Iraq Inquiry Report

Douglas Chapman Excerpts

Thursday 14th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Douglas Chapman (Dunfermline and West Fife) (SNP)]

I thank the Members who managed to secure this important debate. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. and gallant Member for Gravesham (Mr Holloway). If he had had the opportunity to give evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, I am sure that the final read might have been much more interesting than the one that we are anticipating.

There is a completely understandable sense of anger and frustration, some of which we have seen in the Chamber today and in the wider public over recent years, at the Chilcot report not yet being published. My constituents share that anger and frustration and find the situation totally unacceptable—six years on and still no report. I want to focus on the entirely predictable “keep calm and carry on” British attitude. I am sure that the Government see that as a virtue, but to heap unacceptable delay on unacceptable delay is not the way forward. Informing us that the final report may be heavily redacted only adds insult to injury, particularly for the families who lost loved ones in Iraq. It is a dreadful situation to endure.

The conclusion of the Chilcot inquiry should be a chance for the Government to draw a line under the Iraq adventure—perhaps I should say “misadventure”. It is an opportunity to understand where it went wrong, why we fell down this particular rabbit hole and why the UK’s strategy in the middle east was so feckless that the Blair-Brown Government felt that they had no choice but to follow the United States down that rabbit hole. Instead, we have this situation. Chilcot has become something of a “corpse in a cupboard” as the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) so memorably put it in the House this time last year. We must face up to Chilcot and learn the lessons that it may offer. We need to get on with understanding what the UK wants and what our strategic aims are. Otherwise, we will be condemned to continue living with that corpse in the cupboard and, worse still, an ineffective foreign policy.

It is that reality that led the great journal Foreign Affairs to write that Britain

“is at risk of slipping into irrelevance…its foreign policy is widely derided for both its passivity and short-term outlook”

and has led American commentators to talk about the UK resigning as a global power. Last month, when we were discussing the Syrian ceasefire, the Foreign Secretary was asked whether he had contacted his counterpart in Russia to find out more about the ceasefire’s implications. He replied that no contact had been made. We criticise Russia for being isolationist, but we should not fall into that same trap ourselves and become equally afflicted.

The Defence Committee recently undertook an investigation into Russia, and it has become increasingly clear over the course of the inquiry that the symptoms of British strategic impotence exist there, too. It is almost as if the end of the cold war made us stop thinking about Russia, just as we stopped thinking about the middle east. Instead of thinking seriously about the role that we can play in the world, a series of Governments have decided to sub-contract that role to a host of allies, who do not always share our values or have our best interests at heart. Let us break the habit of a lifetime. British make do and mend will not do any longer. I ask the Prime Minister to release the Chilcot report now and bury the corpse that is in the cupboard. Let us learn the lessons of Iraq and get serious about Britain’s role in the world.

I was in Baghdad several weeks ago and Iraq is in a complete mess—it is a shambles. I assure the House that it is far from being mission accomplished—if anything, it is quite the opposite.

After 134,000 Iraqi civilians deaths and 179 UK soldiers killed in action, with another 6,000 seriously wounded, who every day have to live with the consequences of their injuries, we see that we took part in a war that destabilised that country, that caused ongoing civil war in neighbouring states and that paved the way for brutal terrorist attacks across Europe. It was a war with no real endgame in sight and no endgame planned for. All those actions have huge repercussions for our foreign policy, national security and the way in which decisions to go to war are taken. This has eroded public trust in democracy itself. We all remember the demonstrations that took place against the war in Iraq—some of us took part in them. The people knew that our involvement in Iraq was wrong, but the Government of the day failed to listen to those protests and to how the people of this country wanted us to proceed. The current Prime Minister can take a different route—he can listen. I say to him again: this report does not have to be written on vellum and it does not have to wait for the EU referendum, so publish the Chilcot findings in full and publish them now.

Draft Scottish Rate of Income Tax (Consequential amendments) Order 2015

Douglas Chapman Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2015 General Committees

[Mr Gauke]

On the process for pension funds, we are mindful of the specific challenges. The hon. Lady asks for the cost of administration for pension providers, but we do not have a specific number. We are happy to confirm that HMRC continues to work extremely closely with the pensions industry and is extremely mindful of minimising the burden. There are technical groups involving the industry, which continue. End-of-year adjustments for pension taxation often occur for changes of circumstances in-year. Any required adjustment that relates to the interim treatment of Scottish taxpayers will occur in the same manner, usually through coding adjustments.

To finish the point I was making on guidance being published to identify taxpayers, which the hon. Lady raised, HMRC received 20 responses to its consultation on the guidance and is amending it to reflect that. Final technical guidance and supporting information for taxpayers will be published later this year.

Picking up on the point that the hon. Member for Midlothian made about the powers being devolved to Scotland, the Smith commission—it is important to remember that all parties present in the Scottish Parliament signed up to it—specifically decided after careful consideration not to devolve income tax fully but to leave it as a shared UK tax, albeit with significant powers to set rates and thresholds being made available to the Scottish Parliament. That is why the whole of income tax has not been devolved. The UK Government will continue to set the personal allowance, other allowances, income tax on savings and dividend income, and reliefs. Going further than the powers set out in the Scotland Bill would break the concept of a shared tax and would be complicated for individuals and employers with activity on both sides of the border, who would have to understand and comply with two potentially entirely different systems.

As the Prime Minister pointed out today, we can keep on debating the processes, but very substantial powers have been devolved to the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament. Perhaps debate should now focus on how those powers are used rather than necessarily continuing to be about which additional powers should be provided, given where we got to with the Smith commission.

[Douglas Chapman (Dunfermline and West Fife) (SNP)]

Although I recognise that more powers are coming our way through the Scotland Bill, does the Minister agree that there has been grudging movement in the pace of change on the income tax powers? These are matters that affect Scotland’s future financial wellbeing, and I think the powers that we are discussing today were first raised in the Calman commission in 2009. They will not be implemented until the Scottish Government bring forward a Budget in 2016-17, and it is unlikely that full powers will be in place until 2019. The hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South mentioned pension arrangements. At this pace of change, I will probably be collecting my pension by the time some of these changes are implemented.

[Mr Gauke]

I do not accept that point. In the course of a year, the establishment of the Smith commission and the bringing forward of legislation to devolve income tax much more fully to Scotland has been remarkably fast-paced. Indeed, the point that the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South raised was that it involves, in some cases, really quite complicated changes. Institutions such as insurance companies need to be able to make changes to ensure that it works effectively. Yes, there are times when we need a run-in period to introduce measures, but in reaching a consensus and making progress towards a very substantial transfer of power, I am pleased to say that the Government are delivering on the promises made before the Scottish referendum.