Oral Answers to Questions

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin]

I am working tirelessly on behalf of the Government, travelling around the world to support a range of different export campaigns, as is my colleague, the Secretary of State for International Trade.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

6. What steps he is taking to improve the UK’s cyber-warfare defence capabilities.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mark Lancaster)]

We take cyber-attacks very seriously and are aware of the increasing threats. As part of the defence cyber programme, we are investing £265 million in a programme of cyber-vulnerability investigations for military equipment, building a new £40 million cyber-security operations centre, and ensuring that our people are fully equipped to meet the cyber challenge.

[Mr Carmichael]

Is the Department looking at the recent Russian activity in this sphere, especially in Ukraine and Crimea, where it is clear that cyber-warfare has gone hand in glove with conventional warfare? The initiatives that the Minister has outlined today are very welcome, but does he understand that he also has to speak to and include other Departments, commercial interests and media outlets?

[Mark Lancaster]

I was in Ukraine quite recently, and the right hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point. That is precisely why this has to be a cross-Government effort, and why we are spending some £1.9 billion on our national cyber-security strategy.

Report of the Iraq Inquiry

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Thank you very much for calling me, Mr Speaker. I shall endeavour to follow your injunction to be brief. There is a very good reason to be brief at this stage of consideration of the Chilcot report, and that is that we have had very little time to consider a very large mass of detailed information.

I generally find, when trying to unravel what has happened historically, that it is sensible to look back at some of the original sources. In the very short time available, I have picked out a few original documents that have been included in the mass of published material. One of them is the Joint Intelligence Committee assessment dated 29 January 2003 and entitled, “Iraq: the emerging view from Baghdad”. I shall refer to two quotations. At paragraph 10, the JIC says:

“We are unlikely to receive any advance warning of a pre-emptive attack on the Kurds. We judge that a pre-emptive limited artillery strike on Kuwait using CBW could be launched in as little as two hours.”

At another point in the report, a list of things that might be the result of an attack on Saddam Hussein is given. One of these possibilities is described in the following terms:

“to inflict high enough casualties on any coalition ground forces, perhaps in Kuwait, including through the use of CBW, to halt a coalition attack and to swing public opinion in the West against hostilities.”

Another note, entitled, “Saddam: The Beginning of the End”, which was prepared by the assessment staff following a discussion at the JIC on 19 March 2003, states:

“We judge Iraq has a useable CBW capability, deliverable using artillery, missiles and possibly unmanned aerial vehicles. We judge Iraq possesses up to 20 al-Hussein missiles with a range of up to 650km and 100s of shorter range missiles, mostly with a range of 150km or less. These missiles may be able to deliver CBW, although intelligence suggests that Iraq may lack warheads capable of effective dispersal of such agents.”

The reason I quote those two documents is that they were top secret documents that were never intended for publication until the archives eventually came to be released many years later. They show, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the advice received by the Labour Government at that time was that Saddam Hussein did possess, in the assessment of our intelligence agencies, chemical and biological weapons. We now know that that was wrong, but we also know, as a result of the release of those documents, that the Labour Government of the day did not lie to Parliament over the question of their belief that chemical and biological weapons were kept.

More contentious is the question of whether or not Tony Blair exaggerated. That is a matter of harder judgment, but I sometimes wonder what the reaction of Parliament would have been if he had come to us and said, “We really don’t know for certain whether Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons. We know he has had them in the past and used them. Because we can’t be certain that he hasn’t got them now, because of the events that happened only a matter of months earlier, which put al-Qaeda and its suicide brand of terrorism on the world stage, and because we cannot be sure that, for reasons of his own, he might not seek to supply such weapons to suicidal terrorist groups, we judge that we can’t take the chance.”

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s useful approach in going back to the primary sources. Does not the information to which he refers, though, highlight just how dangerous it is to go to war on the basis of intelligence alone, which is essentially what marked the Iraq war out from every other one? Does he agree that the process of making intelligence available for assessment by this House has to be improved, or we could risk doing it again?

[Dr Lewis]

That is very tricky, because there are two scenarios where we can go to war. One is quite straightforward: somebody attacks us and we get on with it, because we are given no choice. The other is a situation such as that under discussion, where we have reason to believe that something horrible could happen and the question arises of whether we should intervene.

One of the most problematic aspects of the Chilcot report is its statement that military action was “not a last resort” and that the peace process could have been given longer. The reality is that, unless an attack is launched on us, we can always go on talking for longer. I cannot think of any point at which it would be possible to say, “We have to launch an attack now because there is no prospect of continuing to try to find out without taking military action.”

The right hon. Gentleman talks about this House having to assess the intelligence, but I am not sure that that helps us too much. We can never be certain that what we are assessing is the whole picture, because sometimes, as those of us who have served on bodies such as the Intelligence and Security Committee will know, there are sources of intelligence that cannot be revealed. Therefore, to present raw intelligence to the House, without being able to say that there is other intelligence not being presented to the House, leaves the House in an anomalous position.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

I am happy to be a substitute for my right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), Mr Speaker.

