, including some very brave Conservative Members, Members from the Liberal party and friends from the smaller parties across the political spectrum. But 122 Labour Members voted on the first occasion, and indeed the numbers went up on the second vote, which is unheard of, given the whipping operation against those who did not want us to go to war. It was not a gift of the Government; it was hard fought for—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is making an intervention, not a speech. We have only two hours remaining for this debate and at least six Members still wish to take the Floor. I would be grateful if Members wishing to intervene did so briefly, because otherwise those who wish to make a speech will be disappointed.

[Mr Meacher]

I am pleased that my hon. Friend provided the House with that information, as I do not think it is well understood. It has been claimed in this debate is that the whipping was not very strong, but that is absolutely not the view that most of us take. It was an attempt to corral Members of all parties to support the war. I think that he has skilfully shown the work that was done under the counter, which forced what was necessary. Without it, the vote might well never have happened.

The second lesson—I will be quick, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I know that I have been speaking for some time—is that the power and wilfulness of a Prime Minister who can so brazenly override normal democratic procedures, quite apart from the personality of Tony Blair, is a very serious issue. He made a commitment to go to war at Bush’s Crawford ranch in Texas 10 months before that vote and without consulting anyone. He regularly told Parliament, right up to the very start of the war, that no decision had been taken. Clearly an unstoppable momentum had been deliberately built up. He lent heavily on his Attorney-General between 7 and 17 March to induce him to chance his legal warning that the war was not legal. On 15 February he ignored and dismissed the biggest protest demonstration this country has ever seen, with up to 2 million members of the public marching against the war. According to evidence given by the UK’s ambassador to the US at the time, Sir Christopher Meyer, Bush even rung up Tony Blair to suggest that he could “sit out the war”, while the Pentagon’s Donald Rumsfeld was quite happy to go in alone, but Blair was obsessive and determined to see it through. In an interview in December 2009 he was asked this question:

“If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?”

He replied:

“I would still have thought it right to remove him”—

that is, Saddam Hussein. To that end, he even colluded with what his own head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, said in July 2002, eight months before the war—that

“the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

That background of the contumacious wilfulness of a Prime Minister dragging this country, virtually single-handedly, to war—as it turned out, a war of momentously disastrous consequences—makes it the duty of this House to set down inviolable conditions to prevent any such catastrophe from ever happening again. That must, at the very least, embrace unquestioning compliance with UN resolutions; a clear and unwhipped vote of the Commons and, indeed, the Lords, long before any envisaged hostilities; and a full disclosure of all the data and evidence that can be used to justify war. Only when those conditions are made to apply will we have learned the lessons of this dreadful episode.

15:06

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

Thank you for calling me to speak in this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. Please excuse my croaky voice, but I was very keen to speak for two reasons. First, as a Royal Air Force officer I served in Operation Warden, the no-fly zone over Northern Iraq in the 1990s; and secondly, just a fortnight ago, I was honoured to return Iraq 18 years on from my military service there. I want to give my perspective on Iraq pre and post the war of 2003.

In the 1990s, Operation Warden was the no-fly zone over northern Iraq which operated from Incirlik airbase in Turkey. Aircraft from the UK, the US, France and Turkey prevented Saddam Hussein from waging his war against Iraq’s 5 million Kurds. Prior to the no-fly zone, Saddam Hussein’s forces slaughtered many thousands of Iraqi Kurds. This included chemical weapon attacks at Halabja and mass executions culminating in the Anfal campaigns of 1988.

In 1995, during my tour, I joined coalition officers from the military co-ordination centre in Zakho, northern Iraq. We toured Kurdish villages near Dohuk and Irbil. Meeting village elders, we spread the word that the only aircraft flying above were coalition ones and that we could help with medical supplies and other immediate necessities such as electricity generators. We were given a warm welcome. The no-fly zone saved lives and has meant that Iraq’s 5 million Kurds have experienced relative stability since the end of the 1991 Gulf war.

After the war of 2003, Iraq’s 2005 federal constitution gave the Kurdistan regional government an unprecedented level of self-government. Eighteen years on from my military service, I was back in northern Iraq two weeks ago as a guest of the Kurdistan regional government via the all-party group on the Kurdistan region in Iraq. I saw the peaceful and increasingly prosperous Erbil and its surrounding areas. This fairly secular region sees Christians, Jews and Muslims living side by side. In fact, over 2 million tourists visited the region last year. The Erbil citadel, 6,000 years old, is the world’s oldest continuously inhabited settlement and a big tourist attraction. Again, the welcome was warm and friendly.

For many years I have spoken of my opposition to the 2003 Iraq war. I come at it from a slightly different angle—a military angle. My view was that Saddam Hussein was a caged animal because the northern no-fly zone, like the one in the south, was preventing any repeat of his previous atrocities. However, it is clear that the dictator’s removal has allowed Kurdistan to move on. Weapons of mass destruction or oil are often cited as reasons for going to war, as they have been in this Chamber today, but it is the regime change that has made a huge difference in the north of the country.

Having been helped themselves, the Iraqi Kurds are now helping others. On this month’s trip we spent an emotional day at the Domiz refugee camp near the Iraq-Syria border. Some 130,000 Syrian Kurds have fled the fighting in Syria. I spoke with many refugees, including children, who continue to be educated in specially constructed schools. The Kurdistan regional government deserves praise for funding and arranging that.

As has been said, however, all is not well in Iraq. There are tensions and rifts between the Kurdistan regional government and Baghdad, the capital is plagued by violence—a post-2006 record of 1,000 people were killed in May alone—and there is a bitter dispute over revenue sharing, as a new oil pipeline from Kurdistan into Turkey nears completion. With an estimated 45 billion barrels of oil reserves—the fourth largest in the world—and a century’s worth of natural gas, the Kurdistan regional government has become a major player and its dispute with Baghdad is now based on the breakdown of revenue sharing. KRG is supposed to get 17% of national revenues and, by the same token, should pay 83% of whatever it earns into the national treasury.

Kurdistan’s relative stability is now a strong pull for foreign investors. It is not just about oil—hotel and leisure groups are investing there. I hope that this can be a model for the rest of Iraq. Given recent events in neighbouring Turkey, the violence and civil war in Syria and the upcoming elections in Iran, the region and western nations need a stable Iraq more than ever.

Ten years on from the Iraq war, the outlook for Iraq is mixed. The absence of the violent dictator Saddam Hussein has heralded peace and prosperity in the north, while the south and the capital face uncertainty and, potentially, an even more violent future.

As I come to the end of my brief speech, I want to pause to remember and pay tribute to those who died in the Iraq conflict, which started in 2003. There have been 179 UK military deaths and 43 UK civilians have died, as have, as we have heard, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children. We must remember them all. With Syria in mind, perhaps these are the lessons we need to heed when pondering the removal of another murderous dictator.

15:12

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

To take up the final point made by the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney) about honouring the 179 dead, I have in the past read out their names. I am sure it would make a deeper impression today if I read them out again, but unfortunately that is forbidden by the rules of the House.

That is part of the feeling we have—the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) made this point—and our reluctance to face the truth. Only the future is certain; the past is always changing. We have heard today so many attempts to fictionalise what happened and we refuse to face our failures. The hon. Gentleman made a marvellous speech on which I would like to base my remarks. He said that what characterises this Parliament is the unimportance of being right and the rewards for failure and the punishment for the truth. I am afraid that that is the abiding culture of this place.

I have received a message during the debate from someone expressing, in very strong language, incredulity at the suggestion that there was not a strong Whip on that day in March. I have been here for 26 years and it was the strongest Whip I have ever encountered. Many of those who were opposed to the war—about 30 or 40 of them—who had signed motions and early-day motions against it were bribed, bullied and bamboozled into changing their minds to either abstain or vote in favour of it. Almost all of them regret that bitterly. It was the most important vote of our careers and it is not true to say that it was easy to make our minds up. It was not. The threat was there that we would lose our seats and that the Prime Minister would resign. Members who were in any doubt were called in to see Ministers to be persuaded. Members of the Committees who had knowledge that we did not have, such as the Intelligence and Security Committee, went around cajoling Back Benchers saying, “If you knew what we know, you’d vote for war, but we can’t tell you because it’s all secret.” They were being fed nonsense and exaggerations as well.

Our reluctance to accept the truth seems extraordinary to me. It would be flattering to describe today’s speech from the Government Front Bench as vacuous. Even now, the Government cannot admit that there were no weapons of mass destruction. It is little short of insanity to suggest that anyone still believes that there were such weapons.

Members have questioned whether anyone foresaw what would happen. A great many people foresaw it at the time. To suggest otherwise is another attempt to rewrite history. I have dug out a letter that I sent to the then Prime Minister in March 2003 to point out what the consequences of the invasion would be. I see with nausea that Tony Blair is now explaining that the inherent nature of the Islamic religion was responsible for the terrible event that took place in Woolwich a few weeks ago. It was not. That event was a reaction to what happened in 2003. My letter stated:

“Our involvement in Bush’s war will increase the likelihood of terrorist attacks. Attacking a Muslim state without achieving a fair settlement of the Palestine-Israeli situation is an affront to Muslims, from our local mosques to the far-flung corners of the world.”

That is when it started and it continued in Afghanistan. The only decision that has been taken without a vote that is comparable to the decision to join Bush’s war in Iraq is the decision to go into Helmand province. There were two dead UK soldiers at that time. The figure is now 441. Nothing has been achieved in Helmand province. Indeed, conditions are worse than in 2006 when we went in.

This House was deceived. We failed. The organs that should have defended us and given us the truth—the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Defence Committee and the Intelligence and Security Committee—were all part of the hallelujah chorus of praise for the messiah, Tony Blair, who thought that he could walk on water. He had been successful in Kosovo. He had been successful in Sierra Leone. Although there were people who opposed him, he thought that he was infallible and was determined to go on.

Tony Blair was asked about the crucial decision in a splendid television programme that was aired recently on BBC2. The decision was not about whether we should stop the war. We could never have stopped the war, because Bush was determined to go in. Saddam would have been removed anyway. The decision that we had to make in Parliament was whether our soldiers should be involved in that. Tony Blair admitted to the shoulder-to-shoulder comment. He almost certainly made his decision in 2002, when he shook hands with Bush and said, “I’ll be with you.” They then invented the facts in order to present this House with a false agenda. If he had not persuaded 40 or so Labour Members to vote the other way, we would not have gone to war.

Tony Blair was asked in the programme why he did not pull out. His comment was:

“I thought it was the right thing to do, I wanted my country to be a part of it. I admit what I said about standing shoulder to shoulder with the US and I would prefer to have gone and left as Prime Minister than to have backed out on the basis that it was too politically difficult.”

There are a large number of “I”s in that statement, but 179 British dead is a hell of a price to pay for one man’s vanity, which I believe was the situation.

Tony Blair did persuade the House; he was very persuasive and used his great talents. He thought it was a special day; it is the only time, I believe, that he invited his family up to the Public Gallery to watch his performance. He saw this; he was the great actor-manager of politics and he gave a splendid performance in the Chamber. There was the invention of the 45-minute claim, and the sexing-up of the introduction to the dossier. Because of that, we sent those young men to their deaths.

