Iraq Inquiry
Debate between David Davis and Bernard Jenkin(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Davis
When the hon. Gentleman listens to what I intend to say shortly, he will realise that Sir Jeremy Heywood certainly does not want to rush the report, and there are some reasons for that of which I do not approve.
I have been asked by a number of colleagues why I believe that the delay has occurred. The truth is that no one in this House knows, not even the Minister. There is not enough information in the public domain, which is why the motion requires an answer to that exact question from Sir John Chilcot. Nevertheless, there are some clues. For clarity, I should say that I do not believe, at this stage at least, that the witnesses are the cause of the delay, and I say that because I think that one of them will be speaking later.
Some of the delay is undoubtedly down to the conflict between the inquiry and Whitehall—Sir Jeremy Heywood and others—about what can and cannot be disclosed. What the inquiry can publish is wrapped up in a series of protocols that have criteria so broad that a veto on publication can virtually be applied at Whitehall’s discretion. Compare this with the Scott inquiry into the Iraqi supergun affair. It also covered issues of incredible sensitivity in terms of national security, international relations, intelligence agency involvement, judicial propriety and ministerial decision making. Sir Richard Scott was allowed to decide himself what he would release into the public domain, unfettered by Whitehall. By contrast, Sir John Chilcot, who is a past Northern Ireland Office permanent secretary, who chaired an incredibly sensitive inquiry into intercept evidence, and who is considered a responsible keeper of Government secrets, is tied up in protocols, subject to the whim of Whitehall.
We know there have been long negotiations between the inquiry and Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, and his predecessors over the disclosure of some material, most notably correspondence between ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair and George W. Bush. There is no point whatsoever in the inquiry if it cannot publish the documents that show how the decision to go to war was arrived at. Chilcot himself wrote in a letter to the Cabinet Secretary:
“The question when and how the prime minister made commitments to the US about the UK's involvement in military action in Iraq and subsequent decisions on the UK's continuing involvement, is central to its considerations”.
The negotiations between Chilcot and Jeremy Heywood concluded only in May last year, when it was announced that an agreement had been reached. The process was clearly frustrating for the inquiry: Sir John Chilcot queries why it was that
“individuals may disclose privileged information (without sanction) whilst a committee of privy counsellors established by a former prime minister to review the issues, cannot”.
He was of course referring to Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell’s respective diaries, which quoted such information. Sir John stated in his letter that documents
“vital to the public understanding of the inquiry's conclusions”
were being suppressed by Whitehall. That is ridiculous. If that is the approach taken, nothing will be learned and there is little purpose in the inquiry.
The inquiry protocols are symptomatic of a mindset that seems to assume that serving civil servants are the only proper guardians of the public interest. That leads me to a particular problem: if a Minister is asked to make a decision that affects him, his family, his property or even his constituency, he is required to withdraw—in the jargon, to recuse himself—from the decision and have somebody else make it. That does not say that the Minister is corrupt; it simply means that one can avoid the appearance of corruption and any chance of an improper decision, and it removes the risk of unconscious bias. It is a proper procedure. No such rule applies for civil servants.
This inquiry process is littered with people who were central to the very decisions the inquiry is investigating. Sir Jeremy Heywood was principal private secretary to Tony Blair for the entire period, from the 9/11 atrocity through to the first stage of the Gulf war, yet he is Whitehall’s gatekeeper for what can and cannot be published. Even the head of the inquiry secretariat, Margaret Aldred, was deputy head of the foreign and defence policy secretariat and therefore responsible for providing Ministers with advice on defence and policy matters on Iraq, and she was nominated to the inquiry by the Cabinet Secretary of the day.
All of that would matter less if the ridiculous restrictive protocols that Whitehall has imposed on the Chilcot inquiry were not there. Like Scott, Sir John Chilcot should be allowed to publish what he thinks is in the public interest, and not what Whitehall thinks is acceptable.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend allow me to intervene?
Mr Davis
No.
To finish my point, if that had been the case, we might well have had the inquiry report already and there would be less public concern about an establishment cover-up.
We also know that the Maxwellisation process is causing some delay. Those due to be criticised in the final report are being allowed lengthy legal consultation. Although this is a necessary part of the process, strict time controls are needed. It cannot be right that those who are to be criticised can delay publication for their own benefit.
Finally, let me deal with the question of preventing publication during the run-up to the general election. Purdah periods exist for a simple reason: to prevent Governments from using their power to publish information that would give them electoral advantage. They are not to prevent impartial information from being put in the public domain—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear”]—so why delay a deliberately impartial report of vital interest to the nation just because the election is pending? It is nonsense. I say to those who are cheering that, frankly, it is not clear that there will be much political advantage anywhere. It was started by a Labour Government, but it was supported by the current Prime Minister, who spoke in favour of it even as late as 2006; the current Labour leader did not vote for it because he was not in the House. There is complete confusion about where there could be any advantage, but the public interest should trump any interest of party advantage and that is why publication should not be delayed by the election.
