Report of the Iraq Inquiry

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I think the two things are completely different. In Iraq at the end of the war, Britain was a joint occupying power and shared joint responsibility for the occupation commission. We were in control of the territory, exercising all the functions and responsibility of Government. As a result of the decisions that were taken around Libya, British boots were never on the ground, we were never in control of that country and we were never an occupying power, so we did not have it within our capability to take the actions that we should have done.

Let me summarise the most important lessons that Sir John has drawn in this report. First, taking military action should always be a last resort. Only after exhausting all credible alternatives should we consider taking the country to war. I believe—this is my personal belief—that the political price that has been paid for apparently neglecting this important principle will ensure that future Administrations are unlikely to overlook it.

Secondly, how government is conducted matters. The failures of process, of challenge, and even of proper record-keeping identified by Sir John were serious and widespread. In part to prevent such failures in the future, the Conservative-led coalition Government established the National Security Council in May 2010 to ensure that there is proper, co-ordinated, strategic decision making across the whole of Government. The NSC includes the Chief of the Defence Staff, the heads of the intelligence agencies, and the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, as well as relevant Ministers—and now the Attorney General—alongside senior officials. It is properly supported by a dedicated secretariat led by the national security adviser, ensuring that all parts of the national security apparatus are properly joined up across Whitehall and beyond.

So we now have a system that ensures that decisions on serious security issues are taken on the basis of full papers and proper challenge and discussion, with legal advice fully explained and considered, and proposals stress-tested by Departments, with decisions formally recorded. Having sat on the National Security Council for six years, first as an occasional member, as Transport Secretary, and then permanently as Defence Secretary and now Foreign Secretary, it seems to me highly improbable that the process of conduct of business in relation to this matter through 2002 and 2003, as set out by Chilcot, could be repeated now.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I think that the Foreign Secretary’s last comment was particularly complacent. Looking at, for example, the Attorney General, why is that not an independent appointment? Why do we still allow the Attorney General to be an appointment of the Prime Minister? It should be somebody who is independent and legally qualified in this area, and that certainly was not the case during the Iraq war.

[Mr Hammond]

The Attorney General’s office is of course filled with expert lawyers. The Attorney General produces his advice on the basis of the advice provided to him by his expert lawyers. I have no doubt, from my extensive experience of Attorney General advice, both as Defence Secretary and as Foreign Secretary, that it is impartial, fearless, and quite often gives us advice that we perhaps do not like, and we have to change course accordingly, as is appropriate. [Interruption.] No, the hon. Lady is taking a conspiracy theory too far. If we get advice from the Attorney General that steers us away from a course of action, then we move to a different course of action. I can tell her, from my own direct experience—my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary will have similar examples from the relatively recent past—of advice from the Attorney General causing us to think again and go in a different direction.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

The decision to invade Iraq was the most disastrous foreign policy decision taken by this country in my lifetime. It did not cause, but it greatly contributed to, the extraordinary problems that have persisted in the middle east and the wider world ever since. I fear it will continue to have tragic consequences for some years to come.

First, we all owe a debt to Sir John Chilcot for producing what will undoubtedly be the most authoritative analysis of how on earth such an appalling blunder came to be made. I certainly have not had the chance to get much beyond the executive summary and just a little bit of the rest of it. It will take a long time before anybody in this House gets through the millions of words that have been produced. The lessons for the inquiry into the Iraq war will be of benefit in particular to specialists: those in the military, the intelligence service, the diplomatic corps and politicians—Ministers, shadow Ministers and those who hold the Government to account—for many years to come. It is too soon to follow up on his extremely formidable findings, which I am sure are correct, but there is a role for this House to begin to consider, as we are, its political aspect.

Sir John Chilcot has examined the formal records, meetings and processes. He analysed them to see what happened, but he is not a politician. The House of Commons and the Ministers involved are able to look at this with a slightly different eye. Why did people reach particular decisions? What is it that makes us want to reach those decisions? Where did it go wrong, in particular as far as the collective system of Cabinet Government is concerned, and the accountability, through Parliament, to the wider public? Because Sir John Chilcot is not a politician, I am not sure that he is able to answer on the wider perspective.