The awful thing is that those families who saw their loved ones die have constructed their own justification by saying, “Well, they died in a noble cause; they did not die in vain. Iraq will be a better place because of it.” Slowly, tragically, they must come to terms with a different reality that their loved ones died because of the ego of one man who used his position to send them into an avoidable war.

We must consider all the other wars we are faced with, and the extent of the deceptions. We went into Iraq to defend ourselves against non-existent weapons of mass destruction; we went into Helmand province to defend ourselves against a non-existent Taliban terrorist threat to the United Kingdom. We are now being told that we should perhaps go into Iran to defend ourselves against non-existent Iranian long-range missiles carrying non-existent Iranian nuclear bombs.

One issue that has come to light but received very little publicity is the activity of people such as the Kagans. Kimberly and Frederick Kagan are a married couple who were at Petraeus’s right hand. They were privy to all the private conversations, went to every secret meeting, and wrote Petraeus’s report to the Defence Secretary on what was happening in Afghanistan. Each time, they wanted a more hard-edged approach to military activities and more aggression, and each time, they tried to sabotage the peace initiatives. The Kagans were not employed by the military or by Petraeus—their paymasters were the defence industry and contractors. There was a strong element of that in Iraq and certainly in Afghanistan, and we must look to such things and to the revolving door that means that wars go on. We are at a stage where we are being told to go into perpetual wars. When one is over, we are softened up for the next one, and on and on it goes.

It gets worse. The hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) spoke about the error of saying that might is right. That works on the day and we win victories, but we store up huge resentment—just as we are doing now with the use of our vastly superior technology in drones and robot weapons. The price must be paid in the end, and we are paying it with the division between the western, Christian part of the world, and the Muslim side. Those divisions are deep and we did a great deal to cause them through our errors in the past.

I will conclude with a poem that was read the other day about the start of the first world war, because it is something we could apply to the former Prime Minister. It is a poem by Kipling, who spent his life celebrating and glorifying war. He managed to get his son, who was almost blind, into the war by pulling a few strings, but he was then tormented because his son died in the war as a result of his efforts. That changed his view, and if any poem will apply to Tony Blair when he becomes—this is the title of the poem—“A dead statesman”, it is this:

“I could not dig: I dared not rob:

Therefore I lied to please the mob.

Now all my lies are proved untrue

And I must face the men I slew.

What tale shall serve me here among

Mine angry and defrauded young?”

15:24

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

I have just returned from a brief all-party visit to Berlin, where, with other parliamentarians, I had the opportunity to visit checkpoint Charlie. Anybody who visits will be aware of the big sections of the Berlin wall that remain, covered in graffiti, as symbols of how divided that city was. We find the same walls and constructs—blast containers—all over Baghdad, Kabul, Helmand and so on. When will sections of walls in Baghdad or Basra serve no other purpose than to remind us and remain as symbols of events in the past?

I congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on securing this important debate. I am grateful for it. It is appropriate to discuss the lessons learned, considering that almost 200 lives were lost, and that the campaign cost the taxpayer almost £8 billion. I declare an interest as a former regular member of the armed forces and a serving member of the reserve forces. I pay tribute, as other hon. Members have, to those who served and to the fallen—those whose lives are permanently changed through injury and, particularly, those who did not return.

The analysis should be divided into three different areas: first, the justification for intervention; secondly, the military campaign and defeating the enemy; and thirdly, the stabilisation and reconstruction phase. General Petraeus, who had a long-term involvement in Iraq, famously said that it was not enough to defeat the enemy, and that, if we are to intervene, we need to enable the local. Those are wise words to remember no matter where we want to go, whether upstream or on any campaign or intervention.

Although we might disagree with intervention, I am not sure we would be having this debate and making the cases we are making if the stabilisation and reconstruction had been more of a success story. I would go further than that and say that Tony Blair would probably have continued as leader of his party and not been taken over by his Chancellor had peace prevailed, had Basra been a success, and had the situation not deteriorated as it did in the aftermath of the invasion.

Like other hon. Members, I await the outcome of the Chilcot inquiry, which will be illuminating. I and other hon. Members attended a number of its sessions. It was interesting to hear people giving direct accounts of their roles, small and large, in the decision-making process, not least the military leaders who gave evidence who felt pulled between commitments in Iraq and continuing commitments in Afghanistan, to which hon. Members have referred. Unfortunately, I believe the inquiry will make unpleasant reading for the Labour Government in respect of some of their decisions.

On the justification for intervention, I spoke out prior to invasion against intervention. I made that absolutely clear, even though the Conservative party seemed to be in favour. As a military person, I define a threat as it is defined militarily—a threat is the ability and intent to cause harm. A threat is not just the desire to cause harm to another person, region, community or state; it must be matched with the means. People must have capability to pose a threat. If the two are not together, in military terms, the threat does not exist. That is why I began to question the justification for the invasion.

I do not have the same problem as other hon. Members with the build-up of armed forces, because that shows intent. We needed to build up capacity to allow the politicians to make the decision. Building up armed forces can persuade the enemy to change their minds. We cut the oak for the ships used in the battle of Trafalgar well in advance of any admiralty decision to attack, but it was in mind and preparations needed to take place. I also do not have much of a problem with the vote in the House on the war itself. As I said, I would have put my hand up to say that I was not convinced. Many in the House were convinced by the intelligence that was presented to them.

We realise now that there were many flaws in the intelligence and that the House was misled on, for example, the 45-minute claim that our British bases in Cyprus were somehow under threat from tactical weapons of mass destruction. There was the very sad role of Alistair Campbell interfering with John Scarlett’s report and directing British intelligence dossiers to complement US intelligence. He was then forced to resign following the tragic death of David Kelly. There was the role of General Colin Powell, for whom I have a huge amount of respect. Not long ago, he admitted that his Adlai Stevenson moment—if I can put it that way—when he addressed the United Nations to give evidence for the justification of war in February 2003, was one of the most regrettable moments of his career. There was the CIA’s claim about yellowcake coming from Niger, which was used in President Bush’s state of the union address, leading, when the truth came out, to Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, going to prison.

The issue of what Hans Blix knew has been raised a number of times and is still debated. It is clear that while working for the International Atomic Energy Agency and leading the weapons inspectors, he continued to have full access in the country, even if Saddam Hussein was not co-operating fully. He had not found any evidence and could have continued in the country for as long as he liked, but was told leave by the Americans because of the impending invasion. We now realise that there was a single intelligence source—an exiled scientist living in Germany—stating that Saddam Hussein had tactical weapons of mass destruction. That was never corroborated. Finally, United Nations resolution 1441 did not actually give the right to invade—a point made clearly by France. It leant on previous resolution 687, which provided for the right to invade if certain conditions were not met. The UN Secretary-General said that he was uncomfortable with that.

I do not stand here as an apologist and say that war was not avoidable. It might have been, but I do not believe that invasion was justified at that juncture. As has been said a number of times, hindsight is a wonderful thing, but one wonders whether Saddam Hussein would have survived the Arab spring or whether, through a natural process of change in the middle east, we would have seen him removed. It is difficult to say.

In his book “State of Denial” Bob Woodward quotes General Franks, the United States central commander in the middle east, on being asked, in December 2001—when we had just gone into Afghanistan—to draw up plans to invade Iraq. That puts into perspective the energy and determination to push forward with intervention in Iraq.

On the intervention itself, Operation Telic went as well as it could have done. In the first three weeks of March 2003, we managed to defeat the enemy completely and were seen as liberators. I pay tribute to the 7th Army Brigade, which had to set up in a very awkward and difficult environment to establish the peace. The one lesson to be learned relates to the shock and awe policy. It is a matter for further debate, but I do not now think it is right for us, armed with these incredible long-range weapons, to destroy infrastructure on such a scale— the very same infrastructure that we will need a couple of weeks after putting boots on the ground. When a decision to invade is taken, we have to be more cognisant of the need to disrupt and take out the enemy without causing more damage and costing us more in the long-term.

It was not long after the initial invasion that the British started patrolling in berets, using our skills base from Northern Ireland to win over hearts and minds by looking less offensive in our military outfits in order to work with locals. It soon became apparent, however, after the successful invasion, that there was no plan or strategy—no idea what to do or how to harness the euphoria following Saddam Hussein’s fall in order to sow the seeds of governance—and so nothing happened and we went from liberators to occupiers. Where was the army of civil servants, linguists, engineers and planners—the people with the skill sets to rebuild Basra and help its people move forward? And let us not forget the significance of Basra, whose people were elated to get rid of Saddam Hussein, who was never a friend of the city, and whose strategic importance cannot be overestimated: as Iraq’s only port, it was a lifeline for moving oil out of the country.

Yet nothing happened. We created an umbrella of security, and our soldiers, having done a brave job, looked over their shoulders, expecting somebody else to come in and deal with governance, reconstruction and development, but nobody was there. I intervened on the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas)—who, as I said, spoke with passion and concern for the position of the then Government, and whom I congratulate on taking a stand at the time—and explained how Clare Short, then at the Department for International Development, which was the one organisation with the money to provide reconstruction and development planning, decided not to participate and sent a message around the Department to that effect. As a result, our armed forces were left on their own. She should have been sacked immediately. I am pleased to say that now the relationship between the Ministry of Defence, DFID and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has improved immensely, but the culture at the time, underlined—I am afraid—by her stance, did not allow DFID even to consider participating in war zones. It was focusing far too much on poverty.

[Mr Llwyd]

The former right hon. Lady to whom the hon. Gentleman refers made strenuous efforts to get the Prime Minister to plan for the peace, even before entering the war. She did everything she possibly could, and it was directly as a result of his not taking her advice that much of the reconstruction work was not done and the humanitarian resources were not invested immediately. She did everything she could, but she found it impossible to get through to him.

[Mr Ellwood]

I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman at all. We had a debate on Iraq when Clare Short was in the Chamber. I asked her directly—it is in Hansard—whether she sent a diktat round her Department and to her directors saying, “Do not do any planning for participating in post-conflict reconstruction, because I believe the war is illegal and I do not want to get into trouble.” I paraphrase, but those were roughly the words. She replied, “Absolutely. I did that. That was my belief at the time.” That is what happened, but whether there is more to it—

[Mr Llwyd]

There is more to it.

[Mr Ellwood]

I shall wait for the right hon. Gentleman’s speech for him to elaborate.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I think it is a bit late for that.

[Mr Ellwood]

As the Minister said, there have been a number of successes of which we can be proud, so we should not be too dismayed: the referendum has led to a new constitution, there has been a series of elections and to some extent all-out civil war has been avoided, but there remains huge sectarian violence and a number of challenges ahead.

My hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), who spoke very articulately and has huge experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, said that Iraq was not Britain’s finest hour. This was there with the Suez crisis and our invasion of Afghanistan in 1839. There was no conflict plan. The decision to disband the army and de-Ba’athify Iraq in one fell swoop was bizarre and ignored the fact that teachers, nurses and others were forced to be part of the Ba’ath party. As soon as we made it illegal and those who were part of it unable to work, we lost the mindset of support from an important swathe of the middle-class population.