The decision to go to war in Iraq was, certainly in foreign policy terms, the most controversial decision of the Blair premiership and, indeed, of the entire Labour period in government. One hundred and seventy nine British troops died, as did more than 4,000 American troops, and many thousands of Iraqi civilians in the chaos and destruction afterwards. Sir John’s inquiry was asked to look at how the decision was taken and what lessons can be learned.

First, there is the crucial question of whether the war was based on a lie. On this, the report concludes:

“there is no evidence that intelligence was improperly included in the dossier or that No 10 improperly influenced the text.”

Prior to the report’s publication, there had been years of accusations about fabricating intelligence. In the wake of its publication a different question has been raised, which is why the intelligence was not challenged more.

The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) quoted from some Joint Intelligence Committee reports. I do not need to repeat those particular quotes, but in 2002 the reports say that the intelligence was “sporadic and patchy”. They also say:

“it is clear that Iraq continues to pursue a policy of acquiring WMD and their delivery means”,

that

“Iraq has an offensive chemical warfare programme”

and that

“Iraq has a chemical and biological weapons capability and Saddam is prepared to use it”.

This view turned out to be wrong, but it was genuinely felt and reported to the Government time after time. It was shared by many intelligence services around the world, including in countries fiercely opposed to the war. Sir John makes important recommendations about how intelligence is to be assessed and challenged in the future, but they are not the same as accusations of fabrication, lying or using intelligence deliberately to mislead.

Sir John concludes that the war was “not a last resort”, that the inspection process should have been given more time, and that the decision to use military action “undermined the authority” of the UN Security Council. This finding raises a huge and fundamental question, particularly in view of the fact that Saddam Hussein had been in breach of a whole series of UN Security Council resolutions over a period of 12 years, and that he had in the past used chemical weapons against his own people. One therefore has to ask who was really undermining the UN. Was it the country in breach, or the countries trying to enforce the UN’s will?

What does this finding mean for the responsibility to protect? My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) raised that issue yesterday. Is one of the lessons that we should never engage in military action, no matter how multiple the breaches of previous UN Security Council resolutions, unless there is full support from the Security Council itself? If that is our conclusion, what does that mean for the authority of the UN? This was not the view that we took in Kosovo. That action, although it was opposed by some, is generally felt to have produced a positive outcome for the people and to have prevented a disaster in the Balkans.

Thirdly, I turn to the aftermath, and the chaos and destruction that ensued.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael]

The question for the House is whether there is the weight of evidence to justify action, not if we should never act without express authority from the UN Security Council, which would be just one piece of evidence that the House should take into consideration. In the case of Kosovo, which is a good example, there were other reasons for acting as we did. I supported that action then and continue to support it now.

[Mr McFadden]

I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention. My point is that the finding about undermining the authority of the UN raises huge questions. It is one of the most controversial findings in the report.

Colin Powell famously remarked:

“If you break it, you own it”.

It is undoubtedly the responsibility of countries that remove a brutal dictator to put in place security measures afterwards. On this point, Sir John’s report is understandably critical of the UK and the US. With intervention comes responsibility. Security is a key part of that responsibility, but we should be clear about two other points: first, the killing of innocent civilians in Iraq was carried out not by UK or US armed forces, but by terrorists and militias that blew up the UN headquarters, attacked mosques, destroyed already fragile infrastructure and bombed marketplaces; and, secondly, that sectarian violence and killings in Iraq did not begin in 2003. Prior to that, it was carried out by the Saddam regime itself: the Anfal campaign; the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in the north; and the brutal suppression of the Shi’a uprising after the first Gulf war in 1991. It was a reign of terror. Decades on, mass graves are still being discovered. I pay tribute to the courage and determination of my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd), who was campaigning for the victims of Saddam’s brutal regime long before the Iraq war in 2003.

Fourthly, what is the lesson for our own security? I believe that people supported the Iraq war for different reasons, and many opposed it for different reasons. They should not all be put in the one bracket. Not everyone has drawn a direct line between this intervention and all the security problems we face, but some have. Foreign interventions will anger jihadists, and may also be used as a recruiting sergeant for jihadists, but it would be a fundamental mistake to believe that the mass murder of innocent people is only a response to what we do, and that if we stopped doing it, they would leave us alone. We should remember that Islamist terrorism existed long before the Iraq war. The USS Cole was bombed in 2000. The World Trade Centre was first bombed in 1993 and then destroyed in 2001, with the loss of 3,000 innocent lives. In Bali in 2002, we saw the murder of hundreds of innocent tourists, and there have been many more attacks around the world since, including last year in Paris. That attack took place in the country in Europe that was the most opposed to the Iraq war.

Let me repeat something I have said here before. Understanding Islamist terrorism simply as a reaction to what we do infantilises terrorists, fails to confer responsibility on them for what they do, and fails to stand up for the pluralism, equality, diversity and religious freedom that we hold dear. Whatever lesson we learn from past interventions, it should not be to franchise out our foreign policy decisions for the approval or veto of the terrorists who oppose our way of life.