I would like to begin by agreeing with one point made by the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) and say how irrelevant it has been to try to turn all this into a witch hunt against celebrity individuals who were involved at the time. That is one of the great failures of political debate in our day. As far as the wider media and the world were concerned, the recent referendum debate was largely the Dave and Boris show. It is quite pointless to say, “Let’s persecute Tony Blair. He was in charge. Are we going to censure him? Is he going to be prosecuted as a war criminal?” and all the rest of it. That is also true for all the other individuals involved.

The one thing the report makes quite clear is that nobody has committed any crime. As one who was present at the time, I have absolutely no doubt that anybody acted on any other basis than that they believed passionately they were acting in the public interest. One of the great things about Tony Blair was that he did believe passionately in what he was doing at the time. That was very evident on the Floor of the House. He never had a doubt about what he was doing, so I am not surprised that he continues to protest as strongly as he does. He has not changed his mind. He believed he was acting in the national interest in cementing our alliance with the Americans. He thought that was absolutely key to our security. He thought that a British contribution would help the Americans with planning, advocacy and so on. He firmly believed that just removing Saddam Hussein was a virtuous act that would make the world a better place—he still does.

Then, as now, regime change is the point on which he gets most passionate. He really thinks—he is probably right; I agree with him, actually—that he got rid of an evil regime. I agree with those who say that that was not in itself a totally adequate achievement. He certainly believed that the regime had weapons of mass destruction. I faced him in the House, intervening on him and so on. I remember one day thinking, “This is the last man still living who still believes they are going to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” It was increasingly obvious to everyone else that no such material was going to be found. Pursuing Tony Blair is a complete irrelevance to what the House should be looking at.

[Caroline Lucas]

rose—

[Mr Clarke]

I will give way briefly to the hon. Lady, but I am not on the Front Bench and cannot keep on giving way as previous speakers have. I hope everybody understands that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas]

I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way and agree with him on the dangers of focusing on just one person. We need to focus on that person, but we also need to focus on the system. However, I worry about the way in which the right hon. and learned Gentleman appears to be letting that one person off any real responsibility for misleading the House. We only have to read Chilcot to see, for example, how Blair misled the House about the position of the French. The motion Blair moved in the House stated that,

“it has not proved possible to secure a second Resolution in the UN because one Permanent Member of the Security Council made plain in public its intention to use its veto whatever the circumstances”.—[Official Report, 18 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 760.]

Yet within a few minutes, even before Prime Minister’s questions, the French were on the phone to Tony Blair saying, “You are deliberately misrepresenting our position.” This happens time and again in the Chilcot report, so while we should not focus only on one man, let us not let him off the hook completely. That does not do any of us any good.

[Mr Clarke]

I certainly did not rise to defend Tony Blair, but he is not the first politician to make a mistake and he will not be the last. If the hon. Lady believes the French, she believes the French. The French were able to exercise a veto in the Security Council. It was a mistake at the time to try to blame the French entirely. They were never going to get a majority in the Security Council, but the French were adamantly—[Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Margaret Beckett]

It would be better to ask my former colleague. However, having been the recipient of Jack Straw’s notes, I would suggest that he was ironically quoting back to the Prime Minister words he did not think the Prime Minister should have used; and he was right about that, as no doubt the right hon. Gentleman will agree.

Then there is the question of legality. It has been said here before, and no doubt will be said again, that Chilcot does not pronounce on the legality of the proceeding. He criticises the processes but he does not say that a second resolution was needed, although I accept that he does not go into that territory. There is an enormous amount of dispute about this matter, and the former Attorney General touched on it a moment ago. It has led to the query, which he raised, as to why there were so few questions from the Cabinet to the Attorney General when he gave us his advice.

One of the things I am pretty sure I have said before, but I do not suppose anybody has paid any attention and they probably will not now, is that it is quite simply the case that the issue of whether we needed a second resolution had been gone over ad nauseam. It had been discussed at length. The Cabinet had had extensive verbal reports from the then Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister about the progress of discussions in the Security Council, about the desire to have a second resolution, about how things were going, who was objecting, and the detail of how that process of negotiation was taking place.