The timeline makes for grievous reading. In summer 2007, we failed to do any development and reconstruction. Our military were forced to withdraw from the city centre, as it became untenable to stay there, and relocate to the airport. The Prime Minister, Mr Maliki, said:

“Basra has been left to the mercy of the militia men”.

In the absence of anything happening, a vacuum developed. Gangs formed, which turned into militia, which then ran the city. In 2008, it was not the British who liberated the city; it was the Iraqi army. Maliki came down to Basra and decided the situation needed to come to an end and that the Mahdi army needed to be pushed out. In spring 2009, our military interest in Iraq came to an end. We did not hand the base over to the Iraqi army; we handed it over to the Americans.

[Paul Flynn]

Is it not true that Maliki—who is hardly an ideal figure—was holed up in Basra, surrounded by the militia and about to be killed, when the American army came in and rescued him?

[Mr Ellwood]

The hon. Gentleman is correct. The details are that Maliki was surrounded and the Americans came in. Once the Mahdi army was removed and the militia brought under control, that was the first occasion when, finally, governance was possible and a mayor of Basra could be put in place to move the city forward.

In my view, after any invasion or intervention, we have a window of three to six months to get things right before the enemy can regroup and the locals then decide, “Actually, life is no better under the new regime than it was under the old.” We missed that window of opportunity, which cost Britain lives—as it did others in the international community—because of our reluctance to do what was required. My concern is this. We sit at the international top table. We are a power with nuclear weapons, we have a place on the Security Council and we have centuries of serious war fighting experience, and we could not even hold a medium-sized conurbation. The armed forces were under immense strain during this period. As I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, this was tied in with, and happened at the same time as, our decision to make an even grander commitment in Afghanistan, with two air bridges operating, to the point that our armed forces were almost unable to cope.

The Minister talked about some of the success stories. Many of us have visited Iraq many times. I recently went to Irbil. It is very pleasing indeed to see how much the region has moved forward from the atrocities it endured under Saddam Hussein. I only hope that such success can be emulated in the rest of the country. Unfortunately, Iraq is not in the headlines anymore, because our troops are not there, but as hon. Members across the House have mentioned, there were as many deaths in this last month as there were in 2008. The scale of continuing atrocities is quite shocking.

In conclusion, there are serious questions about our decision to go to war in the first place, about how Parliament debates these matters and about our ability to do post-conflict reconstruction. This House regularly pays tribute to our armed forces for their commitment and professionalism and the sacrifice they make for our country, but in the long history of British military engagements, Iraq was far from our finest hour. That was no fault of theirs, I should say, but falls totally on the shoulders of the Government of the day, who failed to plan for peace. I am pleased that the Prime Minister, in looking at other interventions, which have also been mentioned in this debate, has introduced three conditions for this House to approve any intervention. First, is there a legal basis for intervention? Secondly, is there regional support? Thirdly, is there an international commitment to the cause? I hope that, as we look for solutions in Syria and the Sahel, the Prime Minister’s conditions will not be forgotten.

15:44

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood). He is of course right to mention the sheer bravery and commitment of our service personnel, the effectiveness with which they conducted Operation Telic, and the speed with which Iraq was defeated, if can use that word. I remember those days clearly, as the MP representing the regimental headquarters of the Black Watch, which was engaged in the operations. I also recall the time of the surge in Falluja, when the media came to me for comment on the many losses sustained by the Black Watch at that time. That was a difficult period for all those Members of Parliament with a military interest in the Iraq war. Those interviews, in which I paid tribute to the many soldiers from my constituency who lost their lives during that war, were among the toughest interviews I have ever had to do. The hon. and gallant Gentleman is also right to mention what happened after the war: the total lack of planning for a sustainable reinvention of Iraq and the stripping of all state infrastructure relating to the Ba’ath party. That was a massive mistake and it led to many of the difficulties that followed the invasion.

I want to go back to 18 March 2003, the day on which we debated the Iraq war. I was here that day, as a few hon. Members who are in the Chamber today were, and I remember it as a dark ugly day, a horrible day. There was nothing like the light Whip that the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) described. I was the Whip of our group, and I remember seeing some of the Labour Whips’ activities on that day. People were drawn aside and told that the Prime Minister would resign if the vote did not go through. They were told that their careers would be at risk if they voted against the Government. It was a horrible day. I remember lots of good men and women being dragooned into the Lobby to support their Prime Minister and their Government against their better instincts. It was good to hear the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher)—it is a pity that he has now left the Chamber—acknowledge that we were fed a lot of nonsense about the case for war. Many Members of Parliament, particularly those on the Labour side, knew that, but they were dragooned into providing that perverse support for their Prime Minister and their Government.

I remember listening to Tony Blair that day. I actually watched the YouTube video of the speech this morning, just to refresh my memory of the atmosphere in the debate. We had to listen to endless drivel and nonsense. He said that the case for weapons of mass destruction was beyond debate, that they were really there, and that they could reach us in 45 minutes. He talked about collusion with al-Qaeda, and said that Saddam Hussein was preparing a nuclear programme using uranium from Niger. It was all total and utter bollocks—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman should use that word, and I am sure that he will want to withdraw it immediately.

[Pete Wishart]

I withdraw it, of course, Mr Deputy Speaker. It was not that, but something very similar, that we had to listen to on that day.

The House passed the vote on Iraq by 412 votes to 149, and 217 hon. Members voted for the amendment tabled by Chris Smith. I was among those who voted against the war, as were my right hon. Friend the Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd), my hon. Friends the Members for Angus (Mr Weir) and for Arfon (Hywel Williams) and the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). I am looking around the Chamber to see who else is here: I see the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas), whom I commend for his fantastic speech today. It was excellent to hear a speech from the Front Bench from a former Minister who meant what he said and I thank him for that. He was listened to very carefully throughout the House. All of us here on these Benches today voted against the war. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) was not a Member of Parliament at the time, but one thing is certain: had she been a Member, there is no doubt that she would have been in the Lobby with us that evening.

That vote is the one that I am most proud of in my 12 years as a parliamentarian. It defined my first Session in Parliament. I, a young whippersnapper of an MP in short trousers, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Angus, first came here in the Session that lasted from 2001 to 2005, and the Iraq war was the defining feature of that parliamentary term. That was the context and the subtext of a lot of the debates we had on similar and other issues. I certainly remember during the 2005 election the sheer anger on the doorstep about the invasion of Iraq and how the war went.

[Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. As a new MP at that time, I too remember the huge anger on the doorstep and the great pressure being put on MPs to vote for war—by the press, for example. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd), my hon. Friend the Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) and I voted against an earlier motion, I recall that one newspaper named us and provided our phone numbers to get people to ring us up. A stream of people—with Geordie accents, I do not know why; the Scots did not seem to bother—then wanted me thrown out of the Labour party. That was news to me, as I had never been a member of it.

[Pete Wishart]

I am, of course, very grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. Lots of strange things were going on at that time, particularly to people who were associated with an anti-war position. He is absolutely right to mention the role of the press in all that. They helped to create the environment, the culture and the mood for invasion and war.

The funny thing is that this did not have any effect on the public. The public loathed the idea of going to war in Iraq. I was at a march in Glasgow where 100,000 people were out opposing the war, while 1 million people in London marched against it. There were worldwide protests, too. It is reckoned that the protests against the Iraq invasion and war were the biggest protests ever witnessed since Vietnam—yet we still had the invasion and the war.

We have heard about the case for war and how compelling it was, and we have also heard about people being duped. The public saw through the case; the public knew that the case was flimsy; they viewed it as nonsense; they knew that there was no case for war. They were against the war because they knew it was wrong to attack Iraq. That is why they went out on the streets in such numbers to ensure that the war would be opposed. The Blair Government, however, were determined to go to war.

Parliament was even recalled in September 2002, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd reminded us, and we came down to listen to the case for war. I remember arriving and there in my pigeon-hole was the dodgy dossier. I remember sharing it with my hon. Friends, and we were almost in hysterics at some aspects of the case for war. It was drivel, but we had to listen to it again and again that day. We now know, of course, that the dodgy dossier was compiled from all sorts of plagiarised sources and that the most notable contribution came from a graduate student called Ibrahim al-Marashi. It seems almost like some sort of script for a failed comedy film kicked out because it lacked credibility, yet this was the case to go to war. I know I cannot say the unparliamentary word again, Mr Deputy Speaker, but that is what this dodgy dossier was.

Of course, there were no weapons of mass destruction, still less any that could have been deployed in 45 minutes. There was no collusion with al-Qaeda either, but al-Qaeda is certainly there now. Al-Qaeda is all over the region, following the political instability caused by this conflict. Of course, there was no evidence of any uranium project and nothing whatever could be found relating to any nuclear programme. We now know that Tony Blair and his Government knew this. How they knew this was revealed in the “Panorama” programme, to which some of my hon. Friends have referred. The programme said that the intelligence case to go to war, which was in the hands of the Prime Minister and the Government, was so flimsy that it lacked any credibility. It was based on an agent called “Curveball”, who saw evidence of WMD being compiled, which he passed on to the Germans. It subsequently spread like wildfire around the US and UK intelligence services, so determined were they to find any shred of credibility in the evidence to justify going to war.

We were misled; that is all we could say about all this. This House was misled. I regret that more Members are not here today. We need to hear more testimony, particularly from those who voted for the war. We have to hear from them, as we did from the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton, to understand that they were misled, lied to and given the wrong evidence. The only way this House can get any sort of closure on this issue is if we massively confess. Those who voted for the war need to come here and say, “We got it wrong. We were lied to by a former Prime Minister, and I wish I had never voted for the war.” That would be the honourable thing for hon. Members to do in this House—but I doubt whether it will happen.

The war was not, of course, based on intelligence. Intelligence was just a useful gimmick—a useful tool to ensure that Tony Blair could do what he wanted, which was to fulfil the almost perverse obligation that he felt that he owed to George Bush. He had probably told George Bush that he would take this country to war.

The night on which the five SNP Members voted against the war, as did our colleagues, was indeed a proud occasion, but let me tell the House about something else of which I am particularly proud. When that man, that former Prime Minister, came into the Chamber for his lap of honour, the House got up like a circus to clap him, but I would not rise to clap that warmonger. I sat rooted to my seat, and I am proud that I did so.

[Mr Weir]

I sat rooted to my seat as well. However, I remember the current Prime Minister, then Leader of the Opposition, standing and waving his hands to encourage his members to rise and cheer on the Prime Minister who had led us into this disastrous war.

[Pete Wishart]

Members were almost hissing us for sitting still, but I am glad and proud that I never rose to my feet to clap that warmonger.

The Iraq war is, of course, associated with Tony Blair, and always will be. It is his legacy. He might as well have had it tattooed on his head, such is his association with that illegal war. Conflicts tend to become associated with prominent figures and leaders: we have had Thatcher and the Falklands war, Churchill and world war two—and Iraq and Blair.

What was it all for? What was achieved? More than 100,000 dead, a region destabilised, a country divided along sectarian lines, and international diplomacy discredited as never before. We may never retrieve our credibility in the international community following Iraq, and that is a sad, sad indictment of what happened here. I will not even bother to go into the details of the millions of people who have been displaced. But another dreadful thing happened, and it is the thing that we will most regret: we have alienated a generation of people living in the Muslim world. Furthermore, we have dangerously radicalised a proportion of them, and that is what we are having to deal with now. That is another legacy of the Iraq war with which we have continued to contend, and we will live to regret it.