Finally, there is the lesson on intervention itself. Sir John makes a number of recommendations on this point—about how intelligence should be treated, ministerial oversight, the challenge of arguments and so forth. The recommendations look eminently sensible, and I am sure that any future Government will take them on board. The truth is, however, that this is not just a matter of process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

The decision to commit to the US neo-con agenda of an invasion of Iraq was, and remains, the biggest political misjudgement in foreign policy in my political lifetime. I gave evidence to the Chilcot inquiry. The inquiry was an opportunity that the former Prime Minister Tony Blair could have seized to say, “I made a serious misjudgement. I was wrong, but at the time I thought I was doing the right thing.” Instead, we had equivocal apologies that were really about the circumstances: “Sorry that people got injured and that some people died.” That was not enough. Had the former Prime Minister taken that opportunity, he would have healed not only himself, but a fault line in his party and the hurt that has been suffered, to some extent, by the nation and by people across the globe. I am sorry that he missed the opportunity to say that because these things will remain with us for as long as he fails to do so.

The two biggest rebellions within a governing party in British political history took place in February and March 2003. It will not surprise you, Mr Speaker, to hear that I want to talk about the parliamentary aspect. Parliament could have done better, even in those circumstances. It was used and abused by Executive power in the most blatant way, and I will mention some examples of that later.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael]

I recall the hon. Gentleman’s role in formulating a cross-party amendment that was put to the House, and I expect to agree with most of what he will say about the role of Parliament. Before he continues, will he reflect on the fact that Parliament did one thing perfectly at that time? It is to the eternal credit of Michael Martin, the then Speaker, that he selected the hon. Gentleman’s amendment over that tabled by the official Opposition, which would have resulted in no material difference.

[Mr Allen]

I have some things to say about the then Speaker—I will get on to that fairly quickly—but first I will set the context. There was growing unease, certainly from the time of the Crawford talks between Prime Minister Blair and the US President George W. Bush, that we were being set on an inevitable path. It was thought that this was not something that anyone was going to change; it was something that had been agreed and was going to happen, to coin a phrase, “whatever”. That was the thing that frustrated and annoyed parliamentarians. This was a preordained decision, and it was going to happen. That was why I and many, many others felt that, as Chilcot said, this was not hindsight; it was foresight. Anyone who had read in the history books about the religious and tribal composition of Iraq realised that action could set off an incendiary device in the middle east, which was already, even then, in some difficulties.

People talk about the debates and what a wonderful thing they were for Parliament, but we had to drag the Government kicking and screaming to a debate. I wrote to Speaker Martin and suggested the recall of the House. He said that of course we could put our suggestion to the House, when it returned. We therefore would have had to wait for the House to return in order to get the House recalled at an earlier point, and I felt that that was probably not the then Chair’s finest moment.

As there was such clarity among many of the parties in the House about the fact that the House had a role to play, we petitioned, we signed early-day motions and we wrote letters—we did everything humanly possible. In the end, because all that failed, we decided collectively to set up our own alternative Parliament. I hired Church House so that Back-Bench Members of Parliament could speak on the matter. I met the former Speaker, “Jack” Bernard Weatherill, who kindly agreed, putting his own reputation on the line, to be the Speaker of that Parliament. One of the things we agreed was that people would not be left out, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) and I had been previously. Jack Weatherill said that he would call every single person who wanted to speak, for 10 minutes at least, even if it meant that his House—we were based at Church House, over the road, because we were not permitted to use our own Chamber—sat until 3 am.

Having got a critical mass of willing Back Benchers, I asked the BBC whether it would cover the debate. The BBC ummed and ahhed, and it finally said that, since the actual Parliament would not be allowed to meet, it would cover the alternative Parliament from the opening to the end of its proceedings. Amazingly, within a day, I received a phone call from Robin Cook, saying, “You lot have won; we are going to recall the proper Parliament.” As he recalls in his diary, my reply was, “My God, that leaves me with a thousand vol-au-vents and 200 bottles of wine on my slate.” I had ordered them to refresh the members of the alternative Parliament, and I am still working my way through the vol-au-vents from my deep freeze.

This was the House at its best, in the sense that Back Benchers came together. Some are still here today, and some are not. They included Charles Kennedy, Chris Smith, Douglas Hogg, Peter Kilfoyle, Tony Lloyd, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), the right hon. Members for Gordon (Alex Salmond), for Moray (Angus Robertson) and for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), and the hon. Members for Arfon (Hywel Williams), for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) and for Angus (Mike Weir). I think about a quarter remain. We decided collectively how the resolutions, the amendments and our external relations should be framed. That was an example of Members of Parliament working together in an excellent way. On 24 September, Parliament was recalled and the debate was held. It was on a motion for the Adjournment, so not many people voted at that point.

We raised collectively a series of issues about how the House works, one of which was the question of legal advice to Members of Parliament. We were in a position where some of us could have been arraigned before the International Court of Justice, so we needed to know what the truth was. The then Clerk of the House said, “Yes, Mr Allen, I will get you some legal advice.” I thought, “Wonderful,” and I was sent off to the lawyer that the House employs to deal with health and safety matters, who assumed that some sort of accident had happened in the office and I was being taken to court. That was not of great help, although that was not the lawyer’s fault. The House and Members should have had legal advice, just as the Government had legal advice, which would, in itself, prove to be relatively controversial.