The views of the then Foreign Office legal adviser in London have been much quoted. Evidence was given to the Chilcot inquiry about that, and it is absolutely right and wholly understandable that all the focus has been on the advice of the Foreign Office legal people in London. Although I was interested in the remarks of the Former Attorney General about how unclear international law is and how interpreting it is not always an easy matter, that is certainly not the impression that the public have been given.

However, I have rarely seen any reference made to the fact that someone else gave evidence to the inquiry about the legality of resolution 1441 and whether a second resolution was required. That person was the head of the Foreign Office legal team at the United Nations—the team whose day-to-day dealings are with the Security Council; the team who advised the then Government, and who presumably advise equivalent people in the Government today, on the handling of negotiations; and who give the Government legal advice about the detail of what resolutions mean—what their import will be.

That legal adviser confirmed what the former Foreign Secretary had consistently told the Cabinet, day after day—that the Russians and the French, in particular, had tried to get an explicit reference into resolution 1441 to the need for a second resolution before any military action could be undertaken, even though resolution 1441, as drafted, stated that it was a “final opportunity” to comply with UN resolutions and talked about “serious consequences” if Saddam did not comply. The legal adviser told the Chilcot inquiry that those discussions in the Security Council were exhaustive; that a very strong attempt was made to insist that a second resolution was carried; but that, in the end, the Russians and the French accepted that a second resolution was not referred to, and the resolution was carried unanimously—including, if I recall correctly, with the vote of the Syrian Government, which is a remarkable thought in today’s circumstances.

The accusation has also been made in all these discussions that the attempt to get Saddam Hussein to conform with UN resolutions was in some way false—that there was no wish for Saddam Hussein to conform, and that the intention from the beginning was military action. As I said in an intervention on the Foreign Secretary, the then Prime Minister repeatedly warned the Cabinet that if Saddam Hussein did, indeed, choose to comply with the UN resolutions, he stayed; and he reminded us that that would be an outcome that many—not least the many in this House who campaigned on behalf of the Kurds—would deplore and regret. It was repeatedly pointed out to us, “If Saddam complies, there will be no military action. He stays in power.”

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the right hon. Lady for so graciously giving way. The Chilcot report contains a quote from Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6 at the time, telling Tony Blair that the US was deliberately setting the bar

“so high that Saddam Hussein would be unable to comply”.

So the idea that when Tony Blair was standing in the House of Commons on the day of the vote, there was still time for Saddam to comply, is simply wrong. Tony Blair has already been told by Sir Richard Dearlove that the bar has been set deliberately high for the weapons inspectors, so that Saddam cannot comply.

[Margaret Beckett]

I know about the quote from Sir Richard Dearlove and I know that he expressed that view, as I recall, quite some time before, because I do not think he was in post at the time we are speaking of. I accept that it was serious and difficult, but if Saddam had shown any intention of complying or made any move to readmit inspectors—for example, a series of tests was proposed that Saddam could meet to show whether he was complying, but all that was rejected—by the French, by the way, and also by Saddam. So that is where we are. There was, indeed, a warning that if Saddam complied, military action would not occur.

That is the original four-point series of accusations. To that story, three further accusations have now been added. The first, from the Chilcot report, is that action was taken when it was not a matter of the last resort. The second is that we could have held back longer and the whole matter could have been addressed by further inspections. The third was that the events that have since taken place in the middle east are all a result of the Iraq invasion, and that that too should lie on the consciences of all of us who voted for it.

The point about whether the intervention was a last resort was also raised by my late right hon. Friend Robin Cook, and those who make that case rest their argument on the continued effectiveness of containment backed by sanctions. What nobody seems to mention any more is that at that time, it was widely and seriously believed that containment was weakening and ceasing to be effective. Anyone who was around can cast their mind back and recall that there was an enormous and growing campaign against the sanctions that were helping to keep in place the hoped-for containment. Many right hon. and hon. Members will recall the protests that took place continually, across the road in Parliament Square, but nearly everybody has forgotten that that was not at first a protest against the war; it was a protest against the maintenance of sanctions against Saddam Hussein. To be fair to those who undertook that protest, it was done on a perfectly legitimate and understandable basis, because Saddam was stealing money that was being given to feed the Iraqi people and using it for his own purposes, and consequently there was growing poverty and hardship in Iraq. It was understandable that people should have been against sanctions on that basis, and they were, and the campaign against those sanctions was growing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas]

rose—

[Mr Howarth]

I will not give way to the hon. Lady because I have very limited time.