By any standard, Iraq has been an absolute and utter disaster. That illegal war was one of the most regrettable and damaging foreign policy adventures ever undertaken in our name. Some Members have gone on about Suez, but the mighty Suez is nothing but a little stream compared with the foreign policy damage that has been created by Iraq. Those responsible must be held to account. History will eventually judge them, but I should like to think that it will be done now, while I am still a Member of Parliament. I should like to think that some justice will be delivered. So far, the only people who have lost their jobs because of Iraq are people who worked for the BBC. One person lost his job because he said that the dossier was “sexed up”. That dossier was more sexed up than some teenage starlet in her latest pop video.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

What is even more regrettable is that after the war, those on what was then the Government Front Bench continued to assert that there were weapons of mass destruction, and that, as a matter of faith, they would be found. Eventually, of course, they had to concede, but it was a matter of belief and not of fact.

[Pete Wishart]

The Minister has been asked today whether there were weapons of mass destruction, but even now—10 years on, and with a different Government —they cannot concede that there were no such weapons. If the Minister were to rise in order to say, “Yes, we concede that now,” I would give way to him, but so far no UK Government have conceded that there were no weapons of mass destruction, and I think that until a Government do that, we will not have political closure.

We have had five useless reports on Iraq. That is the only thing we can call them: useless. They might as well have been made out of whitewash, given their validity when it comes to trying to discover and understand what actually went on. Now worrying issues are starting to emerge in relation to our best hope of ensuring that those responsible are held to account through the Chilcot report. My right hon. Friend the Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd referred to some of the current difficulties with Chilcot.

I mentioned to the Minister David Owen’s view that there is collusion between Tony Blair and No. 10 to ensure that the private correspondence between George Bush and Tony Blair is not revealed. We must see that correspondence, because it will probably tell us more than anything else about the reasons for going to war. We will be able to see how the plan was shaped and designed between the two of them, and to see the commitment that was made by Tony Blair to George Bush.

The Chilcot inquiry started four years ago, and with every year that passes, the Iraq war recedes and the Chilcot conclusions lose their potency. I say this, however, to the current Government and those who were in the last Labour Government: we will not forget. We will not forget this, and we will continue to hold this Government to account for what they do.

History will judge these people. At some point, what actually happened will have to come out. If Chilcot does not do that, it will come out later. I am not confident that we will get the truth about Iraq before the end of this decade, however. I think it will take another generation before the true story of Iraq is told, because there are too many big reputations at stake, and too many pillars would come down if it were actually revealed. The Foreign Office and the foreign policy of the United Kingdom would probably be totally discredited if the truth about Iraq came out.

That is why I am not confident that we will find out the true story about Iraq before the end of this decade, and I will be out of here by then. I do not want to be part of a country that does this. It is appalling to be part of a nation that indulges in illegal wars. I am from Scotland. Scotland is the nation that defines me, and I want my country to make a peaceful contribution to the world and not get involved in these illegal wars, so I am glad we will have an opportunity next year to ensure that we are no longer part of a nation that is prepared to indulge in such things.

It was not a Tory Government who took us into this illegal war; it was a Labour Government, for goodness’ sake—the last type of Government we would expect to take us into an illegal war. It is not all about the evil Tories, therefore. It was a Labour Government who did that, and I am glad that next year my nation will get the opportunity to vote for independence and ensure we will never be part of illegal wars again.

I think the case for independence is overwhelming, but this issue really helps it. The issue has politicised so many people. We have heard about the Stop the War coalition, which did so much great work on it, and Stop the War lost one of its greatest advocates in the last few days: the iconic author Iain Banks. I remember when he came down here and participated in the activities of Stop the War. He was an author without peer, an iconic Scot and a great, great guy. He was heavily politicised by the Iraq war. In fact, he tore up his passport and sent it to Tony Blair, such was his disgust at the war.

I want to pay tribute to Iain Banks in my final remarks by quoting some words not from his great works, “The Crow Road” or “The Wasp Factory”, but from him to Tony Blair. He said that

“it was Blair who bowed to Bush in the first place, and Blair who convinced the Labour party and parliament of the need to go to war with a dossier that was so close to lying that it makes no difference.”

Indeed!

16:03

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I could do no better than echo the words of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) about Iain Banks. He was a great writer and a great supporter of the Stop the War coalition, of which I am the current chair, and he gave enormous political, practical and financial support to the anti-war movement. We thank him for that, and for all the other great things he achieved during his life.

This debate falls 10 years on from that desperate, fateful time when this country went to war with Iraq. I remember the debate on that here as if it were yesterday. The Chamber was full. We were told there was an ever-present threat from weapons of mass destruction. We were told that there were nuclear weapons and yellowcake, and all the other canards were brought up throughout that debate, and at the same time there was a massive whipping operation going on all around the Chamber. I have to say that I was totally unaffected by that whipping operation—it seemed to pass me by completely—but I observed it going on in dark corners around this building.

It was a shameful day for Parliament, and it was a shameful day for the whole political system in this country. Outside in Parliament square, there were thousands of people. They thought, naively perhaps, that they would be listened to. Some 1 million and more had marched in central London—maybe 2 million were on the streets of London that day—and 600 demonstrations on every continent of the world, including Antarctica, had been held a month before, and the opinion polls all showed that there was no support for this war against Iraq. They thought that Parliament would reflect their views and their wishes.

The vote that day in which Parliament, sadly, endorsed going to war not only did enormous damage to Parliament, but did enormous damage and a disservice to a whole generation, because they had put their hopes in the political process to carry out their wishes and it did not do so. That engendered cynicism and we are still dealing today in many ways with the legacy of the war in this country. Let me deal first with the role of Parliament.

My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) was correct. Up until the Iraq war, taking this country to war at any time was completely a matter of the royal prerogative exercised by the Prime Minister. That royal prerogative remains in operation. A number of us, particularly my hon. Friend, argued strongly that we should have a vote in Parliament on the war—previously, only procedural votes had been possible. Eventually the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, agreed that there could be vote, although I think it was a matter of self-interest on his part: he wanted to share the responsibility and the burden. We were pleased to have the opportunity to vote against the war, and I suspect he was pleased to have the opportunity to get a lot of MPs through the Lobby in support of his view.

Some people think that whipping, lobbying and pressure are the only things that matter in politics, but, quite honestly, we are sent here as representatives of our constituencies; we all have a conscience that we have to live with and decisions that we have to take. At the end of the day, an MP cannot blame anyone else; it is his or her own decision and vote, and the record will stand. I think our constituents understand that, but the very least we can do in recognition of what happened then is, first, in the immediate future, ensure that we have a vote before any arms are sent to Syria; and secondly, ensure that we have a proper war powers Act, so that Parliament must vote before British troops are deployed.

[Caroline Lucas]

rose—

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I will give way to my friend, if I may call her that, the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). I congratulate her on her absolutely excellent speech and on securing the debate. As a fellow officer of the Stop the War coalition, I can hardly not give way to her.

[Caroline Lucas]

The hon. Gentleman is making a wonderful speech, as we knew he would. He spoke just now about the importance of having a vote before war. Does he agree with me that it should be a free vote—that we need to be voting from our conscience, not from the Whips’ list?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Absolutely. On something so fundamental as the deployment of armed forces, a free vote is the right thing to do. Many have said it is easy to send other people’s sons and daughters off to die and then hide behind a veneer of party loyalty, but the issue is much bigger than that.

[Mr Llwyd]

May I suggest a further prerequisite, which is that some machinery should be adopted whereby we are all made privy to a certain amount of the delicate intelligence information that has led the Government to their conclusion? Otherwise, we could be duped into acting the same way again.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The right hon. Gentleman is correct. The legal advice given to the Cabinet is still the subject of debate. The Chilcot report is yet to come out—I understand it is heading for 1 million words, leaving “War and Peace” well behind, and goodness knows how many volumes there will be when it is finally produced. The information we are given is very important if we are to make an informed decision. It is, however, simply not credible to say that we were unaware of the dubiety of the information we were given. I came here at 8 o’clock on the day the dodgy dossier was published to pick up a copy and read it, and by a quarter past 8, I had realised it was a load of utter bunkum and that we had been dragged back to the House on false pretences. The same is true of Colin Powell’s address to the UN that September, when he claimed that chemical weapons were hidden in ice cream vans all over Iraq.

I received hundreds of messages, e-mails and so on from people who were involved in the anti-war movement, and I spoke at 200 anti-war meetings in this country and others before the decision was taken. Just think of the commitment of those people who went on the march in February 2003. Many of them were not of the left and many were not necessarily pacifists—anti-war as such—but they were convinced that we were being led by the nose into disaster. Frankly, the whole political establishment should have woken up and understood that, because the consequences were so huge for us and for the rest of the world.

I say all this not because I am any apologist for Saddam Hussein—I am not—and not because I do not recognise the abominable human rights abuses he committed; I do. But I remember that, in the 1980s, raising questions about arms sales to Iraq, human rights abuses in Iraq and the British relationship and trade with Iraq was a very unpopular thing to do in this place. There were not many people supporting that. Even after Malabar—as I said earlier—in 1988, we still participated in the Baghdad arms fair only a year later to continue that relationship. Of course the west did support Iraq against Iran. The consequences of all this are absolutely huge.

I just want to raise a couple of more general points as a lesson from this. What happened in 2001 was wrong, obviously; what happened at the twin towers and the killings was a disaster. Then we merrily invaded Afghanistan, the point at which the Stop the War coalition was founded. We proceeded to occupy the country very quickly and then found that it was not as simple as that. Here we are 12 years later; still in Afghanistan, still not controlling the country and still losing lives there. We denied international law by allowing the Americans to call people enemy combatants, not prisoners of war. Guantanamo Bay was set up. Extraordinary rendition took place. The Homeland Security Act was passed in the USA and a whole raft of anti-terror legislation was passed in this country. Civil rights of people all over the world were damaged by the decision to invade Afghanistan, and that was compounded later by the decision to invade Iraq.

Then we invaded Iraq, after the infamous George Bush speech in 2002 in which he talked about the axis of evil without any evidence whatever and tried to claim that Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were as one. They did have one thing in common, actually. There is some evidence that, at various points in their lives, each tried to kill the other. That was roughly the only thing they had in common.

The behaviour of the occupying forces in Iraq has been far from perfect. We have seen Abu Ghraib, Falluja, the bombing campaigns, the torture of individuals and the driving of hundreds of thousands of people into exile both as internal and as external refugees from Iraq. I have very sad memories of visiting a refugee camp on the borders of Iraq and Syria, where there were a few hundred poor benighted Palestinian people whose families had been driven out of Haifa in 1948. They had been though countries all through the Gulf states, ended up in Iraq and were driven out of Iraq into Syria. Goodness knows where those families are now. They have joined the steady stream of refugees across the region. We have to think for a moment about the Palestinians and so many others.