Another issue that arose was the question of war-making powers. We in this House should define how we are involved. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee worked hard to come up with a sensible set of words that would allow a response in the event of immediate threat of attack, but with the House being consulted where appropriate. In a proper democracy, the Executive and the legislature work together.

Another issue is the recall of the House. Instead of having a farcical arrangement, we should allow the Speaker to say, “On the balance of what I have heard from people on this issue, there is a very strong feeling that the House should be recalled.” That would be better than a dozen people doing it, or 550 people not being allowed to do it. The Speaker should be given that power to recall, rather than the Government having the power to ask the Speaker to do that.

A further issue—this could not be dealt with in the Standing Orders—is a free vote on war. In the first vote on Wednesday 26 February, 122 Labour Back Benchers voted against the proposal, while 119 Labour Back Benchers voted with the Government. I am absolutely confident that if those Back Benchers had been allowed to make their own decision rather than being pressured by Whips, being asked to see the Prime Minister—even being asked to see the Prime Minister’s wife, on certain occasions—and being got at relentlessly, the number of Labour Members would have been much more than 122. I would guess that a rump of about 20 or 30 Members would have voted with the Government, and that would have put them in a very difficult position.

Some of the Conservative Members who stood with us on that day deserve a mention at this point, after Chilcot. I have not spoken about this issue at any length since the decision for war because I thought my job was to support the young men and women of my constituency who went to war. I put it on record that the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) gave up a potential ministerial career. The hon. Members for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon), for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) and for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner), who are all still with us, also did so, as did good colleagues such as Peter Ainsworth, John Gummer and others who are no longer with us in this House. They all put their necks out very extensively.

Finally, on 18 March, we came to the vote on the amendment stating that the case for war was not established. Some 139 Labour colleagues supported that out of the total number of 217 MPs in favour. The number therefore went up, despite the immense pressure that was being put on people.

We went to war; we won the war. We lost the peace and we are now reaping the whirlwind. Let Parliament be strong “whatever”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon). I commend her for her thoughtful and well-informed contribution to the debate. I did not agree with every point that she made—no one would expect me to—but I did agree with her about the tone that we should adopt in our approach to this debate: it right for us to approach it with a degree of humility and to be careful not to reinvent history.

I was here in 2003, and I remember those debates. As I listened to the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd), I could hear her speaking from the Opposition Benches, but I kept looking over to the Government Benches, because that is where I remember her sitting when she made her speeches in the 2003 debates, and they were very powerful speeches.

I well remember the atmosphere described by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who recalled the way in which the votes were whipped and the way in which the Government really did make every effort to steamroller the motions through the House. He said that he felt vindicated. I know what he meant by that, but I do not sense anything quite as positive as vindication in this. If anything, I feel slightly depressed, because I think that there was an inevitability that was not addressed by the House at the time, and I fear that we would still not address it if we were placed in the same position today.

I will say a bit more about that later and about how I think the House should deal with it in the future, but I should first place on record our gratitude to Sir John Chilcot and his team for doing a thorough piece of work. Like others, I have been critical of the length of time that it has taken, but there is no denying the thoroughness of the work that has been done. What we see before us on the Table certainly clarifies one thing in my mind: we were absolutely right to set up an independent inquiry. We have been chivvying that man and his team for years, and now we see why it has taken him as long as it has.

The report fills in a lot of the background detail. It does not tell us anything that we did not already know or have cause to believe, in the broadest terms. However, Sir John has placed a number of dots on the page, and it is now for Parliament to join them up to produce a discernible picture. In particular, he says, quite clearly and quite fairly, that he will not express a view on the legality of the war, but he offers us evidence from which we can draw our own conclusions.

We are shown the already infamous memo from Tony Blair to George Bush in which he said:

“I will be with you, whatever.”

I think it important for the House to put that in the context of the time. As others have pointed out, Tony Blair was always meticulous in the House in making a case that was based on weapons of mass destruction. That was not true of George Bush. George Bush never pretended this was anything other than an exercise in regime change, so when Tony Blair wrote that memo to George Bush, he was saying, “I will support you even though I know what you are doing is something which is done on a quite different basis than that for which I am seeking authority from the House of Commons.” That is significant because, of course, a war entered into for the sole purpose of regime change would be an illegal war, whereas one for which the purpose was the removal of weapons of mass destruction was one for which there could have been a legal basis.

The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) posed a pertinent question. He asked, “How would the House have reacted if Tony Blair had been more balanced and even-handed in the presentation of the evidence?” That is where the detail of what Chilcot tells us is important, because in fact we see from that memo why Tony Blair was not more even-handed and balanced in the presentation of the evidence: he was working to an objective; he was working to an aim; he was supporting a commitment he had already made.

The right hon. Gentleman referred to the Syria vote in 2013. I gently suggest that he might want to refresh his memory of the terms of the motion against which he and others voted, quite legitimately. I do not challenge his right or his reasons for doing so, but it was not a vote to remove Assad; it was a motion instructing the Government to obtain authority from the United Nations and then to come back to this House before any further military action was to be sanctioned. That was why I was prepared to support it.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I was not planning to intervene as I have made my speech, but—this is one of the knock-on effects of the matter we are discussing today—by the time we got to that vote we knew perfectly well that if we had passed that motion, the bombing would have started that weekend. All the planes were ready to go, and I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman is, if I may gently say so, naive enough to believe anything else.