It seemed to me that resolution 1441 and all the previous resolutions had to be upheld; otherwise, international collective will would have been meaningless.

There was, however, another important humanitarian reason why I felt compelled to support the proposed action. Having spoken to many Iraqis who were on the receiving end of vicious attacks and repression by Saddam Hussein’s regime, particularly Iraqi Kurds, I felt strongly that the course of non-action would be an abdication of humanitarian responsibility. That viewpoint was very much influenced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd), who had unrivalled knowledge about what was actually happening in Iraq at the time and the appalling abuse of human rights that by then was beyond question.

Following the action in Iraq in 2003, I visited both Baghdad and Basra in March 2005, together with the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) who, at the time, was the Member for Henley. The purpose of that visit was to attend the inauguration of the Transitional National Assembly. In an article in The Spectator of 19 March 2005, following the visit, he concluded:

“It could all still just about work, and if it does, I think it will still be possible to draw a positive balance on this venture.”

In an interview in the North Wales edition of the Daily Post on 18 March 2005, another member of the delegation, Elfyn Llwyd, the then Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy, said that although he had opposed the action in Iraq,

“Politicians across the spectrum do not want us to withdraw immediately.”

The then hon. Member for Henley concluded his Spectator article with the words of an Iraqi Minister:

“‘Thank you, people of Britain, for what you have done! We give you our thanks and our praise and our love. You built this country eight decades ago, and it didn’t work. Now you are rebuilding it and it has to work.’”

The point of those two quotes is that although there were still massive problems of sectarian violence and the challenge of restoring vital public services, the political outlook at that time was moderately hopeful. It was clear from talking to people from different parties, different religions and different backgrounds that that hope existed.

During the following two years I visited Iraq on a further two occasions—first, as the Chair of the Committee considering the Armed Forces Bill, and on another occasion with my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley. Two things became apparent during those visits. The first was that progress towards stability was painfully slow and the optimism that there had been in 2005 was ebbing away. The second was that the post-conflict planning had not been successful. The Foreign Secretary referred to the failure of the de-Ba’athification programme. Condoleezza Rice, who was then the National Security Adviser, has said that neither she nor the Secretary of State at the time, Colin Powell, were even consulted about that decision. That was another failure of process.

Those of us who voted for action are often asked, legitimately, whether we regret it. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), I cannot regret the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. What I do regret is the fact that the post-conflict planning was not successful.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Austin]

I said earlier that, clearly, mistakes were made after the invasion. But let us be honest; the charge that is made against Tony Blair and the Government of the time is of falsification and misuse of intelligence, and of wilfully misleading this House and the rest of the country. That is what people are saying, and I think the Chilcot report proves beyond doubt that none of those charges is true.

[Caroline Lucas]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ian Austin]

No, I will not give way, because other people want to speak.

Tony Blair’s critics on the hard left opposed every attempt to use British forces, not just in Iraq or Syria, but even in Kosovo, where the UK intervened to prevent thousands of people from being slaughtered. The right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) described that at the time as “unpardonable folly”, even though Britain was intervening to prevent genocidal slaughter. I will take no lectures from the SNP on these issues.

The leader of the Labour party was a founder member and chair of the Stop the War coalition—an organisation that, under his leadership, praised what it said was the “internationalism and solidarity” of ISIS, and compared it to the international brigades. It supported what it called the Iraqi “struggle” against British troops “by any means necessary”, and among many other appalling things, it said that it stood with Saddam Hussein, compared Assad to Churchill, and promoted or provided a platform for Assad apologists. For the hard left, the world is a simple place: all the problems are caused by the west, and the solutions are easy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

No one doubts that Saddam was a brutal tyrant, but few would now dispute that the Iraq invasion was the biggest foreign policy failure of recent times. The Chilcot report provides detailed confirmation that military intervention was by no means a last resort, that all other avenues were not exhausted, that Iraq posed no immediate threat to the UK and, crucially, that hindsight was not necessary to see those things.

