Chilcot Inquiry

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trimble (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Trimble; he may not be, but I am. Will the Minister reassure the House that the Government understand that the delays in publishing Chilcot—whether justified or not—are eroding public confidence in the report and in the inquiry process itself? Even allowing for the fact that this is an independent report, is there really nothing that the Government can do to impart some urgency and immediacy to this matter?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have no doubt that the members of the inquiry are fully aware of the urgency. If I had been advising them, I would have put a limit on the amount of time to be taken to respond to these Maxwellisation letters. That is one of the issues that remains. But certainly one of the lessons learnt will be that we need to ensure that inquiries do not take as long as a number of inquiries—not just this one—have taken in recent years.