[Mr Carmichael]

With respect, I do not want to get taken down a side alley and into the question of Syria, compelling though that is, but the bombing could not have started on the authorisation of this House on the basis of the motion put to the House and against which the right hon. Gentleman voted. It is interesting to speculate, although not necessarily wholly germane to this debate, what would have happened had the House gone down the route urged on it in 2013—what might then have been the reaction of President Obama, how things might then have moved on, whether we would have been put in the position we were in relation to the vote we took last year on Syria. What I think is undeniable is that all these decisions and others—Libya is a good example—were taken under a cloud, which still hangs over our foreign policy and our role in the world, as a result of the experience of the debate on Iraq.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) pointed out, it is remarkable that if regime change was the agenda that sat behind the Americans’ intervention in Iraq, they did so little to prepare for its aftermath. The removal of the Ba’ath party from government must stand out as being one of the biggest strategic errors we have ever been party to. It completely failed to understand that many ordinary Iraqis who were engaged in Iraqi government and civic society did so as part of the Ba’ath party because it was the only party in town. To remove the infrastructure of government in the way that was done in 2003 has left a void in that infrastructure that remains a problem for Iraq to this day. The country has never recovered from that, and it provided fertile ground from which extremism flourished. That was all predicted by many of us who questioned the decision to go to war in 2003.

The House today is very different from the House that took that decision. Only 172 of the 659 Members who were here in 2003 remain Members today. I calculate that 141 of those 172 voted in favour of taking action, and 21 voted against it. I re-read the Hansard reports of the February and March debates before I came here today, and I was reminded that there was not a happy atmosphere in the House at the time. On that, I absolutely agree with the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire. It was tense and brutal, and deliberately so. It was the creation of that atmosphere that forced many people to vote for the enterprise against their better judgment.

It is important that we approach this matter with some humility. The amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) garnered some support. It said that the case for war had not been proven, and that was certainly the view that I took. I was not going to vote for a motion that said we would never go to war in any circumstances, because, like other Members, I knew that Saddam was a brutish dictator. We also knew that he had had weapons of mass destruction in the past. In fact, we had been quite happy to turn a blind eye to that fact because he had been using them against Iran, whose regime we were also quite happy to see removed.

It was that sort of double standard in our foreign policy that I hoped we might see the end of after the enterprise in Iraq. Sadly, that does not seem to be the case. In the speech that I made in the debate in 2003, I called for the implementation of United Nations Security Council resolution 242 on the question of Palestine. Sadly, we are no further ahead on that issue today than we were in 2003. If anything, we are further behind. That is why, should we ever find ourselves in this position again, the House must take its duties more seriously. We must ask questions. We cannot accept assertions when we should be given evidence.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) is exactly right. The issue of whether the House allowed itself to accept assertions instead of evidence touches on a point made by the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), which I think I agree with, that Members of the House must take their responsibilities seriously when it comes to votes on such matters that affect the lives of not only people in other countries, but the servicemen and women who are deployed on the basis of our votes.

There is a huge lesson to be learned from this, as I have heard from people who took part in the debates at the time on both sides of the House. Those debates took place before I was in Parliament. Those people now regret that they downloaded their sense and judgment from the Dispatch Box in the belief that no Prime Minister would tell them such things unless they were firm and true. They therefore believed that what they were being told must be right. Of course, those who demurred from that view were demonised in the House and outside it. If there is any lesson to learn from all this, it has to be that we should never again mistake certitude at the Dispatch Box for certainty about such grave matters.

We are told by some people that the report reveals no smoking gun in relation to the former Prime Minister. People have listed exaggerated versions of the charges against Tony Blair—that he lied, for example, and that he misled Parliament—and say that none of that is in the report. I have stated previously that I know Sir John Chilcot and have experience of working with him in Northern Ireland in various capacities. I also said that while he had many attributes and skills, I was unsure whether he would be found in the “Yellow Pages” under “I” for independent or “C” for challenging. I accept, however, that the report is compelling. It may be written with typical British understatement, but we should not neglect the key truths within and the lessons that need to be learned. Some will say, “There is no smoking gun about the dodgy dossier or anything else,” but I will give an example of Sir John Chilcot’s understatement. He says in paragraph 836 of the executive summary:

“The Inquiry shares the Butler Review’s conclusions that it was a mistake not to see the risk of combining in the September dossier the JIC’s assessment of intelligence and other evidence with the interpretation and presentation of the evidence in order to make the case for policy action.”

That is a telling criticism of what exactly was afoot with the September dossier.