There has been talk in the House that a contempt motion may come forward next week. If one does, I will support it, because I believe that Tony Blair was responsible for fixing evidence around a policy while telling us that he was doing the opposite. In so doing, he was treating his office, the Cabinet, this House and our constitutional checks and balances with disrespect amounting to contempt.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), who is no longer in his place, said that this process should not be about settling old scores, and I want to assure him that it is not; it is about Parliament doing its job properly. It is not about making a future Prime Minister afraid of taking difficult decisions; it is about ensuring that any future decisions are taken without misleading this House and with a full debate and Cabinet discussion. It is right to hold the former Prime Minister to account, but we must not lose sight of the fact that our political system allowed him to behave as he did. Chilcot reveals failures both systemic and parliamentary that allowed the former Prime Minister to act like a President.

Let me give just one example of those failures. Chilcot found that Parliament endorsed

“a decision to invade and occupy a sovereign nation”

without UN authority, and that it happened despite the fact that FCO legal advisers were clear in their view that the war was not legal. Lord Goldsmith, who as Attorney General constitutionally had the last word and had raised concerns in 2002, was, in Chilcot’s word, “prevented” from actively advising on the key UN resolution 1441. The Attorney General’s advice 11 days before the vote remained that it was not safe to say that the war was legal, yet a week later he had changed his mind, because the Prime Minister had assured him that Iraq had committed further “material breaches” of resolution 1441. Despite seven years of forensic investigation, Sir John Chilcot tells us that he cannot find the grounds that Tony Blair relied upon when he made that assurance. What is recorded is that Blair did not request, nor did he receive, considered advice on his view. That in itself is an appalling disregard for due process and must never be allowed to happen again. We must amend our system so that the Attorney General is an independent legal expert and not a political appointee of the Prime Minister.

Let us also reflect on Parliament’s role. How did Members of Parliament come to vote for this terrible folly? We had a chronic and abject failure of the official Opposition. The Tories, with a few very honourable exceptions, simply abandoned the job. The job of opposition was left to the smaller parties and the 139 Labour Back Benchers who opposed the motion to go to war. Time and again we have heard in this House the defence that MPs voted for the war “in good faith”, but MPs are not elected to show good faith; they are elected to show good judgment, based on the evidence. One way to help to guard against this happening in the future would be to replace the royal prerogative on war with a new constitutional convention that includes the idea that votes on war are not subject to party whipping. If that had been the case, more Members might have engaged their own judgment rather than allowing themselves to be taken along on trust.

Although Chilcot does not judge the former Prime Minister’s guilt or innocence, he does bring out themes that I believe support a charge of contempt of Parliament. Let me focus on just one of those. Chilcot shows that a key example of the former Prime Minister fixing evidence around policy was a phone call with George Bush on 12 March 2003. In that call, Blair and Bush agreed to publicly pretend to continue to seek a second UN resolution, knowing that it would not happen, and then to blame France for preventing it. Chilcot reveals that Tony Blair then did two misleading things. He told his Cabinet the next day that work continued in the UN to obtain a second resolution and that the outcome remained open, even though that was not the case. He also went on to repeat a deliberate misrepresentation of the French position, both at Prime Minister’s questions on 12 March and in his key parliamentary statement on 18 March—he even included it in the war motion before the House.

In short, the French position was for more time for the weapons inspectors, but with war as an explicit possibility. The former Prime Minister kept taking out of context phrases from an interview by President Chirac given on 10 March, saying that they showed that France would veto a resolution in any circumstances. That was clearly not true, and Chilcot shows that it was not true. The French kept correcting Blair, but Blair instructed Jack Straw, in Chilcot’s words, to “concede nothing”. Clearly that was because he needed to continue the misrepresentation of France to provide cover for his failure to get UN support for the war.

Then we come to the gross misrepresentation of Iraq as a growing threat to the region and the country. Tony Blair said that Saddam’s weapons programme was “active, detailed and growing”, and that the intelligence showing that was extensive, detailed and authoritative. Yet the Joint Intelligence Committee had said just six months earlier:

“Intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction…and…missile programmes is sporadic and patchy.”

Even just two months before that, Jack Straw had written to Blair warning of “weak intelligence”, and the Butler report tells us that the intelligence between July and September was “unproven”. Over and over again, Tony Blair misled this House, and it is our right to hold him to account.