Report of the Iraq Inquiry

Debate between Ben Bradshaw and Pat McFadden

Thursday 14th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Mr Bradshaw]

My right hon. Friend made a strong critique of one of Sir John’s findings about the undermining of the United Nations. Another finding that I consider problematic is the “last resort” suggestion, which was also criticised by the Chair of the Defence Committee. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, at that time, it was clear that time was running out? Saddam had been given 90 days when the resolution specified 30 days, so saying that other avenues could somehow be explored was not realistic at the time.

[Mr McFadden]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. At some point, there is always the issue of deciding. Every debate about intervention since 2003 has taken place in the shadow of this decision. Iraq has already increased the threshold for military action and the Chilcot report will raise it further. There is an inescapable question, however. To put it bluntly, we can have all the committees and processes that we want, but we still have to decide. The decision can go wrong, and everything that will happen in the aftermath cannot be predicted.

Much has been said about the size of the report, with its 2.5 million words. If we stack the volumes on top of one another, the paper would stand about 2 feet high. The very sight of the report will be a warning to future Prime Ministers. Since 2003, Prime Ministers and Presidents have been very conscious about learning from Iraq, and this report will make them even more conscious in the future. The biggest question of all is this: in reflecting on what went wrong after the invasion and the findings of the report, and adding in the reduced size of our armed forces in recent years, what if the conclusion was, “Never intervene again”? What message would that send out to the oppressed of the world, to dictators or to terrorist groups?

I was not an MP in 2003, so I never had to face the responsibility of voting for the war in Iraq. The most significant vote on foreign policy since I was elected was over Syria in 2013, and that vote was heavily coloured by our experience in Iraq. I have a slightly different interpretation from that of the right hon. Member for New Forest East. I voted against military action in 2013, even after Assad had used chemical weapons against his own people. Yet Syria, where we did not intervene beyond the limited airstrikes we voted for last year, has been a humanitarian disaster even worse than Iraq. Hundreds of thousands are dead, millions have been displaced, and we have seen the greatest movement of refugees since the end of the second world war. It is not a vote to intervene that has troubled me most in my 11 years here; it is that vote not to intervene, as the international community, with the exception of Russia—where have the demonstrations outside its embassy been?—stood back and decided that it was all too difficult. There is no Chilcot report on Syria. We can tell ourselves that because we did not break it, we did not buy it, but that makes absolutely no difference to the human cost.

So let us learn, but let us not sign a blank cheque for despots and terrorist groups around the world, or delude ourselves that the security issues that we face stem only from our foreign policy decisions, rather than from an ideology that encourages the killing of innocent people in countries around the world. Yes, intervening has consequences—2.5 million words detailing those consequences are before us—but so does standing back, and leadership is about deciding the difference.

Legal Aid Reform

Debate between Ben Bradshaw and Pat McFadden

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) on securing this important debate and commend her for her excellent speech.

Given the welcome fact that so many Members want to contribute, I will confine my remarks to the impact of the Government’s proposals on my local citizens advice bureau in Exeter, whereby it would lose all its welfare benefits funding, and funding for debt cases would be restricted to instances where there is an “immediate risk” of homelessness. Taken together, my CAB estimates that the changes will affect up to 700 cases a year in Exeter alone. The director of Exeter CAB, Steve Barriball, has described as “perverse” the fact that the Government are proposing to fund debt advice only when the client faces an immediate risk of homelessness. He says:

“It is widely accepted that timely intervention is more productive and reduces costs elsewhere, such as County Court repossession and other action.”

As other Members have said, these changes represent a terrible false economy, and in the case of Exeter they come at the same time as the local authority, Devon county council, is proposing to cut its support to the CAB by a massive 20%, as part of its attempt to grapple with a 27% reduction in funding from central Government. Yet it is estimated that for every pound of public money spent on CAB services, the CAB saves the public purse £12.20.

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

I appreciate what my right hon. Friend is saying about his local citizens advice bureau. In Wolverhampton, the citizens advice bureau handles some 1,600 cases a year that are funded by such help, involving 26 employees. The local director has said:

“The CAB would effectively go back 20 years in its development”

if the current proposals go through. In response to the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), who spoke a few moments ago, would my right hon. Friend care to contrast those proposals with the record of the Labour Government, who increased the funding to citizens advice bureaux when the recession was coming, precisely because we knew that there would be a greater need for debt advice as economic times got tough?

[Mr Bradshaw]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right. Indeed, I was about to make the point—gently, I hope—to the hon. Members for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) and for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) that it is not good enough for Government Members to excuse every cut that this Government are implementing by talking about the need for fiscal consolidation. There is a clear choice to be made about the speed and degree of fiscal consolidation, and there is growing evidence that the speed and degree of fiscal consolidation being pursued by this Government is not only damaging important services such as the CAB, but damaging our economic recovery. All hon. Members need to do—