I conclude with this thought. We have to learn a lesson, and it is a harsh one. We are not a global power. We cannot afford to be a global power, and why would we want to be one? Have we been enhanced as a country by our activities since 2001 in Afghanistan or Iraq, or have we been diminished? Do we have a better image or a much worse image around the world? It is time for us to take stock. Do we have to be a nation with a predilection to go to war and to have a global reach for our armed forces? Or do we wish to become a force in the world that supports international law, human rights and recognises the limits of the environmental destruction of our planet? Do we need Governments or Prime Ministers who say, to use the words of Tony Blair, that this is a chance to remake the middle east? The best way of remaking the middle east is to recognise the injustices done by colonialism, occupation, wars and the treatment of people who are trying to live their own lives, and to try to promote peace. The legacy of this war is a disastrous one. The enmity between the west and the Muslim communities, the enmity that is played out on the streets of this country, is a result of that. It is time for us to learn some very harsh lessons and, above all, to put them into practice.

16:14

[Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak in the debate and to congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on the efforts that I know she put in to secure it. I know that a great deal of work was done over some time to get to the point where today was chosen as the day of the debate.

I shall use most of the time available to me to focus on a legacy issue in relation to Iraq. That may have come to the attention of some Members when they have seen television footage of families who have experienced the effects of depleted uranium and other weaponry used in Iraq. It seems to have resulted in very unusual levels of birth defects and other conditions, especially among children who were conceived during the Iraq war. I intend to focus on those issues mainly because they are not often talked about and because those are issues on which the Government could be taking more action so that we can understand what happened and learn the lessons from that for the future.

The use of depleted uranium in weapons has been controversial from its development in the 1960s to the present. Much of the work in this area has been done on the effects on veterans, rather than on civilian populations. The Ministry of Defence discovered in the early research and development programme that depleted uranium released a chemical that was toxic and radioactive and that contaminated areas that it had been fired into. The scientific work that has been done, as I said, related mainly to veterans, but in recent years more evidence has been collected from civilian populations, including in Iraq.

The work relating to veterans shows clearly that in certain circumstances depleted uranium has the potential to cause cancer and damage to DNA. It can lead to birth defects and contaminate soil and ground water. Depleted uranium was used in the first conflict in Iraq in 1991 and also in the more recent conflict in very significant quantities. It is thought that 290,000 kg of depleted uranium was fired during the Gulf war in 1991, and that in the first six months of the Iraq invasion 140 kg of depleted uranium was used. Studies of the effects on civilian populations which have been made public so far show a staggering rise in birth defects among Iraqi children conceived in the aftermath of the war, with high rates of miscarriage, toxic levels of lead and mercury contamination and spiralling numbers of birth defects ranging from congenital heart defects to brain dysfunctions and malformed limbs. Compelling evidence seems to link these birth defects and miscarriages to military assaults.

We cannot sure whether these are due to depleted uranium or the effects of other ammunition used in the area, but it is clear that there are particularly high levels of birth defects, for example, in Falluja, where the United States has admitted using white phosphorous shells, although it has not admitted using depleted uranium. Findings published in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology are the latest in a series of studies suggesting a link between bombardment and a rise in birth defects. Its findings in 2010 prompted the World Health Organisation to launch an inquiry into the prevalence of birth defects in the area affected. Although that report was expected to be published last year, it still has not appeared. Some claim that it is being buried and 58 scientists have written to the Iraqi Government and the World Health Organisation calling for its immediate publication. It is right that we, as elected politicians, ask the British Government to use their influence and power to do everything they can to ensure that as much information about these issues is brought into the public domain.

As a result of previous work, the Work Health Organisation is looking at nine high-risk areas in Iraq, including Falluja and Basra. We need to say clearly that we want that information in the public domain. We must do more to work out exactly the impact that some of the weaponry used in modern warfare has on civilian populations. Perhaps in previous centuries the effects of war were felt predominantly by military people and those who went to war, but one of the clear effects of modern warfare is that many of the types of weaponry used have long-term implications for civilian populations.

Of the studies that have been made available in the public domain, one shows that more than half of the babies born in Falluja between 2007 and 2010 were born with a birth defect. Before the siege the figure was more like one in 10, and prior to the turn of the millennium fewer than 2% of babies were born with a birth defect. According to that study, in the two years after 2004 more than 45% of all pregnancies surveyed ended in miscarriage, whereas the figures before the bombing were below 10%. Between 2007 and 2010, one in six of all pregnancies ended in miscarriage. The research that is in the public domain is clearly incredibly concerning.

Another piece of research looked at the health histories of 56 families in Falluja and examined births in Basra in southern Iraq, which was attacked by British forces in 2003. It found that more than 20 babies in 1,000 were born with births defects at the maternity hospital in 2003, which is 17 times higher than the rate recorded a decade previously. In the past seven years, the number of malformed babies born has increased by more than 60%, to 37 in every 1,000.

We have spoken a great deal today about the politics that led up to the decision to take forces into Iraq in 2003, and that is absolutely proper, but the reality is that families in Iraq are now dealing with the aftermath of decisions that might have been taken by the British Government and the action of British and other troops. I think that it is beholden on Parliament to insist that the Government do everything they can to ensure that this is researched more thoroughly. We must try to find the facts and see whether there is evidence linking the use of particular types of weaponry and the effects on civilian populations, and we must ensure that any lessons are learned for whatever future actions we might be involved in.

16:23

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

It is an honour to follow such a passionate and well-informed speech from the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark). I think that we are all indebted to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) for securing the debate, and I apologise to her for not arriving in time to hear her speech—I was opening a job show in my constituency first thing this morning—which by all accounts was a powerful introduction to the debate.

Although I was not a Member of Parliament at the time, I am very proud that the Liberal Democrats played such a strong role in opposing the war. I am particularly proud of the role played by my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr Kennedy), who was leader of the Liberal Democrats at the time, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell). The hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) talked about the breadth of the coalition that opposed the war and said that it was not just made up of predictable left wingers. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Fife is far from being a raging pacifist leftie. He is a thoughtful and distinguished advocate and is now, as he was then, a distinguished spokesman on international affairs. That voices such as his were ignored at the time is a measure of just how dogmatic certain people in the Labour Government were.

I have found this debate very humbling, not only because of the first-hand accounts of intelligence, diplomacy and military experience that we have heard from people who were connected to the war in different respects, but because of the emotion shown by those who were, in effect, forced to vote against their own colleagues in their own party. The hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) made a very powerful speech about that. We have heard about the bitter regret felt by those who feel that they were misled into voting for the wrong thing. We should also remember the members of the Government who honourably resigned over this issue—Robin Cook, John Denham and others who gave up their ministerial careers. The emotions are clearly almost as strong now as they were then.

We have heard powerful descriptions of what felt like the inevitable momentum towards war. That was certainly felt outside Parliament as well. Those of us who were watching from the outside might not have picked up on all the details of the parliamentary debates, but every day we saw the pictures of the troops gathering in Saudi Arabia and had the sense that it was something that simply could not be stopped, no matter how many people marched, no matter what arguments were deployed and no matter what intelligence was presented to counter what was in the dodgy dossier.

If the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) is right, that momentum had started long before. He mentioned the Crawford summit in April 2002, when Tony Blair stood shoulder to shoulder with George Bush. That was reinforced at subsequent summits between the two of them. Although I have a lot of respect for the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), it is not really credible to say that the leaders did not know the detail or had not had time to read it. I am sure that the detail of the intelligence on the military situation and the situation inside Iraq was all gone into in enormous detail, as was the legal advice. As everybody has said, the Chilcot report is long overdue, and we need to start to hear about the detail of the decision-making process. Some of the documents that are still not public need to be made public. It looks from the outside as though there was a deliberate collaboration in creating that momentum towards war in order to make it inevitable.

We have to allow that some aspects of that political mission had, in a sense, some honour to them. Saddam’s was a despicable regime. Thousands died in the chemical attacks in Halabja in 1988. There was also the massacre and destruction of the entire lifestyle of the Marsh Arabs in 1991 following the first Gulf war. There might have been a psychological element for George Bush in the sense that, according to the conservative psychology, his father had left the job half done in allowing the massacre of the Marsh Arabs to take place, because they had risen up in the expectation that they would be supported by the allied forces, but they were not.

We should remember that since 1991 there had been a safe haven in Iraq for the Kurds, reinforced from 1992 by the no-fly zone described on the basis of first-hand experience by the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney). Perhaps George Bush felt that he did not want to repeat his father’s error of betraying people in Iraq who were opposed to the regime. Perhaps the psychology of 9/11 also made people feel the need to do something to give some substance to the supposed war on terror, which, to me, has always had a slightly Orwellian ring to it.

[Hywel Williams]

The hon. Gentleman will perhaps recall the light-hearted quip at the time that for the US and UK to invade Iraq would be as though after Pearl Harbour the United States had invaded Mexico—it would have been as peculiar and as odd as that.

[Martin Horwood]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point.

There was the emotional declaration of the war on terror but then a feeling that it did not have much substance. I think that those in the conservative right in the United States were searching for something to give it more edge and substance, and perhaps that was part of the psychology that led them to towards war. The psychology of the British Prime Minister involved is something that I will not go near.

I am not one of those who now hope that the decision will be proved wrong by the failure of Iraqi democracy. I hope that Iraqi democracy will succeed and that a stable, federal state will emerge from the continuing conflict. I do not want to paint everything that is happening in Iraq as being as bad as or worse than it was under Saddam. Nevertheless, I think that those hon. Members who voted against the war made the right decision and I am very proud that Liberal Democrats did so. There are three central reasons why I think they were right to oppose the war.

First, there really was no case: there were no weapons of mass destruction. A few years later, after I had become an MP, I remember Hans Blix telling a meeting in Parliament that he had wanted and had pleaded for more time and that, had they been given it, the weapons inspectors could have established the facts of the case, but of course they were evacuated to make way for the invasion. It was not Iraq that stopped the weapons inspections; it was the United States and the UK. As the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton has said, the intelligence on which that action was based was old and out of date.

There was no immediate humanitarian crisis. In Syria and Libya, and even in Bosnia, people were dying or being threatened with blood baths, but that was not the case in Iraq. There was no immediate humanitarian justification for intervention. If there was a secondary reason—this was sometimes mentioned—it was the idea that Saddam might be in cahoots with al-Qaeda, but that also turned out to be completely imaginary. In fact, the precise opposite, if anything, was true. Subsequently, of course, we have seen the emergence of al-Qaeda in Iraq as a substantial force of Sunni jihadists, and it is now spilling over into Syria, where a direct offshoot of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Jabhat al-Nusra, is making that conflict worse. The repercussions of the intervention are extraordinary, but there was no fundamental case for it, as we were told there was.

Secondly, our party’s view is that the war was illegal. We have still not seen the then Attorney-General’s advice to the Government. UN resolution 1441 is cited, but as other Members have said, it did not provide a legal justification for invasion. Actually, its central concern was with the weapons inspection regime, which, as I have said, was brought to an end by the invasion. The weapons inspectors were evacuated because of the invasion. They were not prevented from continuing their work by Iraq.

Hon. Members’ speeches and the recent excellent BBC documentary have highlighted how the real political objective was clearly regime change and that other arguments and cases were deployed tactically to try to support it. Perhaps regime change was a laudable objective—Saddam was a terrible dictator—but the only complication is that regime change is illegal under international law; we therefore participated in an illegal invasion.

