Chilcot Inquiry and Parliamentary Accountability

Debate between Alex Salmond and Ian C. Lucas

Wednesday 30th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Alex Salmond (Gordon) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House recognises that the Chilcot Inquiry provided substantial evidence of misleading information being presented by the then Prime Minister and others on the development of the then Government's policy towards the invasion of Iraq as shown most clearly in the contrast between private correspondence to the United States government and public statements to Parliament and to the people and also in the presentation of intelligence information; and calls on the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, further to its current investigation into the lessons to be learned from the Chilcot Inquiry for the machinery of government, to conduct a further specific examination of this contrast in public and private policy and of the presentation of intelligence, and then to report to the House on what further action it considers necessary and appropriate to help prevent any repetition of this disastrous series of events.

I move the motion on behalf of myself, my hon. Friends and hon. Members representing seven political parties across this House—[Interruption.] I see Labour Members are already in an excitable state; I just said “Members of”.

It is a great pleasure to move this motion on St Andrew’s day—Scotland’s national day. The leaders of the political parties complimented Scotland in their remarks at Prime Minister’s questions. When the SNP parliamentary group discussed what motion should be tabled, there were many obvious candidates: Scotland in the world or the meaning of St Andrew’s day—a broad debate given that this is a St Andrew’s day motion. However, we thought it would be better to focus on issues of signal importance to the people. The second debate to be moved by my hon. Friends this afternoon will be on the injustice perpetrated on the WASPI women—Women Against State Pension Inequality—to see whether a debate can advance their cause. This debate is on the issue that has dominated the past two decades of politics, both here and internationally: the war in Iraq.

One hundred and seventy-nine Members are left in the House of Commons who were present when the debate on the war in Iraq took place in March 2003. I remember the figure exactly, because the same number of British soldiers died in the conflict. The deaths of thousands of American soldiers and 200,000 Iraqis, the birth of Daesh in the prison camps of Iraq and the conflagration in the middle east are all directly sourced to the disastrous decision of March 2003. The intention of today’s debate is not to rerun the Chilcot debate of July—we have had that debate—but to try to identify from that debate how we can take matters forward in terms of parliamentary accountability.

I mentioned a few seconds ago that Members from seven political parties in the House put their names to the motion. We do not want to rerun the Chilcot debate, because the generally accepted view of both the press and the public was best summed up in the headline in The Times the day after Chilcot:

“Britain fought an unnecessary, disastrous and potentially illegal war in Iraq because of Tony Blair’s misguided and personal commitment to George W Bush, the Chilcot report concluded yesterday.”

That is a reasonable summary of the general tenor of the reaction to the Chilcot report. What was unstated and unsaid in the Chilcot report was what to do with both the amassing evidence, and what to do in terms of parliamentary accountability if, as we believe, this House and the public were grievously misled into that disastrous conflict.

The hon. Members representing seven political parties in this House commissioned a report from Dr Glen Rangwala of Trinity College, Cambridge. I put the report in the House of Commons Library this morning. All Members would do well to give it a good reading. The report considers, in exact terms, the statements made over a period to this House—not just in the March 2003 debate—and takes into account Chilcot’s findings from the wider canvas of information now available, and contrasts and compares the two. It might help the House if I make a few remarks on Dr Rangwala’s general findings.

In summary, from late 2001 to March 2003, Tony Blair repeatedly made three interrelated statements to the House of Commons: no decision had been taken to use military force against Iraq; military action could be avoided by Iraq’s disarmament of its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons; and regime change was not the goal of Government policy. The report of the Iraq inquiry, published on 6 July, demonstrates conclusively and authoritatively that each of those three statements was untrue, and that their falsity was known to Mr Blair. Mr Blair backed up his claims about the need for Iraqi disarmament by asserting there was conclusive evidence of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction and that these weapons were a threat to the UK’s national security. On both points, those statements contradicted the intelligence assessments put to Mr Blair.

[Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that Hans Blix, the arms inspector carrying out an inquiry at the time of the vote in March 2003—I was present and voted against intervention—believed at that time that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction?

[Alex Salmond]

I am aware that Dr Hans Blix asked for more time to complete the process of inspection and was denied that by the then Prime Minister and President of the United States of America.