Chilcot Inquiry and Parliamentary Accountability

David Amess Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

I have to tell my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts) that the House is at its best when listening to a maiden speech, but I am afraid it went rather downhill after that. He made an absolutely brilliant speech. He commanded the House, and he brought in a great sense of humour. He was set a very high bar, in following a former Prime Minister, but who knows what will happen in the future. I am very jealous that he lives in the wonderful village of Bladon.

I rise, with pride, to support the motion. It is rather unfortunate that there is bad blood between the Labour party and the SNP—no doubt, if the Liberal Democrats were in the Chamber, there would be bad blood between them and the Conservatives—but I wish to concentrate solely on the lessons to be learned following the Chilcot report.

There are only 179 of us left who were in the House that fateful night in March 2003. To my utter shame, I did not follow my 15 colleagues in voting against the war, so the one lesson I have learned is not always to accept at face value everything that is said at the Dispatch Box. That is a big lesson I have learned. I pay tribute to all Members, including those from other parties, who were much wiser than I was. I genuinely thought that the weapons of mass destruction were targeted on our country and that they could reach here in 40 minutes. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) had a briefing with 11 colleagues, but I was not privy to that. I regret the way that I voted. I congratulate my hon. Friend on his speech, with which I entirely agree, and my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) on his speech. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) intervened, and I congratulate him on everything he said.

As we have heard, the Chilcot report took seven years and cost £13 million. It found that military action had been taken before peaceful options had been exhausted; that the reliability of evidence on Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction was overstated; that the legal justification was far from satisfactory; that rather than bolstering the UN, the UK helped to undermine it; that UK armed forces were poorly prepared; that warnings about the consequences of removing Saddam were not taken seriously; and that the UK overestimated its ability to influence the US. I would have thought that was pretty damning.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), who is not in his place, did an excellent job with his inquiry. He put it to the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood:

“Chilcot actually says, ‘Most decisions on Iraq pre-conflict were taken either bilaterally between Mr Blair and the relevant Secretary of State or in meetings between Mr Blair, Mr Straw, and Mr Hoon, with No. 10 officials and, as appropriate, Mr John Scarlett and Sir Richard Dearlove and Admiral Boyce’.”

In further questioning, he put it to him:

“Yes, but when the Prime Minister sent another letter to the President of the United States, using those now very famous words ‘I will be with you whatever’, he was advised by officials that this position should be shared with other Cabinet colleagues before he sent the letter and he refused to do so.”

The Cabinet Secretary replied:

“I certainly agree with you that private memos from the Prime Minister to the President of the United States setting out…the…position…should have been subject to collective approval”.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe also said that.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

I was not in the House at the time of the vote, but I was a civil servant, and I wonder whether my hon. Friend would comment on the fact that the proper involvement of officials, rather than sofa government, could have prevented some of the excesses in 2003.

[Sir David Amess]

My hon. Friend makes a wise point. It is yet another lesson to be learned.

On 13 July, there was an exchange between my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe. My right hon. Friend said:

“It seems from the Chilcot report that, at some point between December 2001 and possibly March 2002 but certainly by July 2002, Mr Blair effectively signed Britain up to the American military effort… Under American law, to go to war on the basis of regime change is entirely legal. They do not recognise the international laws that render it otherwise, so for them regime change is a perfectly legitimate casus belli.”—[Official Report, 13 July 2016; Vol. 613, c. 360.]

My right hon. and learned Friend intervened and said that

“with hindsight…given that Hans Blix was perfectly willing to carry on with inspections, if the Americans could have been persuaded to delay for another month, all this could have been avoided… The Americans dismissed Blix, however, and regarded him as a waste of time; they were trying to get him out of the way.”

My right hon. Friend replied:

“That is exactly right. That should have been the stance that Mr Blair took, but he did not. He chose instead to come to Parliament to misrepresent the case… Finally, Mr Blair was asked by Tam Dalyell”—

a great parliamentarian—

“about the risks of terrorism arising from the war, but the Prime Minister did not give him an answer—despite having been told by the JIC and by MI5 that it would increase both the international and domestic risk of terrorism and would destabilise the states in the area.”—[Official Report, 13 July 2016; Vol. 613, c. 362.]

I am grateful that my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex has said that whatever the result of today’s debate his Committee will look at this issue again. In six years, the former Prime Minister involved us in wars in Iraq, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan. I am very concerned about that record. With hindsight, I should not have been partisan. Instead, I should have listened more carefully to the wise words of Robin Cook and Clare Short. We owe this to all those British servicemen and women who lost their lives as a result of the Iraq war. The world has been completely destabilised by the disastrous decision that Parliament took, and the general public will not understand if, after spending all that time and money on the Chilcot report, we do not put in place a mechanism by which lessons can be learned. I also think that the former Prime Minister should be brought before a Select Committee.