The third crucial reason why it was wrong to go to war was the political and diplomatic effort behind it. It was not a united international effort. In the end, the troops were from, I think, the United States, Britain, Australia and Poland. Others might want to correct me. Perhaps Spain was involved as well. NATO was disunited, the French were in opposition and the region was disunited. The United Nations was certainly disunited and the Secretary-General warned that the invasion would be in contravention of the UN charter if it went ahead. This was cowboy diplomacy. It was almost the kind of unilateral interventionism of which the world needs to be very fearful. The decision to invade posed a danger not just to the people of Iraq—although it certainly did—but to the whole world, because it could be used as justification for anybody’s decision to intervene without international sanction, regional support or a proper legal case.

I think that the coalition Government have learned those lessons. The recent intervention in Libya stands in stark contrast to the invasion of Iraq. There were no allied boots on the ground. It was a limited intervention, even though militarily it was a simpler prospect than Iraq. There was clear sanction from a UN resolution and an immediate humanitarian case. There was also united regional support in the Arab world. We can say collectively—those who are in the Government in particular—that we have learned the lessons of what went on in Iraq.

We now have the strange situation in which we are still waiting for the final chapter: the Chilcot report. We have been waiting for four years. That is almost as long as Britain’s military intervention in Iraq. If it carries on for much longer, it will outlast the war itself. That report will raise deep and serious questions that we still want answers to. For the former Prime Minister, it will raise some threatening legal issues and some deep questions about his role in taking us to war. The irony of ironies is that in the meantime, he has been made a peace envoy to the middle east, which I find extraordinary. All credit to him for the role that he has played subsequently in trying to bring peace to the region. However, we still need to ask how and why he took us to war. We need the Chilcot report and we need it soon.

16:26

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

I join other Members in congratulating the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on securing this debate. I know that considerable effort went into that, and it is good that many hon. Members have been able to share their various insights. Some Members have recalled the events in Parliament during the build-up to the vote. Others have shared their experiences of the situation in Iraq before the invasion, of delivering the invasion or of coping with the consequences of the invasion and making the best of the difficult situation that had been created for all.

Like other hon. Members, I acknowledge at the outset that we have heard some telling contributions. As well as the opening speech by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion, which I heard only part of because of other commitments, there was a particularly telling contribution from the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas). His measured and well-meant speech got to the heart of the issue in a way that should make all of us feel uncomfortable, although in a positive way. All of us in Parliament, before we just bunch with our herd, put on our blinkers and vote the way we are asked, should think deeply about the issues. We need to inform ourselves and must not just rely on Whips’ whispers. Whatever we are paid, we are paid well enough to inform ourselves and we get a further allowance to help others inform us as well.

I was struck, as were other Members, by the speech by the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart). I cannot match the insights of the hon. Members for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) and for South Thanet (Laura Sandys), who spoke of their personal experiences in situ and showed an understanding of many of the complications in Iraq.

Along with other politicians from Northern Ireland, I have taken part in exchange visits with Iraqi politicians and those who are trying to build civil society in Iraq. We know that the insights that we get into their situation and the aftermath of the invasion are limited. However, while I do not disagree with anything that other hon. Members have said about the poor state of Iraq, its levels of corruption and the deep economic mire that it is in, I would not want our words about those issues or the political questions that we exchange to detract from the good work that many people are undertaking in Iraq, not least those in civil society and those who are trying to build honour and purpose in what passes for the democratic process in that country. We must reinforce those who are trying to do good and take things forward in that very difficult situation. No matter how we try to write off this war and what followed it as a foreign policy and military misadventure on the part of the Government, we should not do anything to write off the democratic purpose and progressive effort that elements in Iraq are trying to undertake.

I was not a Member of the House in the period building up to the war, but I am glad to say that SDLP Members opposed the war, along with the other nationalist parties, the Liberal Democrats, a significant number of Labour Members, and some considerate Conservative Members. At the time, I was leader of my party and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, although of course we were all suspended in October 2002. During that period, however, I had a number of exchanges and meetings with Tony Blair at which—believe it or not—we talked about more than just Northern Ireland.

I recall that in November 2002, Tony Blair convened a meeting in Downing street with leaders of the European socialist and Labour parties. We were supposed to be discussing common challenges across Europe, but the working lunch that Tony Blair addressed was very much focused on Iraq. In particular, he was trying to allay the concerns that he knew were felt by members of his sister parties across the EU. I remember being struck by the argument he was making for what he was trying to do. He used language saying that he was trying to be the mooring rope that would keep the American impulse closer to where Europe would want. He said he was trying to be a bridge between America and Europe, and that was why he was getting so close to George Bush and maintaining a strong relationship with the American Administration.

He said he believed that if the Americans were committed to the war anyway there needed to be a restraint on any intervention, and he believed that his strong alliance could provide such a constraint. He argued that action could contribute to reigniting the peace process in the middle east. He felt that if America ended up going in on its own, it would be hopeless to think that anything positive could be done in the middle east, whereas if America went in with European support, the requirement that would come with that support would involve a new beginning to the peace process in the middle east.

Some around the table seemed impressed and mesmerised by that, but I was not. I made it clear—with no discourtesy to our lunch host—that I was not there to admire Tony the bridge, and neither did I believe that what he saw as a mooring rope was how the Americans saw things. From my visits to Washington it was clear that they saw him not as a mooring rope, but as a tow rope by which they hoped to take as much of Europe as they could, and they did not care if Europe was ruptured in the process. In my broad political movement of European sister parties I could see exactly where the strains were showing.

I should acknowledge that whatever criticisms anybody may have, Tony Blair did make a significant contribution to our process, although not as much of one as some of his writings and memoirs suggest, as they seem to write out the fact that everybody else made contributions as well. I did not always agree with his judgment and I certainly never always trusted his word, but I never doubted his motives in relation to our process. I am, however, as confounded as anybody else as to how he got himself into such a position and the mental convolutions of his rationale on Iraq.

I had the opportunity to talk to both Tony Blair and George Bush in Hillsborough in the weeks after the invasion of Iraq. I was the first party leader to protest at the fact that George Bush’s visit to Hillsborough conflated meetings on the Irish peace process with meetings on the prosecution of the war in Iraq. Despite attempts by the Northern Ireland Office and the British Government to limit or put conditions on people’s presence in Hillsborough, I was allowed to present a petition of two wallpaper scrolls, which was organised by Amnesty International in the Foyle constituency and the north-west region more widely. The petition was not simply a protest against the war; as we would expect from a thoughtful organisation such as Amnesty International, the petition focused on the responsibilities that the invading powers had to the civilian population in Iraq—their duties were not just observing human rights and security, but ensuring infrastructure, utilities and the proper operation of commercial or other transactions.

Protocol did not allow me to hand the petition to the President of the United States, as he was a visiting Head of State. Instead, the two scrolls rested on a chair. I was able to tell the President they were there for him. Not entirely condescendingly, he told me, “You’re a good man, Mark, but you’re wrong and we are right and we are proving it.” Richard Haass, who worked at the State Department and was a special envoy to Northern Ireland, said, “You will see. We will have this finished in weeks.” I asked, “Will we have proof of the weapons?” He said, “Yes, we will have that in weeks, too.”

Looking on was a frowning Tony Blair, who looked a bit peeved and a bit jealous. He was obviously annoyed that I had taken that opportunity. I said to him, “Don’t worry, Tony, we haven’t forgotten about you,” and gave him two large bags of postcards containing similar protests and making similar points. Richard Haass probably genuinely believed what he told me. I therefore do not know whether I can join in the sweeping judgments against everybody involved and all parties to the enterprise, which led to such death.

A number of hon. Members have mentioned the parliamentary aspect. We have heard hon. Members’ recollections, including those of the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher), of the considerations and conditioning going into the vote. In my time in Parliament, that same occasion was recalled by Frank Cook, then the hon. Member for Stockton North, when the House voted on 42-day detention. He compared the whipping and briefing that day—he was told, “If you don’t vote for this, the Prime Minister will be forced to resign and it will be a humiliation. Out of loyalty to the Prime Minister, you have to vote for this, otherwise there will be an election”—with the arguments to which he was subjected on the day of the Iraq vote. He said that succumbing to those arguments on the day of the Iraq vote was the biggest regret of his life, and that he would never make that mistake again for any Prime Minister or party.

The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion made a key point. We want to ensure that there will be votes in future, but we must ensure that they are honest and honourable. Free votes ensure that people cannot turn round and say, “I voted how I did because it was a vote of confidence. I was opposed to what I voted for, but I voted on a different issue. The issue was confidence and whether we stayed in government or had an election.” We need to ensure not only that there are votes, but that the terms on which votes are taken are the right ones. That is why, when we debated the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act 2011, I opposed any amendment that would have given the Speaker the power to decide what issues were issues of confidence. As issues of confidence can trigger an election and abort a fixed-term Parliament, they would have been abused to confuse what Members were actually voting on. Members would have been told to vote not on the issue, but on whether they wanted an election next week, or their leader out.

On the Chilcot inquiry, I met John Chilcot in the context of the Northern Ireland peace process. Again, I would give a mixed account of his contribution. I worked and talked with him very early on in the Hume-Adams process, and he was encouraging of new engagement and new lines of dialogue opening up between the British Government and all interests in Northern Ireland. After the Castlereagh break-in, he was appointed by the Government to undertake an independent inquiry into it. As I pointed out in a previous debate in the House, his report did not deal with findings on what had happened, how it had happened and who had been involved. Instead, it came up with an ulterior agenda of trying to ensure that MI5 and the security services would in no way find themselves accountable to, or constrained by, the Northern Ireland policing measures introduced under the Patten report. The intention was to try to reroute intelligence policing away from the Patten model—under the chief constable—to one entirely under MI5, beyond any review by the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Policing Board or anybody else.

I made the point, when we discussed the establishment of the Chilcot report, that I knew John Chilcot and that he was someone in whom I could recognise skills and articulacy, but he was not someone whose phone number I would expect to find in Yellow Pages under either I for independence or C for challenging. I hope that my jaundiced judgment is proved wrong when we finally see the Chilcot inquiry report. At times during the inquiry, I was given hope that I would be proved wrong. However, we have been waiting a long time. I was particularly struck by the contribution from the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd), who was able to tell us of colourful issues regarding the background, character and composition of the inquiry team. Parliament must be able fully to digest the report, not just respond immediately to a statement on the day. It must be debated subsequently.

In all future debates, as in today’s debate, we need to remember that the issue is not just about what happened here on a parliamentary or political level, and not just about the wrongs of dodgy dossiers and undue whipping. The real issue is the story of what happened to the people in Iraq: the people who were sent out in the name of this Parliament and sacrificed their lives and limbs. They and their loved ones are still wondering what it was all about, and I hope we are not adding to their sorrow, misery or sense of futility by speaking the truth today. The contribution by my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark) was important, because it focused on some of the legacy issues for which we in this House bear a collective responsibility. We still have a responsibility towards the people of Iraq.

