Report of the Iraq Inquiry

Angus Robertson Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. and learned Friend makes good points. Let me respond. In terms of Cabinet responsibility, yes, before a decision such as this is made we need to have a Cabinet meeting and Cabinet discussion, but I would not try to substitute that for the work that the NSC now does, in which the head of MI5, the head of MI6 and the Chief of the Defence Staff are around the table. They sit there as equal members able to speak up and tell us what they think. That debate is frankly more valuable than simply listening to other Secretaries of State, although they are there as well. I still think that that is the best place to do that.

Yes, we should have parliamentary debates and it is good if we have them in reasonable time. One of the issues with the Iraq debate was that it was so close to the point of decision that many colleagues felt that to vote in a different way was somehow to let down our troops on the eve of a vitally important decision. Early debate is always good.

[Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)]

May I begin by thanking the Prime Minister for advance sight of his statement and for a few short hours this morning to have a look at the millions of words in the report? Today we remember the hundreds of thousands of people who have died in Iraq—Iraqi civilians and, of course, the 179 UK service personnel who have lost their lives. Today is an important and sombre day for their families, and our hearts go out to them.

The report that we are considering now will be pored over in the days, weeks and months ahead, and it should be the first step in learning the lessons from the UK’s most shameful foreign policy action in decades. Paragraph 409 of the executive summary of the Chilcot report confirms that on 28 July 2002, Tony Blair wrote to President Bush saying:

“I will be with you, whatever”.

Frankly, it is remarkable that the Prime Minister did not think that that was noteworthy enough to mention in his statement to the House. My first question to the Prime Minister is why he did not do so, given that much of the debate rests on the rationale of the Prime Minister of the time for signing up to whatever course of action the United States was prepared to pursue?

On intelligence, the report concludes at paragraph 807:

“The assessed intelligence had not established beyond doubt either that Saddam Hussein had continued to produce chemical and biological weapons or that efforts to develop nuclear weapons continued.”

I completely understand why the families of dead and injured UK service personnel, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, will feel that they were deceived about the reasons for going to war in Iraq. I completely understand why they also feel let down when it comes to the post-conflict situation, and the Chilcot report catalogues in graphic detail the failures in planning for post-conflict Iraq.

Paragraph 630 of the executive summary states that

“when Mr Blair set out the UK’s vision for the future of Iraq in the House of Commons on 18 March 2003, no assessment had been made of whether that vision was achievable, no agreement had been reached with the US on a workable post-conflict plan, UN authorisation had not yet been secured, and there had been no decision on the UN’s role in post-conflict Iraq.”

The summary goes on to say at paragraph 814:

“Mr Blair, who recognised the significance of the post-conflict phase, did not press President Bush for definite assurances about US plans, did not consider or seek advice on whether the absence of a satisfactory plan called for reassessment of the terms of the UK’s engagement and did not make agreement on such a plan a condition of UK participation in military action.”

In fact, the Chilcot report concludes, at paragraph 857:

“The UK did not achieve its objectives”.

Lack of planning has been evident since, in relation to Afghanistan, Libya and Syria; most recently there has been absolutely no plan whatever for Brexit. When will UK Governments of Tory or Labour hue actually start learning from the mistakes of the past so that we are not condemned to repeat them? I hope and expect that in the months ahead there will be the opportunity to hold to account those who are associated with and responsible for taking the UK to war in Iraq. It has not only caused hundreds of thousands of deaths; it has undermined people’s faith in Parliament and Government in the UK and left an indelible stain on Britain’s standing in the world.

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his remarks. He rightly said that it is a sombre day—he is absolutely correct. He highlighted a number of the very serious mistakes that were made, not least on planning for the aftermath. He asked specifically why I did not mention the specific Tony Blair note to President Bush. I was trying to be very careful in my statement to accurately summarise what Sir John Chilcot has said. There was a whole section in my statement about the processes, and I said that Sir John had found that at crucial points Mr Blair sent personal notes and made important commitments to Mr Bush that had not been discussed or agreed with Cabinet colleagues. It is worth reading Sir John Chilcot’s statement from this morning about that.

The right hon. Gentleman rightly focused on paragraph 630 of the executive summary. It is a powerful paragraph that says that

“when Mr Blair set out the UK’s vision for the future of Iraq in the House of Commons on 18 March 2003, no assessment had been made of whether that vision was achievable, no agreement had been reached with the US on a workable post-conflict plan, UN authorisation had not yet been secured”

and so on. That is one of the most powerful passages in the report, and he is right to draw attention to it.

I do not accept that all the same failures are in some way apparent when it comes to planning in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan there was a very clear connection as a Taliban regime was playing host to al-Qaeda. The goal of Government policy, which I supported at the time and indeed put in place when I became Prime Minister, was to make sure that that country could not become a safe haven for al-Qaeda. There was some considerable success in pursuing that aim. There was a huge amount of planning on the post-conflict situation in Afghanistan, and we are still engaged in that. It is not right to say that there was no plan; there is a plan. There is a UK-run officer training academy to strengthen the Afghan army. But as I said earlier, you can have all the plans in the world, but these are still extremely difficult things to get right.

If the right hon. Gentleman is somehow saying that there is no point in ever taking part in any intervention or trying to help any of these countries, that is a different position, and he should be honest and say that. But I would argue that with Afghanistan and Libya—and indeed with Brexit—we have set out the alternatives. That does not mean they are easy.