The Prime Minister—well, last week’s Prime Minister—highlighted in his statement that Sir John had identified that an “ingrained belief” was genuinely held by people in both the US and UK Governments about Saddam and his weapons. I know that to be true. In November 2002, Tony Blair addressed myself and other socialist leaders in Downing Street and not only told us what he believed was the case with Saddam and what he thought would be found, but shared the view that the US was going to go to war anyway and it was important that he maintained a restraining influence. He described himself as something of a bridge, trying to ensure that America would not go too far on Iraq. I remember saying to him that I did not buy the image that he was selling of himself as a mooring rope, attempting to hold America closer to where Europe was on such matters, and that I felt that America saw him as a tow rope who would pull Europe and possibly rupture it. I do not doubt, however, that he sincerely believed that he was somehow in a positon to restrain and influence America by adopting the course that he was preparing to take.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael]

A very different approach was taken at the time by Canada. Jean Chrétien, the then Prime Minister, said that Canada would not stand with the United States. Now, 13 years down the line, does the hon. Gentleman think that the relationship between Canada and the United States is any the worse for Chrétien’s decision?

[Mark Durkan]

No, absolutely not.

To say that I might accept that there was an ingrained belief, genuinely held, is not to endorse or accept that belief, or to say that it was a wise belief. It was a foolish and rash belief that was, in some ways, deluded.

Alongside that ingrained belief, the report also states that the UK Government, and Tony Blair in particular, had an ingrained intent that was not genuinely expressed either to this House or in public—those are not the report’s words, but mine. The ingrained intent was that he was going to war anyway, because he thought that that was where America was going. The report contains example after example of evidence being bent, melted and confected to justify that the preparation for any intervention would be undertaken on the basis of weapons of mass destruction, whereas it was clear that the then Prime Minister knew that the intervention in which he would be joining America really had an agenda of regime change. People in this House and elsewhere knew that that was illegal, so that view was withheld. People might say, “Chilcot hasn’t said that Tony Blair lied to or misled this House”—it was not for Chilcot to make such a finding about a parliamentary matter—but nobody can say that there was no duplicity of presentation throughout.

The report’s other big indictment is about the paucity of preparation. I refer to the fact that there was a commitment to go to war without the proper equipment to protect and safeguard people who were being put in harm’s way, or to allow them to give care to people whom they would be meeting in distress. There was a paucity of preparation for the aftermath with regard to any sort of reconstruction. People had the assumption, “The Americans will somehow sort that out. We assume they have that done.” That is serious and must bear on all our minds.

When we have had votes such as those on Syria and on Libya during my time in this House, I and other hon. Members have had to consider what we were being told, and what assurances and assumptions the Government’s position was resting on. That is why I have not been convinced on any of those. I say that not from a point of view of self-righteousness, because I was in the small minority of those who voted against the action in Libya and hoped that I was going to be proved wrong. When it looked as though the early intervention had achieved the short-term goals that people had wanted it to achieve, I was more than happy to have been proved wrong.

There were times during the debates on Syria in this House when some of us who were asking about the Government’s proposals were advised that we should just listen to what the Prime Minister was saying. During the last such debate, there were people here who still had not learned the lessons from the Iraq war, because they were saying, “If our Prime Minister is telling us this, we should do it. We should proceed.” It is clear that in this House we need to do much more to learn the lessons from all this.

The motion is that “this House has considered” the Chilcot report. Obviously, I do not demur from that motion, but we should not pretend to ourselves that this two-day debate is anything like an adequate consideration of the report. I cannot pretend to have read all 2.6 million words, and other hon. Members have not pretended to have read them either. This debate has also taken place in the context of a swirl of other events, which is somewhat distracting. A strong undertone in this debate has been the question of the former Prime Minister, and the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer) was right in pleading that we should not just personalise this around the former Prime Minister. The hon. Gentleman also made hugely important points on behalf of people who serve in these sorts of military ventures.

I ask hon. Members who tried to say that the report exonerates Tony Blair to stop making the mistake of polishing its non-findings and trying to rubbish some of its findings. Some people who are highlighting the non-findings are also questioning several of the findings about what the future course should be, and what future requirements should be with regard to upholding UN positions, and proper parliamentary oversight, information and awareness.

The final point I make, in agreeing with the hon. Member for Bridgend about her statement, “People don’t have the right to criticise unless they asked about the equipment,” is that people also do not have the right to justify the Iraq war and to pretend that the Chilcot report is not an indictment of the decision and how it was taken if they did not ask questions at the time. The report tells us that those questions should have been screaming out to us at the time, and if we look carefully at the report, we see that any reading of the intelligence available to MPs at the time would have told them that they were there.

Shipbuilding on the Clyde

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dunne]

We have made it very clear that British Government procurement policies are being adopted by the Ministry of Defence. In all our contracts where steel is involved, we are looking to provide for contractors to ensure that British steel manufacturers have an opportunity to bid. In that respect, the only change is that there are perhaps greater opportunities since we implemented that new policy than there were before.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The workforce on the Clyde are highly skilled and motivated men and women, and I really do wish that the focus of the House this afternoon could be on preserving their futures and livelihoods, instead of on other considerations. With that in mind, will the Minister assure me that, between the end of the construction of the offshore patrol vessels and the start of work on the Type 26 frigates, everything will be done to ensure continuity, because it is in our national strategic interest to ensure that the workforce is maintained?

[Mr Dunne]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for focusing his question on that important subject, and I agree that the workforce on the Clyde are highly skilled; indeed, I make a point of meeting the trade union representatives of shipbuilders on the Clyde, and I did so last month. The short answer to his question is yes. The five offshore patrol vessels—three of which are in build, and two of which we added as part of the SDSR—do provide continuity between the Type 45s and the aircraft carrier blocks, as they finish being produced on the Clyde, and the beginning of work on the Type 26s.

