Iraq Inquiry

Debate between David Davis and John Baron

Thursday 29th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House regrets that the Iraq Inquiry has decided to defer publication of its report until after 7 May 2015; and calls on the Inquiry to publish a timetable for publication and an explanation of the causes of the delay by 12 February 2015.

The second Iraq war led to the deaths of more than 4,800 allied soldiers, 179 of them British. The lowest estimate of Iraqi civilian fatalities is 134,000, but plausible estimates put that number four times higher. So let us be clear—at least 134,000 innocent people died. The war created 3.4 million refugees, half of whom fled the country. It cost the British taxpayer £9.6 billion and it cost the American taxpayer $1,100 billion.

The war has done untold damage to the reputation of the west throughout the middle east, and indeed among Muslim populations both at home and abroad. Initiated to protect the west from terrorism, it has in fact destroyed the integrity of the Iraqi state and triggered a persistent civil war that has created the conditions for perhaps the worst terrorist threat yet to the west—ISIL. It has done huge harm to the self-confidence and unity of the west, neutering our foreign policy. The war was, with hindsight, the greatest foreign policy failure of this generation, and I say that as someone who voted for it. So that is why the Chilcot inquiry was set up.

The Iraq inquiry was announced in 2009 with broad and proper terms of reference. Sir John Chilcot, the inquiry’s chairman, made it clear that this was principally about learning lessons. He said that these

“lessons will help ensure that, if we face similar situations in future, the government of the day is best equipped to respond to those situations in the most effective manner in the best interests of the country.”

Governments are often prompted by acts of terrorism into making mistakes. The United States rushed into extraordinary rendition, torture, illegal surveillance and Guantanamo Bay. We attempted to introduce 90-day detention without charge, which everyone now accepts was unnecessary and wrong. But the greatest and most dangerous errors are in foreign policy. As Lady Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5 stated, the invasion of Iraq “undoubtedly increased the threat” of terrorist attacks in Britain.

Since the announcement of the inquiry, three major foreign policy decisions would have greatly benefited from the lessons that arose from the Iraq war. In Libya we undertook a military intervention that was intended to prevent a massacre, quite properly. It was successful, but it was the precursor to protracted conflict and unrest following our nominal military victory. In Syria, the Government were blocked by this House from military intervention, an intervention that would have led us to be the military supporters of our now sworn enemies, ISIS. And now in Iraq the UK has become embroiled in the ongoing civil war that has raged since the invasion in 2003.

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

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Davis]

I will, but as the Government have, in my view improperly, made two statements on a Backbench Business day, I will have to limit the number of interventions I take.

[Mr Baron]

As someone who voted against Iraq and Libya, I can only concur with what my right hon. Friend has said. Does he accept that the Chilcot inquiry has made it clear that it has cleared a lot of evidence for publication, but has not published it since 2012? Would it not be right, in the absence of the report itself, to get the evidence published, which would be the next best thing?

[Mr Davis]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I will refer in a moment to the Winograd commission, which produced an interim report before the final report. Either of those approaches would have been sensible and worth while, and are still possible.

When decisions such as those that were made in Libya, Syria and Iraq are made without knowledge of all the facts, mistakes are made and sometimes people die as a result. So it is not hyperbole to say that the delay to the Iraq inquiry could cost lives because bad decisions could be made.

When it was announced in 2009, the inquiry was expected to take one year, and that was thought by the then Leader of the Opposition to be too long. Had the inquiry stuck to that timetable, the Government would have had the benefit in all the actions I have mentioned of any lessons that might have been learned from the final report. Six years on from the start, Sir John Chilcot has said that the report has taken

“longer than any of us expected would be necessary”.

Criminal Law

Debate between David Davis and John Baron

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

I agree with my hon. Friend. He will hear some of us attempting to stay in order—desperately, Mr Speaker—while making those arguments, but he will be unable to vote explicitly on them; he will have to vote on whether we have a vote on another day or we close down the debate today. That is not the way Parliament is designed to work. I am afraid, therefore, that this is a travesty of democracy.

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

I thank my right hon. Friend for making his comments. Would not the solution be for the Government to make it clear from the Dispatch Box that they will make time available to allow us to discuss the issue properly, as the country wants and as Parliament wants, and then we can move on? It is within their scope to do that now.

[Mr Davis]

It is, of course, within their scope, and I was very tempted at the beginning of the exercise to suggest to the Home Secretary that she shoots the Opposition’s fox—that she says, “We’re going to have a day’s debate tomorrow. There you are. All over.” They would have looked stupid and we would have looked very democratic. Sadly, that did not happen. I will not vote for the proposal today. I may abstain, I may double-vote, but I am not going to vote for the proposal because I do not want us to leave uncovered an extremely important debate in the history of this House.