16:53

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have taken part in this important and useful debate. The honesty and frankness with which Members have taken part does credit to this place: it has shown the House at its best. I note with interest that no one spoke in defence of the UK’s support for the war. Over and over again, hon. Members emphasised the heavy price paid for the invasion, not only by people in this country, but crucially by people in Iraq, where sectarian violence continues to grow.

The debate focused on looking forward as well as back, and I want quickly to underline a few of today’s conclusions. Hon. Members expressed a lot of support for having free votes—and, crucially, votes based on information—when the House debates going to war. Many hon. Members spoke about the importance of basing our decisions on information. We also heard about the importance of reforming the relationship between the Foreign Office, the military and Parliament to ensure that it works better; about the need for structural changes to the Foreign Affairs, Defence, and Intelligence and Security Committees; and about the significance of Iran and Syria.

Many Members spoke about how the war undermined Parliament’s reputation. I hope that this debate has been a step towards reinvigorating confidence in Parliament. I pay particular tribute to the contribution from the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas), whose comments, as everyone said, were from the heart and delivered with a frankness that made us all listen. I would like to pay tribute to other colleagues, too. The anger with which the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) spoke about the level of deception rang out across the House and, I hope, much wider. The hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) spoke powerfully and with an expertise that not many of us in this place have about the importance of acknowledging when we get things wrong and of being able to say that we are failing. He warned of the dangers of thinking that we can only ever succeed.

I thank the Minister for loyally sitting through just about the whole debate, although I cannot thank him for the substance of his remarks, given that he was constrained, as he explained, by the convention preventing him from speaking before Chilcot reports. Waiting for Chilcot is like waiting for Godot. It would be helpful to have that report as soon as possible. The debate lacked a contribution from a Minister made with the same degree—or any degree, frankly—of honesty and frankness about what went wrong as other speeches. [Interruption.] I wanted to give credit to all my wonderful colleagues, but I am being told that my time is up. Is that correct, Mr Deputy Speaker?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

You have had your two minutes, but I am allowing you to continue. I am sure you are coming to an end.

[Caroline Lucas]

The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) made an important point about the conflict of interest of those on the Chilcot inquiry and about the importance of the Attorney-General’s advice being put in the public domain. The hon. Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys) talked about the problem of a lack of planning post-Saddam. The hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) catalogued many of the deceptions and reminded us that the rules of the House prohibit us from reading out names of the dead.

The hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) shared with us his interesting perspective as a serving officer and what it felt like to be in that position. He stressed that threat is a combination of intent and capacity, which needs to be borne in mind when trying to judge what constitutes a threat. I welcomed the contribution from the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), because he put it clearly on the record that there was very heavy whipping during the vote and that that day, 18 March, was a “horrible day”. The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) implied that the whipping was all very nice, light and happy, but that was not the case.

The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark) raised the crucial issue of depleted uranium, while the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) rightly reminded us that Hans Blix pleaded for more time. He did not say it was a lost cause and that war was the only option—on the contrary. Finally, the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) gave us some fascinating insights into the mind of the Prime Minister. Quite how he thought the invasion would help the middle east peace process is a question that will keep me thinking for the rest of the day and beyond.

I apologise to those I have not mentioned in my brief winding-up speech, which has already stretched your kind patience, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War.

Petitions

Thursday 13th June 2013 Commons Chamber

16:59

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

I rise to present a petition on behalf of the users of Walsall Gala baths. A petition in similar terms has been signed by 1,938 people.

The petition states:

The Petition of the users of Walsall Gala Baths,

Declares that the petitioners do not wish to see the closure of the Walsall Gala Baths as they believe that it is important to have swimming facilities in the town centre. Especially and in particular, we do not wish to lose the only brine pool that is centrally located, well used and much appreciated for its medical benefits to many of its users.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to take all possible steps to encourage Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council to consider the objections of the local residents.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.

[P001183]

17:00

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I rise to present a petition that has been collected by Sacred Heart Catholic voluntary academy, in Mere close in Leicester. A similar petition, with 1,000 signatures, was presented to Downing street this morning. The petition has been organised by Catherine McMillan and Catherine Hayles and the year 6 students, who seized on the idea and pushed it through. I also want to mention the headmaster, Gerry Hirst, and the chairman of governors, Father Lally.

The petition declares:

The Petition of a Citizen of the UK,

Declares that the Petitioner believes that the food system is failing the poorest people and that the government should champion aid for small-scale farmers, especially women, to help them access markets and increase their income, bargaining power and voice in decisions; further that the government should champion checks on the power of global food companies, requiring them to report on the lobbying they do and their impacts on human rights.

The Petitioner therefore requests that the House of Commons does all it can to encourage the Government to take such action.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.

[P001184]

Genetic Medicine

Thursday 13th June 2013 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Karen Bradley.)

17:02

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for your patience—and that of the House—in waiting for me to raise this important subject at this time of the week. I also thank the Minister for her presence. I pay tribute to her long interest in this subject, her work at the Department of Health on cancer, screening and public health—she is a tolerant and fair-minded advocate of public health in the Members’ Tea Room—and her interest in the difficulties of the early onset of dementia. I was struck the other day by her moment at the Dispatch Box, when she was greeted with extraordinary affection in the House, which was a sign of the great respect and affection in which she is held and the respect for the work she does.

My interest in this debate comes from a family interest in cancer—an interest that I know is shared by many in the House and across the country. Few families have been untouched by the disease, which is increasingly understood to be a genetic disease. I lost my father and my mother-in-law to cancer, and, as the parent of two children, take a close interest in something that I might have inadvertently passed on to them. I also have an interest because I come to this House after a 15-year career in biomedical research and speak in my role as Government adviser on life sciences, taking a deep interest in how current breakthroughs are changing the assumptions on which we base public policy.

For the purposes of giving some background and declaring an interest, I want to explain what I did in those 15 years. I spent four years running a predictive toxicology business, which looked at drug compounds and analysed their likely toxicology and efficacy in different patient groups. I also spent six years in translational medicine, working with academic health science centres up and down England and Scotland, helping to set up the Scottish translational medicine research institute and working at University college London on the cardiovascular institute and at King’s Health Partners on dementia. I was delighted two years ago to be given the chance to support the Government as life sciences adviser. I stress that I have no ongoing commercial interest in the sector. For the purpose of clarity, I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. It details historical investments, including a very small shareholding in GlaxoSmithKline, which has been passed down through our family since my grandfather met the founder and decided that the then baby milk business might have a good future.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

Foresight!

[George Freeman]

Indeed. The register also shows a very small shareholding in a women’s cancer diagnostics joint venture business that I helped to set up with Cancer Research UK and UCL Partners.

This is a topical debate. We have seen in the newspapers recently the news of Angelina Jolie’s decision to have a double mastectomy, having received a diagnosis of a high chance of developing breast cancer based on the most well-known and acknowledged genetic test, the BRCA mutation. The widespread coverage in the press of her decision has been helpful in raising public awareness, as have the powerful and moving descriptions of the thinking behind her decision and of her husband’s support for her.

Only yesterday in The Times we saw the news of the NHS cancer registration service launching a project to bring together all the available data on the 350,000 types of cancer across the 50-million-patient database in Britain. Over the past month, we have also seen the launch of Cancer Research UK’s contribution to the global alliance on sharing genomic and clinical data. Topically, there is also an ongoing battle in the American Supreme Court involving Myriad Genetics and the ownership of the BRCA gene.

I believe that the revolutions in translational medicine, in experimental medicine and in the personalisation of medicine are a huge force for good. They raise a number of important issues, some of which we might touch on in the debate. By way of illustration, I want to share with the House a couple of stories illustrating how I came to see that force for good in practice.

The first involves a project at King’s Health Partners in south London, led by Professor Simon Lovestone, who is a pioneer in clinical research into psychiatric disorders, particularly dementia. The project is funded by the National Institute for Health Research, and I congratulate the previous Government on putting in place that infrastructure, which we have developed and continued. Professor Lovestone and his team have developed a case register information system, which is a portal for data for the whole of the South London and Maudsley NHS mental health trust, involving 250,000 patients. It brings together all the information, anonymised and in large datasets, on medical records and clinical histories and on the often complex drug histories involved in treating mental health, along with MRI brain scans, to create a powerful database for the purpose of shedding light on the mechanisms of action and the clinical drivers of early-onset and late-onset examples of the disease.

The portal is now being used by researchers on campus for purely academic work, alongside researchers from industry who, quite fairly, pay substantial amounts of money to King’s Health Partners in order to use the facility. They often find themselves working alongside leading-edge researchers. As a result, King’s Health Partners has signed up to a number of collaborations with industry to work on some very expensive drug programmes. That is an example of how data can accelerate academic research and bring academic and industry researchers together in pursuit of a common cause.

The other company that I want to mention is the joint venture set up by UCL Partners called Abcodia. It is based around a database of 250,000 women who are at risk of gynaecological cancer. It was funded by Cancer Research UK and the Medical Research Council over 20 years, but at the end of the academic study, the database was sitting gathering dust. It is now being used as a powerful database to provide all sorts of screening and diagnostic molecular biomarker services, and is helping to identify the biomarkers that predict and are implicated in the onset of gynaecological cancer. It is also a powerful database for all the diseases of ageing in women, many of which are the same in men. It is a powerful tool for understanding the molecular biomarkers and the drivers for the early onset of a whole range of late-life diseases.

These databases are incredibly powerful, and across the NHS and across our university academic health science centres, they are being run under very high standards of ethical and regulatory regimes and with very strong patient consent. One lesson is that where clinician scientists work with patients to do basic and clinical research, patients and the research charities that work with them are hugely supportive of this revolution in genetics and computing.

More than 10 years ago we sequenced the human genome. It was a massive global collective effort, which took several decades and several hundred million pounds to achieve. It now costs about $1,000 to sequence the entire genome of one of us, and it takes no less than 24 hours—and those numbers are falling fast.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My hon. Friend is to be congratulated on the widely respected work he is doing as a Government life sciences adviser; he really is doing a fantastic job. I congratulate him, too, on securing this debate. I think he is aware of the campaign of my constituent, Les Halpin, to accelerate the use of drugs in the NHS in carefully controlled circumstances on a trial basis for people with terminal illnesses. With the sort of conditions my hon. Friend has been talking about, if we could change the protocol in the medical profession and harness our innovative bio-sciences sector, we could become a world leader in the development of new drugs.

[George Freeman]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and I pay tribute to his advocacy, on behalf of his constituent Les Halpin, of the access to medicines campaign. We have plans to continue to help support it. My hon. Friend’s point is important, and the point that Les Halpin has made is that people like himself with a terminal disease actively want the opportunity to take part in trials and research so that their disease and suffering will not be in vain. My hon. Friend speaks powerfully on behalf of his constituent and on behalf of those with other diseases who share that view.

The truth is that this revolution of translational personal lives medicine is all about the end of the one-size-fits-all blockbuster model of drug discovery and development. The more we know about disease, the more we discover the genetic predispositions of disease and how different patients respond in different ways both to drugs and to the onset of disease. We discover that what was yesterday one cancer is today three or four and tomorrow will be 30 or 40. This is breaking down the size of markets and requiring a whole new model of research around patients. It puts patients right at the heart of the research process. That is challenging for hospitals and for companies, but ultimately, I believe—we are seeing the evidence—it is good for patients, leading to quicker innovation and quicker access to drugs. It is also good for our life sciences sector. It is a win-win, which is why the Government were right to describe the report on the subject as “health, wealth and innovation”. The three do indeed go together.

