Report of the Iraq Inquiry

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2016 Commons Chamber

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

I, too, want to confine my observations to the lack of military planning and the lack of equipment provided to our service personnel in Iraq.

Page 127 of the executive summary of the Iraq inquiry says:

“The MOD was slow in responding to the developing threat in Iraq from Improvised Explosive Devices…The range of protected mobility options available to commanders…was limited. Although work had begun before 2002 to source an additional PPV”—

protected patrol vehicle—

“it was only ordered in July 2006 following Ministerial intervention.”

Royal Highland Fusilier Gordon Gentle, who was 19 years old, died in a Snatch Land Rover that was destroyed by a roadside bomb, or IED. He volunteered for the position of top cover—looking out from the top of that vulnerable vehicle. The vehicle travelled from Basra towards the Kuwaiti border—a route dubbed “IED alley” by some soldiers. If the vehicle had been fitted with an electronic jammer—known as an Element B —that device would have blocked the radio signals controlling insurgents’ roadside bombs. Gordon Gentle could still be alive today if that had happened.

Those vehicles were inferior to the replacement Mastiffs, which arrived in the conflict zone two and a half years later. The Snatch Land Rover was not the vehicle that should have been used, when people were constantly trying to blow them up. When Gordon Gentle was killed, the lessons were not learned. Why it took so long for those vehicles to be replaced should be investigated.

Gordon’s mother is Rose Gentle, who has campaigned vigorously to get answers from this inquiry. She wrote to me last night, and she asked me to read this out:

“As a mother that lost her son in the Iraq war I am disgusted and shocked at the way Tony Blair took us into Iraq. He misled Parliament and he misled the whole country. He should be held in contempt. Let the people of the country who vote know that their feelings and their voice matter. Mr Blair cannot be allowed to walk away while military families suffer.”

I concur with those remarks. Rose Gentle has done tremendous work for charities such as Soldiers Off The Street. As I said earlier, she was in London last week to hear the results of the Iraq inquiry.

I support the calls by my right hon. and hon. Friends for Tony Blair to be held to account. However, in addition, it is important that the state issue a formal apology to those who lost loved ones for failing to equip them and for failing to enable them to defend themselves.