Report of the Iraq Inquiry

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

What the hon. Lady is asking for is quite difficult. The process should be that Ministers take action on the advice of officials and on the advice of intelligence that is carefully corralled by the Joint Intelligence Committee. Then we have to account to Parliament for the decisions that we take. On occasion, it would be right for the Joint Intelligence Committee or the Government to put some of that intelligence in front of Parliament, as I think we did in the cases of Libya and Syria. By its very nature, the idea of sharing secret intelligence on a much wider basis will be very difficult, and I do not want to promise to do that. The ISC is there to scrutinise decisions that have been taken, rather than pre-emptively to review a decision that is about to be taken, so we do need to get our ducks in a row. If we try to muddle that, we will get ourselves into a muddle.

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

My thoughts today are with Mrs Rose Gentle whose son Gordon was killed in Iraq at 18 years of age. There was a campaign for this inquiry and it has waited a long time for it to report. The Prime Minister said in his statement that sending

“our brave troops on to the battlefield without the right equipment was unacceptable.”

I agree with that, but, as the last Member to be called in this debate, may I join other hon. Members and ask the Prime Minister to reflect further? Does he not appreciate that the state should apologise to those military families for their sons and daughters being sent into a war without the correct equipment, and will he take this opportunity to apologise to those military families?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that providing the correct military equipment is an absolute obligation on Government, and huge steps have been taken in the past few years to make that happen. On the responsibility for apologies and all the rest of it, the people who were in Government who took these decisions are still alive and able to answer the criticisms in the report. This is slightly different from the situation over, for instance, Bloody Sunday or Hillsborough. This report is about a set of Government decisions that were taken, and the people responsible are still around. It is very easy for a Prime Minister to stand up and make an apology and all the rest of it, but it is not appropriate for me to do so today, because the people who made these decisions are still around. That is why I have chosen to speak in the way that I have.