Royal Naval Deployment: Mediterranean

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Defence to make a statement on the announcement that the Royal Navy will join NATO forces in the interception and return of migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean.

[The Secretary of State for Defence (Michael Fallon)]

The scale of the migration challenge requires NATO, the European Union and other countries across Europe to work together to address both its symptoms—the constant flow of migrants and the conditions we see them face—and the causes in Syria and beyond. We must also work with local civilian authorities to tackle the gangs that profit from smuggling migrants.

The United Kingdom has already been engaged for several months, with the Home Office ship VOS Grace deployed in the region since November with a detachment of Border Force officers.

On 11 February, NATO Defence Ministers took the decision to deploy NATO ships, better to enable Turkish and Greek coastguards to intercept the migrant boats and disrupt the smugglers’ business model. Standing NATO maritime group 2 arrived in the region within 48 hours of that decision and has been conducting initial reconnaissance and surveillance of illegal crossings since then.

The NATO Secretary-General outlined in a statement yesterday evening that discussions between NATO, Turkey and Greece have agreed that NATO vessels can now operate in Greek and Turkish territorial waters.

We have, therefore, decided that the UK contribution is to send Royal Fleet Auxiliary Mounts Bay and a maritime Wildcat helicopter to the Aegean. Their roles will be to support the NATO monitoring and surveillance task. They will work alongside three Border Force boats: the VOS Grace, the cutter Protector, which is on its way to the region, and a further cutter, which is expected to start operations later this month. Together they will support the Turkish and Greek coastguards and the EU Frontex mission.

The Prime Minister is attending today’s EU-Turkey summit on migration. Contributing to the EU and NATO missions to counter smuggling is only part of the Government’s wider approach to tackling the root causes of irregular migration. The United Kingdom is leading the way in tackling those issues at their source, providing significant amounts of aid to assist in stabilising troubled regions and lessening the need for people to leave. In the meantime, the Royal Navy deployment is an important part of the international effort to assist the Turkish and Greek authorities in reducing this criminal and dangerous people trafficking.

[Mr Carmichael]

I thank the Secretary of State for that answer and, in particular, for coming to the Chamber to make the statement. He describes a series of tactics, many of which will find broad support in this House, but it seems to me that, taken together, they do not add up to a strategy. Today’s press refers to a “war against people traffickers”. If we are to win that war, we need to cut off from the people traffickers the supply of those who are desperate enough to pay to use them. Of course, in the longer term that means getting peace in their countries of origin, but in the short to medium term, surely it means a series of safe and legal routes into Europe, the expansion of the refugee family scheme and the introduction of humanitarian visas.

What will happen to those seeking refuge who are intercepted in the Aegean? Will they be taken back to Turkey? Does that not run contrary to the principle of non-refoulement, which is at the centre of international refugee law?

What will be done to keep under review the widely questioned status of Turkey as a “safe country” to which people can be returned? Is the Defence Secretary aware of the reports from Human Rights Watch describing people being sent from Turkey back to Syria? What impact do the Government think that action will have on the flow of refugees elsewhere? The Secretary of State will, I am sure, be aware that last year 35,000 people came to Europe through Russia. What will be the impact on that land route if the sea route is to be closed down? What will that mean for the deployment of resources elsewhere in the Mediterranean, in particular assisting those travelling from Libya to Italy? The Secretary of State will be aware that the coastguard cutters were deployed on that route last year. Will they be available to help those who get into difficulty on that route, on which there have been many more deaths by drowning than there have been on the route through the Aegean sea?

If this is to be a war against people trafficking, I fear that, as with all wars, there will be innocent victims. The innocent victims, it seems to me, will be those who are desperate enough to undertake the journeys across the Aegean, across the land routes and across other parts of the Mediterranean. Will the Secretary of State assure me and the House that those people will be uppermost in the Government’s consideration?

[Michael Fallon]

There are, of course, already innocent victims of that people trafficking. Several hundred have drowned this winter, and several thousand drowned last year. It is in all our interests to reduce the number of people who attempt the dangerous crossing. The right hon. Gentleman is right that we have to work at cutting off the supply much further back. We have done that through our contribution to the reconstruction of Syria and our aid programmes in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and much further south in east and west Africa. On the creation of safe routes, I am not convinced that establishing some routes as safer than others will do anything to reduce the flow. On the contrary, we need to increase the capacity of, in particular, the Turkish authorities and the Turkish coastguard to intercept the boats before they set off on that very dangerous crossing.

The right hon. Gentleman asked me specifically about interception. The position is that if a boat in distress can be intercepted in Turkish waters by the Turkish authorities —perhaps alerted by the helicopters that are now deploying from the international force—there is a greater chance that the Turkish coastguard will be able to return that boat to the Turkish side. If such a boat is intercepted in international or Greek waters, it is more likely to be taken to one of the Greek reception points. So far as the effect on the alternative route that opened up last summer from Libya to Italy is concerned, HMS Enterprise is still on station in the Tyrrhenian sea and only yesterday rescued around 100 people. It is important to begin to establish a policy of return, so that there is less incentive for migrants to attempt those extremely dangerous crossings and less incentive for criminal gangs to make money out of their doing so.

