Iraq Inquiry

Earl Howe Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Earl Howe]

That this House takes note of the Report of the Iraq Inquiry.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe) (Con)]

My Lords, we meet today, less than a week after its publication, to debate the report of the Iraq inquiry by Sir John Chilcot and his committee. It is a report which has already received extensive tributes as a seminal and extraordinarily impressive document, but it is appropriate that I should begin by expressing the Government’s deep gratitude to Sir John and his team of privy counsellors, including the late Sir Martin Gilbert, for their conscientious, forensic and thorough analysis. As an account of what happened during the years in question, it surely cannot be bettered, and because of, rather than despite, its length, it undoubtedly affords the best possible basis for public debate and reflection.

Indeed, for the long term, that is where the value of this report lies. Stones can be cast in many directions, and have been. That is the painful part and, in the nature of major inquiries, an almost inescapable consequence, but in confronting uncomfortable truths, as we must, I would contend that the more important role for us all, but particularly for government, is also to confront current realities. As a Government, and as Parliament, it behoves us to ask some searching questions arising out of Sir John’s findings, not just about what happened in 2002-03 and subsequently, but also about today. What can we say now, for example, about the process of decision-making in government? What are the differences today in the way that intelligence is gathered, assimilated and presented? How effective are we in equipping our Armed Forces to enable them to undertake the tasks we place upon them? In short, could the same thing happen again?

Happily, we are well placed in this Chamber to examine these and other questions in a frank and informed way. There are many here with very considerable experience of Iraq and other military conflicts. We have those who were members of the Government during the period of the report or who were serving as Members of Parliament as events unfolded and many who, like me, were in this House and remember the events of that time very vividly.

Following the Prime Minister’s Statement last Wednesday, we had a brief opportunity to discuss Sir John’s report, but it is right that we now have a day set aside in this House, and two days in the other place, to discuss it at greater length. The Iraq war set in train events which cost the lives of scores of thousands of Iraqis, thousands of international troops and many of our own brave service men and women, and we owe it to the memory of all those who served, to all those who suffered life-changing injuries and to all those who lost loved ones to do justice to the report’s findings, whether in Parliament during the course of this week or more fully still over the weeks and months ahead as we continue to digest the detailed findings.

In speaking of our service men and women, at all levels, it is right too to remind ourselves that this report is most certainly not an indictment of their performance or their conduct. On the contrary, as Sir John made clear in his statement, our Armed Forces prosecuted a successful military campaign, took Basra, saw the fall of Baghdad in less than a month and helped remove Saddam Hussein, a man who was, let us not forget, a brutal dictator who oppressed and murdered his own people. The service personnel, civilians deployed to Iraq and Iraqis who worked for the UK showed great courage in the face of huge danger. They deserve our lasting gratitude and respect. For all its present troubles, Iraq is now a better, freer and more democratic country than it ever was under Saddam. Our Armed Forces can be proud that they made a difference.

However, their efforts cannot disguise the shortcomings in decision-making and planning surrounding the operation and its aftermath that make Sir John’s report such uncomfortable reading. While it may appear to be restrained, almost quiet, in its approach, its conclusions are stark and devastating. There were too many failures—failures of process, of knowledge and understanding, of decision-making, of strategy, of planning and of preparation. His ultimate conclusion is damning. The Government failed to achieve their stated objectives in Iraq and the UK military role there ended a very long way from success.

There will, therefore, be many lessons to learn. Indeed, on that theme, one of the things that I hope will emerge clearly from this debate is that many lessons have already been addressed. We have not stood still waiting for Chilcot to be published. We have learned lessons from the Butler and Hutton reviews, and in 2010 the Prime Minister established the National Security Council to ensure joined-up strategic decision-making at the top of government. Thanks to the NSC structures, the conflict pool and latterly the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund mechanism, there is a much stronger culture of cross-government working on strategy, policy and delivery issues in fragile and conflict-affected countries. Indeed, we are seen as world leaders in the way that we integrate our work across departments. The NSC is not an ad hoc committee but, rather, a standing committee of the Cabinet with its own secretariat, meeting regularly both inside and outside parliamentary term time and including as members the service and security chiefs and the Attorney-General.

Within the Ministry of Defence, we have gone a long way to addressing the criticisms made in the report relating to equipment. Underpinning those changes, we have corrected failings in the MoD’s finances so that we can better match our strategy and our plans to the level of our resources. This has allowed us to commit to £178 billion of investment over the next 10 years in the right equipment for our Armed Forces. The reforms led by the noble Lord, Lord Levene, have led to a much greater degree of accountability and sense of ownership of the equipment programme within the service commands.

In addition, we have systems in place to enable us to respond swiftly and appropriately to calls from a conflict zone for additional equipment to support and protect our troops on the ground. In Afghanistan, for example, some £5 billion was approved for urgent operational requirements, enabling our personnel to benefit from, for instance, mine detection and counter-IED equipment and protected patrol vehicles. There is now a senior military officer within the Ministry of Defence whose direct responsibility it is to commission and co-ordinate such approvals.

In the context of post-conflict planning, I mention too the work that we have been doing to enable civilians and the military to train, plan and work together routinely. DfID officials attend the MoD’s training courses for senior military personnel, DfID advisers regularly take part in military planning exercises so that development and humanitarian needs are considered as part of the MoD’s planning and decision-making and the MoD, the FCO, DfID and other departments undertake joint assessments of the causes of instability and conflict in our priority countries, which in turn inform the deliberations of the NSC.

In the coming months, government will analyse what more must be done. We are not complacent. In the Ministry of Defence, the Secretary of State has, with the Chief of the Defence Staff and the Permanent Secretary, already established a team to review the findings and set out the changes that must be made. I look forward to the outcome of that work.

For now, I conclude by echoing the words of the Prime Minister when he said there are some lessons we should not draw from Iraq—not least, the notion that intervention is always wrong. The UK and the international community have intervened successfully in the past, such as in Sierra Leone and Kosovo. There have been times when we perhaps should have intervened but did not, or did not do so effectively, such as in Rwanda and Srebrenica. Today we are intervening again to assist coalition efforts in Iraq and Syria against Daesh, and we are surely right to do so. So our challenge, the challenge of the Government and the military in future, is not simply to prevent bad intervention but to ensure better intervention when intervention is needed. With that end in view, I look forward to the debate that lies ahead of us.