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Minister and the Department on the work they are doing in pursuit of the life sciences strategy, particularly on the £100 million cancer genomics project. That provides an extraordinary opportunity for Britain to sequence the genomes of 100,000 patients and combine that information with the clinical data—one of the world’s most precious resources in our NHS—creating a global hub that would put Britain right at the forefront of unlocking this field of cancer genomics.

I pay tribute, too, to the work of the research charities, which do extraordinary work driving funding and research, but also in advocating some of the changes that need to be made. In the time available, I will not be able fully to go through all the information I have received, but the Minister and I may be able to pick up some of the points afterwards.

I do want to say that Cancer Research UK has done a huge amount of work in this field, setting out a very clear analysis of what it wants to see happening—support for NHS provision of genetic tests for inherited cancer risk, improving existing molecular diagnostic services for cancer and strong support for the 100,000-patient cancer genome project.

The Prostate Cancer UK charity—you will remember, Mr Deputy Speaker, the moustache that I sported in the autumn in support of the Movember campaign—has highlighted the fact that nearly 35,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer every year and that 215,000 of us are living with the disease. By 2030, it will be the most common cancer in the UK. One in eight men will get prostate cancer at some point in their lives. The genetics of prostate cancer is well behind that relating to other diseases and needs to be accelerated as it is not as well understood. However, recent developments in understanding the genetics of prostate cancer have been crucial to driving up survival rates and showing the potential for future improvements in treatment.

Breast Cancer UK is investing substantial sums in the study of genetics, and the Breast Cancer Campaign has already provided £10 million. It has highlighted the role of Angelina Jolie’s recent decision in drawing public attention to the importance of genetics in providing earlier diagnosis and better treatment.

The Alzheimer’s Society has raised some interesting points. In many respects, Alzheimer’s is the toughest of the blockbuster diseases for us to crack, and it is becoming increasingly apparent that it is one of those diseases that we will not crack through the magic discovery of some drug. What is needed to beat this disease is a completely new model: a massive collective effort by patients and researchers using data and online tools such as PsychologyOnline. The Alzheimer’s Society has said that genetic testing may cause difficulties in some cases. A genetic defect cannot be repaired, effective treatment to slow the disease is not yet available, and the society fears that some premature genetic testing may trigger inappropriate responses.

Genetic Alliance UK has set out a detailed response to the debate, and has issued some important calls. In particular, it has called for the explicit inclusion of genetic testing in NHS England service specifications for all services that may utilise genetic testing. It has also called for investment in research that will help to elucidate the findings of whole genome sequencing and exome sequencing for clinical use, so that the benefits of the technology will be available to patients as soon as possible; for recognition of the importance of clinical genetic services as a resource for single-gene conditions; and for the linking of the commissioning of companion diagnostics with the stratified medicines for which they indicate patient response.

I have referred elsewhere to an Arab spring of health care. I believe that the current revolution—the stratification, targeting and, ultimately, personalisation of therapy, which cancer therapy is leading but in which other therapeutic areas are rapidly making progress—is all about patient empowerment. That applies both to someone like Les Halpin, who was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown)—someone who has a terminal disease, and wants to play his part in ensuring that others do not suffer in the same way—and to much younger patients with an easier diagnosis who want a chance to play their part in research. The aim is to give patients better access to information about their disease, and to earlier treatment. All the research findings show that patients on research programmes respond better, have better outcomes, and appreciate and enjoy—if that is the right word—the process.

There is also an Arab spring of disease charity involvement. Our disease charities are raising ever larger sums, and playing an ever bigger role. Movember, which was started five years ago by two Kiwis who raised $500, has now raised $23 million, and is the world’s biggest prostate cancer charity. It is using the internet and driving social media, establishing research committees, and setting standards for prostate cancer research all over the United Kingdom. The power of computing in genetics is transforming the way in which we conduct medical research.

Lord Saatchi’s Medical Innovation Bill, which is currently in another place but is coming our way, raises a number of the issues to which I have referred. It makes a powerful case for adapting regulations so that clinicians are no longer bound to stick to protocols that they do not believe will be effective. We need to make it easier for clinicians to innovate and to adopt new medicines and new treatments when they think there is a reasonable chance of a better outcome, without in any way undermining their duty to put patients’ interests first.

A number of other campaigns are coming our way. One of my reasons for initiating the debate was to give the Minister a chance to respond to some fairly specific policy questions. They cannot all be answered this evening, but let me present a few of them. Who owns the rights to genetic data, the rights to DNA—that issue has been highlighted by the Supreme Court’s ruling against Myriad Genetics—and the rights to clinical data? Some interesting work done in the other place suggests that, ultimately, we need to establish the idea that the data are ours. Your medical records are yours, Mr Deputy Speaker, and mine are mine. If we put patients at the heart of this, we will build a framework for consent and for enlightenment, which will be all to the good.

Who has the right to be tested, and when tested, what rights do they have to counselling? I want to reiterate that this has nothing to do with the insurance scare stories we sometimes read about in the press. I call again for the insurance moratorium to be extended. This is not about in any way wanting to undermine the ability of those who have had testing to receive health insurance. The point of this revolution is that it is about empowerment. It is about empowering patients actively to seek, and take, more responsibility for their health care earlier in their life, not penalising those who do that. There are also some important questions to be asked about how we open up the NHS to allow greater access to the types of medical breakthroughs that will fundamentally change the way we treat illness and disease in our society.

I am delighted to give the Minister some time to set out the Government’s support both for this important and emerging field and, as the Prime Minister said in his speech in December 2011 launching the life sciences strategy, for the inspiring vision that every patient in the NHS will be a research patient.

17:20

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anna Soubry)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) on securing this debate and pay a warm tribute to him for the great work he does as the Government’s life sciences adviser. I also thank him for his kind words about me. I pay tribute, too, to my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), who yet again, quite properly, advances the campaign of his constituent, Mr Les Halpin. There is much merit in that campaign, and my hon. Friend has brought it to the Floor of the House before, and so he should. We wish Les Halpin all the very best, and I pay tribute to the great work he has done and the valid points he makes in his campaign. I should also congratulate all the charities my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk mentioned that are concerned with prostate and breast cancer and Alzheimer’s disease; I pay tribute to them for all the work they do on those diseases, and all the campaigning work they do in advancing this topic.

It is a good time to hold this debate, but I fear I will not have enough time to address the subject in as much detail as I would wish. Numerous questions have been asked, and the usual rules apply: if I do not answer any of them, I will, of course, write a letter—or, rather, my officials will write a letter—to my right hon. Friend. I just called my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk my right hon. Friend, and why not?

[George Freeman]

That is very kind.

[Anna Soubry]

Yes, it is very kind of me.

It is a good time to hold this debate, as the development of genomic technologies, based on the individual’s genetic data, is a rapidly developing field that will bring benefits for NHS patients and the economy. The UK is a recognised world leader in scientific research in genetics, and the services that are available to NHS patients are among the best, if not the best, in the world. The NHS, in its unique position as a single, national health care provider, is ideally placed to harness this new technology and reap the benefits.

The data that are obtained from sequencing part of, or the whole, genome are limited in their usefulness unless they are linked to more information on the individual and the results of their treatment. That is why controlled access to patient records will be vital in our efforts to improve diagnostic capability, understand better the epidemiology—I hope I do not struggle in pronouncing that word—of disease and develop better health care tools and treatments.

On generating more data, the issue of ensuring we protect data obtained from an individual’s DNA has been discussed in many different forums, including the 2009 Lords inquiry into genomic medicine in health care and the consequent work by the Human Genomics Strategy Group, which was led by the Department of Health.

In December last year, the Prime Minister announced that we would be the first country in the world to put in place a programme to sequence 100,000 whole genomes. That is part of a programme that will receive an extra £100 million in funding over the next three to five years. The result will be the building of safe platforms of data that will open access.

Now that it is becoming a reality, access to genetic data will continue to be a subject of keen interest to many. It is only right that it is debated on the Floor of this House because it is so important. As with other data, DNA sequence data will be governed by strict legal controls. It will not be shared with other parties in a form that identifies the individual unless there is a legal and appropriate basis for so doing, and where such a legal basis exists, the patient has the right to be informed about how their DNA sequence data are used. The sequencing information will be strictly controlled within existing NHS arrangements and managed in a way that protects patient confidentiality.

As I said, the raw read-out data are of little value to clinicians, researchers or indeed the industry if they cannot be linked to phenotype and clinical data, so we need to ensure that information-rich data sets are developed that have been value-added through linking genetic and genomic data to disease development, treatment and results. Data need to be made available in an environment that fully meets consent and data protection requirements. To ensure that we harness that potential as part of the growth agenda, which my hon. Friend mentioned, we must develop an industry ecosystem that helps to promote innovation within a healthy, competitive economic atmosphere, which respects data protection and consent boundaries and allows open data sharing for academic research.

While the protection of personal data is important, we should not forget that sharing data has immense benefits. Those patients with cancer or rare diseases who will have their whole genome tested as part of the Prime Minister’s initiative may well argue that they want more of their data to be shared, to help research into their condition and to help fellow sufferers. The recent review carried out by Dame Fiona Caldicott recognised that people’s concerns about what happens to their information, who has access to it and for what purposes, is hugely important; but people also raise concerns about why their data are not shared more frequently when common sense tells us all that it really should be. On the other hand, there was high level of anxiety among some clinicians about when it is safe to share information and what safeguards are required, including concerns about breaching data protection laws or threats to their professional status.

Clearly, a cultural change is required to rebalance sharing and protecting information in patients’ and service users’ interests. We believe that the Caldicott recommendations strike a good balance between the rights of the individual and the need to develop new treatments and services for the greater good. There is no contradiction between demanding rigorous safeguarding of personal information and enthusiasm about sharing information. We want to develop systems that provide open data from what we call safe platforms. There should be no surprises to patients or service users about who has access to their information, and they should be fully informed about their rights in relation to their data. That includes explaining to individuals how their information will be used, including de-identified information, and that it may be used for public health prevention and research, as well as providing assurance that any misuse will be tackled vigorously.

If we are to get better, less fragmented care and to harness the potential of genetic and genomic data for the benefit of all, any lack of trust between individuals, be they individual patients or organisations, in relation to their practice of information governance has to be overcome. The Department of Health research indicates clear public support for using health and care information in research to better inform and develop new treatments. We want to ensure that individuals retain consent to any use of their personal information. That is why we have asked the chief medical officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies, to retain oversight of the programme to sequence 100,000 whole genomes, to ensure that the patient and public interest is protected.

I pay tribute again to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk. We could have a huge debate on this subject, and I apologise again that we do not have the time to take it further today, but as I said, I shall ensure that he has a response to all his questions. He has kindly provided me with many of them already, and my officials have compiled a long, long set of answers—far too long for this short speech. He will be in full possession of our responses, and I am sure that he will share them throughout the industry. I thank him again for all his hard work.

Question put and agreed to.

17:29

House adjourned.