Trident

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to take part in a very important debate on a subject to which the House has not given sufficient time recently, although we have known for some years that we would have to address it. For the benefit of Government business managers, may I say that I think the House would be better served by a more substantial motion in Government time, which might allow wider consideration of the challenges that face us?

We are dealing today with an Opposition day debate. I listened with great care to the speech of the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O'Hara). It was remarkable that it focused on the position of the Labour party as much as it focused on the Government. That is a novel position for an Opposition day debate. In fairness, I am not entirely without sympathy for the approach, given the current difficulties in the Labour party. It is not that Labour lacks a clear position—in fact, I would suggest that Labour has too many clear positions and it is difficult to reconcile them all within the one party.

I have sympathy with the review that Labour is undertaking. I wish it well, but I have severe misgivings when I hear that Ken Livingstone has been put in charge of it. Putting Ken Livingstone in charge of a review of nuclear weaponry is a bit like putting King Herod in charge of the nursery.

I commend the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) for his contribution to the debate and the manner in which he made it. The review could do an awful lot worse than to take as its starting point the Trident alternatives review that was carried out at the behest of my party in the previous Government, which looked at various alternatives and different ways in which the question could be approached.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray]

Can the right hon. Gentleman clarify the stance of his own party? A member who represents his party in my constituency claimed that we did not need a nuclear deterrent because we did not use it in the Falklands. Will the right hon. Gentleman clarify his party’s policy, please?

[Mr Carmichael]

I am not responsible for every contribution from every member of my party in every constituency, any more, I suspect, than the hon. Lady would want to be for her own party. I will come to my party’s position in a moment, because I think it is central to the debate and I want to put it on record. The hon. Lady has the advantage of being able to consider the terms of the amendment that was tabled but unfortunately was not selected for Division today.

It is worth remembering that we are having this debate only because the maingate decision, which was to have been taken in the previous Parliament, was delayed until this Parliament. When the Minister responds to the debate, I invite him to accept that although his party wanted to take that maingate decision in the last Parliament, events vindicate the decision that was made and this is the right point in the cycle to take it.

We live in an ever-changing and uncertain world. As the hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke), I think, said earlier, we cannot ignore the fact that nuclear weapons exist. I wish they could be uninvented, but they cannot. That is the basis on which we should approach this debate. It is not just about whether the position should be reviewed or not: it is about what the United Kingdom, as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, can do to take a lead in the international community and among the nuclear powers to ensure that there is a serious movement towards multilateral nuclear disarmament.

This was a formative debate in my early political years, as it probably was for you, Madam Deputy Speaker, in the 1987 general election, but the world was a very different place in 1987. The cold war was still at its height and the Soviet Union still existed. We have seen enormous change since that time, but the change has not all been in one direction. We have only to look at the situation in Ukraine and Crimea to realise that such old enmities never die. It is not pertinent to say what is a tier 1 or a tier 2 risk at this point. The question is what the situation will be in the future.

Having said all that, I would still say that the Government’s determination to pursue a like-for-like replacement for Trident ignores the different world in which we now live and misses the opportunity that we have as a force for multilateral nuclear disarmament to take a different approach—to take a step down the nuclear ladder—and as a nuclear power to meet our obligations under the various nuclear non-proliferation treaties.

When the Secretary of State addressed the House, he spoke of what he has done to reduce the number of nuclear warheads currently available for deployment. I commend him for that. He lamented the fact that this has elicited little response from other nuclear or nuclear-aspirant countries. I suspect that that is because despite the reduction in the number of warheads, the Government continue to cleave to the notion of continuous at-sea deterrence. The time has now come for a very long and serious look at whether that remains an appropriate approach. My party has reached the conclusion that it is no longer necessary or appropriate. We would like to see an end to continuous at-sea nuclear deterrence, while of course maintaining our deterrence capability. That would allow us to take something of a lead in taking the step down—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) wishes to intervene, I will take an intervention, but I will not take sedentary chuntering.

[John Woodcock]

My hon. Friends and I are baffled about how this part-time deterrence would work. Why would it save money, how would it stop the first-strike capability, and what would the submarines do when they were not deterring?

[Mr Carmichael]

If the hon. Gentleman wishes to have a serious debate about this, then I am well in the market for that. He should understand, though, that this is a legitimate and substantial proposal that commands a lot of support among many people who understand and accept the need for nuclear weaponry but are prepared to look at how we use our position as a nuclear power and as a proponent of nuclear disarmament rather than as something that is—[Interruption.] Before he continues to shake his head, he might well find that his own party’s review comes up with something very similar to this. He should be careful not to disparage today what he might find in his manifesto tomorrow.

It is unfortunate that this debate has occasionally generated more heat than light, but it is an important one that this House has to have, and I suspect that we shall be returning to it in the months and years to come. When we do so, it should be on the basis that this is our opportunity to be a leading force for nuclear disarmament in the world; it is not all just about the renewal of weaponry.

[Several hon. Members rose—]