Report of the Iraq Inquiry

David Davis Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right. I was a relatively new Back Bencher who sat up there on the Opposition Benches listening to the arguments and coming to my own conclusions. Anyone who voted for the conflict has to take their share of responsibility. I do not choose to go back and say, “Well, if I had known then what I know now,” and all the rest of it. I think you make a decision, you defend it at the time and then you have to live with the consequences and bear your share of responsibility. That is the position I take.

The right hon. Lady makes a very good point about the evil of violent extremists, whether al-Qaeda, Daesh or others. This problem in our world existed before the Iraq war. It exists and is worse today. We are doing all sorts of things in all sorts of ways to try to combat it. Although the debate about what happened in Iraq and the decisions that were taken is vital, we must not let it sap our energy for dealing with this cancer in our world, which is killing us in our own country.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

The Prime Minister referred to the cause or aim of the war as being weapons of mass destruction. I draw his attention back to the document sent from Tony Blair to the American President. After it says

“I will be with you, whatever”,

it goes on to say that the reason is that getting rid of Saddam Hussein is

“the right thing to do.”

The aim was regime change, not WMDs. That fact, and the fact that, as Sir John Chilcot says, Blair’s commitment made it very difficult for the UK to withdraw support for military action, amount to a deception and a misleading of this House of Commons. It is not the only one. Sir John has been very careful about avoiding accusing the former Prime Minister of lying to the House, but a lot of the evidence suggests that he did. What action can this House take to deal with that?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. I have had longer than anyone else to read the report, but I accept that trying to get to the bottom of that particular issue is difficult. Sir John Chilcot seems to be saying that the British Government had a policy of sort of coercive diplomacy—they wanted to use the pressure of the threat of military action to get Saddam to comprehensively disarm. Look, everyone is going to have to read the report and come to their own conclusions. From my reading of it, Sir John Chilcot is not accusing anyone of deliberate explicit deceit, but people will have to read the report and come to their own conclusions.