Eurozone Crisis

Debate between David Davis and John Baron

Tuesday 15th November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Baron]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If he needs confirmation, I suggest that he look at the front page of City A.M., where he will see what Angela Merkel has said about political union. There is a political deficit in the eurozone at the moment, which is why Governments are being appointed and not elected in Greece and Italy. That is a consequence of the fact that the eurozone and the EU are hellbent on political union at the cost of democracy and getting the people’s consent.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on a formidably cogent speech. Sadly, I will not be here to hear the Minister’s attempt to answer it. The democratic deficit that I am worried about is the one in this country. We are having this debate in Westminster Hall. Whatever its outcome, it will not change what happens in the IMF. Is there any way that Parliament can have a say on British taxpayers’ money being used in pursuit of an end that is against their interests?

[Mr Baron]

My right hon. Friend makes a good point. By raising such issues in Parliament and in collaboration with other like-minded individuals, we can hope that we can force the Government to think again and to look at the various mechanisms at our disposal in the House. If we do not raise these points in our Chambers, the Government will not answer the questions that need to be put to them. My right hon. Friend is right; we will not change anything today. The hope is that together we can force the Government to think again.

Let me go back to why the IMF is getting involved at all. What makes the situation even worse is that the eurozone has resources that could do much more to help. For example, the Bundesbank has reserves of £180 billion, £130 billion of which is in gold, and gold is going up in price. That is in stark contrast to our country and the action of the previous Government, who sold gold at near the bottom of the market.

I agree with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton about why we supported Christine Lagarde, the former French Finance Minister, being put in charge of the IMF. It is like putting the debtor in charge of the debtors’ prison. Christine Lagarde has admitted on record that the bail-out arrangements broke the rules, but she said that that could be justified because we all had to rally round to save the euro, which itself is a political objective. That is complete nonsense and it does not augur well for the future, and the Government taking confidence in the fact that the IMF has signed off the packages does not augur well either. The IMF signed off the initial Greek package and look at what happened then: the situation went from bad to worse. I suggest that it will get worse still. Having some sort of blind confidence in the IMF signing off the packages is basically abdicating one’s responsibilities of Government to question what is going on. I do not see that detailed questioning happening at the moment.

I suggest that the Government’s line on this issue—their approach to the eurozone crisis—is symptomatic of their flawed approach generally to the euro. The Government seem to have fallen in behind the French and Germans in this cry that somehow we must save the euro. I suggest to the Minister that that is economic clap-trap. Binding divergent economies into a single currency without full fiscal union was, and remains, a massive mistake. Similar thinking warned us of the perils of exiting the exchange rate mechanism, yet look what happened then: almost to the day that we exited the ERM, our recovery started and it was a very strong recovery.

I suggest to the Minister that the sky will not fall in if the euro breaks up. We will still have, by and large, a free market, although I think that it could be improved, and we will still have consumers demanding goods. If anything, by not trying to save the euro, we could help to stimulate demand, because by trying to save the euro we are cutting off one of the key ways to improve competitiveness—devaluation. By cutting off that option, we are making the austerity packages worse; we have to add to the austerity packages because the countries in need do not have the option of devaluation.

Saving the euro is making matters worse, yet the Government are silent on this issue. They have shown no leadership. They have fallen behind the line that saving the euro is everything—it is not. I suggest that the Minister and the Government look at the experiences of Norway and Switzerland, which have their own currencies and free trade agreements with the EU. Those countries are doing very well. Saving the euro should not be the ultimate goal, because it is making the austerity packages worse.

Voting by Prisoners

Debate between David Davis and John Baron

Thursday 10th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. It would be quite interesting to see how many prisoners have ever voted, let alone how many voted at every election in the run-up to their incarceration.

The Court also argues that the penalty is not proportionate, but again that is plainly wrong. We are not one of those countries where, when someone is convicted of a criminal offence and sentenced to prison, they lose the right to vote for ever. Such places do exist. Indeed, in one state of the United States, people lose their right to vote de facto for ever, but we are not one of those places. When someone is in prison, they cannot vote; when they are released, all their civic rights are completely reinstated, meaning that that denial is an absolutely proportionate response to the seriousness of the crime. If the sentence reflects the crime, the denial of the vote also reflects the crime.

Let me be clear. In my view, convicted prisoners should not have the vote: robbery, rape, drug dealing—frankly, the crime does not matter, given its seriousness. But, despite what the Justice Secretary said the other day, violent criminals, sex offenders and drug dealers will get the vote if we accept the compromises that have been aired so far. The Government talk about a less than four-year rule, but 28,000 people convicted of serious violent crimes, sex crimes and crimes against children would be incorporated in that. Even a one-year rule would include thousands of people, many of whom will have committed serious crimes from which we would recoil.

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

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. The right to vote underpins our democracy, but that right is a qualified right, not an absolute one. Does he agree that these qualifications should therefore be established by this Parliament, not by unelected European institutions that wish to bypass our established laws?

[Mr Davis]

My hon. Friend takes me ahead of myself. As he well knows, the simple truth is that these are politically appointed judges, many of whom do not have enormous experience in court. Indeed, some of them have no experience in court, even in their own countries, let alone ours.