Chilcot Inquiry

Debate between Lord Hurd of Westwell and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I entirely agree with that. It is a huge inquiry, which is one reason why it has taken so long. Perhaps the noble Lord has seen Sir John Chilcot’s letter of 20 January in which he said that they had served longer on the inquiry than any of them had anticipated. It has been longer than they expected. One of the issues for the inquiry on historical child abuse currently being set up is that the number of cases over a very large number of years that it is being asked to cover is almost daunting for an inquiry of that sort.

[Lord Hurd of Westwell (Con)]

Can my noble friend give the House an assurance that when the report is finally published it will contain an adequate section explaining precisely what have been the difficulties and obstacles in the way of producing the report earlier?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, it is an independent inquiry, but I will ensure that that gets back to the inquiry itself.

Chilcot Inquiry

Debate between Lord Hurd of Westwell and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Tuesday 6th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we all regret the delay, but I wish to stress that this is not unusual for inquiries of this sort. I know that we were all looking at the al-Sweady inquiry as part of our Christmas reading. That took five years to report on two battles in one afternoon and cost £24 million. The Baha Mousa inquiry, looking into the death in UK custody of one Iraqi civilian in September 2003, took three years and cost £13.5 million. This inquiry has been looking at nine years of British policy and operations within Iraq. It is not entirely unexpected, therefore, that it has turned out to take a long time.

[Lord Hurd of Westwell (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that my noble friend’s point is at the heart of this whole matter? This has dragged on beyond the questions of mere negligence and forgivable delay; it is becoming a scandal. This is not a matter of trivial importance; it is something to which a large number of people in this country look anxiously for the truth. Is it not time that the Government exerted themselves to make sure that that reasonable demand is met?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we all regret the amount of time that has been taken. I think in retrospect, as an outside observer, that it might have been a good thing to have recruited a larger staff at the beginning of the inquiry, because the sheer volume of the documentation that the inquiry found itself looking through was much greater than had originally been anticipated. It is, however, an independent inquiry. The Government will receive the report. The one decision that the Government will then take is when it will be published. It is up to the chairman of an independent inquiry to decide when and how it completes its report.

Ukraine, Syria and Iran

Debate between Lord Hurd of Westwell and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Monday 24th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hurd of Westwell (Con)]

My Lords, has my noble friend seen some rather disturbing press reports today about rows and ructions within the group of Syrians who are opposed to the Assad regime? This has happened before and it may happen again, but how does my noble friend assess the cohesion of the anti-Assad forces in Syria?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That is a very difficult question to answer in some ways because, as the noble Lord well knows, there is a very large variety of fighting groups. Indeed, in north-eastern Syria in the past week or two the moderate forces in the opposition have been fighting radical jihadis to expel them from ground otherwise occupied by the opposition. However, my experience of the Geneva II talks so far is that the representatives of the Syrian National Council have been more coherent and more constructive than some had predicted in advance. We are doing all we can to support the Syrian National Council in being an inclusive body, including Kurdish and Christian representatives, women and so on, and in strengthening its links with the moderate fighting forces on the ground. Of course, the picture remains extremely unclear. It is currently very difficult to get around inside Syria for obvious reasons, but we are a little more confident than we were that there is a reasonable opposition willing to work for a transition regime, through which we and others can work.