The Iraq inquiry has been a missed opportunity. Terrible mistakes were made but, fatally, we have so far failed to learn our proper lessons from them. Douglas Hurd, the former Foreign Secretary and in no way an anti-establishment figure, has branded the endless delays a “scandal”. He is right. It is a disgrace. It is an insult to those who died on our behalf in that war and a betrayal of the people they died to protect. That is why I ask the House to pass the motion today.
Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons
Debate between David Davis and Bernard Jenkin(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
When the Prime Minister wanted to take military action in Libya, most of us supported him because there was a clear moral imperative: if we had not acted, tens of thousands of lives would quickly have been lost. That clear moral imperative does not stand in the action we are countenancing.
There is no doubt that the Assad regime is evil, but that is not our casus belli: our casus belli is the monstrous crime of killing hundreds, perhaps more, of civilians with nerve gas. The use of chemical weapons is not the first monstrous crime of this regime: at least 100,000 people have been killed in the civil war, most of whom were civilians. Death by dismemberment, burning, being crushed under falling buildings, gangrene or all the other outcomes of the use of conventional weapons is no better than death by nerve gas—these are monstrosities, however they are delivered. In moral, as against legal, terms many people will rightly, as they have in this debate, ask: why intervene now?
To press their case, this Government and the American Government, now supported by the JIC, have asserted, in effect, that the gassing of a large number of Syrian civilians could have been carried out only by the Assad regime. Perhaps. There are three possibilities. The first, and probably the most likely, is that nerve gas was deployed by Assad, but even the JIC says that this is an irrational and incomprehensible act. My hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) pinned that perfectly. Another possibility is that it could have been done by a rogue or panicky military unit in the Syrian army without Assad’s knowledge—that may be the most likely explanation—or it could have been done by the Syrian rebels with the direct aim of dragging the west into the war. These are the only people who have a clear motive that fits the crime. The JIC discounted that last possibility, but there are many reasons for us to worry about this concern. We do not want to be conned into a war, in effect, by actions designed to do just that.
There are plenty of facts around, or at least reported facts. It is reported that the UN representative for human rights for Syria thought there was concrete evidence of rebels having sarin gas. There were reports that the Turkish authorities arrested 12 al- Nusra fighters with 2 kg of sarin gas, and other reports that Hezbollah fighters are in Beirut hospitals suffering from the effects of sarin gas.
A number of people, most notably my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway), the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, have said that we must have clear evidence to show the House that, if there is a casus belli, it is real, not confected or constructed. That may mean more aggressive disclosure of intelligence than we would normally have. Given where we have been before in this House, we must consider that our intelligence as it stands might just be wrong. It was before, and we must test it rigorously.
Mr Jenkin
It is impossible to imagine how the rebels would have the capacity to shell a single location from seven different locations, which is what occurred on that occasion. Do we honestly think our own security services have not learned the lesson from Iraq or that they are not extremely cautious about the advice they make public on which decisions are going to be made? Should we not have faith in these devoted and courageous public servants, instead of joining the post-Iraq panic that is paralysing this country?
Mr Davis
If I had 10 minutes to take my hon. Friend through the forensics, I probably could. There is plenty of forensic evidence that will come out of the UN investigation and out of other data that we can obtain by other methods. It is not a question of panic; it is a question of getting the facts right before we act. It is very simple: when we are going to do things which will lead to the death of people, civilians in particular, we should get our facts right first.
That brings me to the Deputy Prime Minister on the “Today” programme this morning, talking about chemical weapons and saying—let me quote him exactly—that it is
“the first time in close to a century”
that we have seen—in Syria, he means—
“the ever more frequent use of chemical weapons.”
I recommend that he speaks to our American allies. The CIA has recently declassified and published its information on Iraq’s use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war, in which the west provided intelligence data in order for the Iraqis to be able to target their activities more effectively, killing 50,000 Iranians. How will our stance now be seen on the Iranian street? What will the pressures be on the Iranian Government when we make our holier-than-thou arguments about chemical warfare now?
I do not have time to conclude the arguments that I want to put. I will make one last point. Putin has said that the reason he provided anti-aircraft missiles to the Syrians was, in his words, to balance the war and prevent external intervention. What will his response be if we attack Syria? His response will be to feed this war more weapons, more deaths—
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Debate between David Davis and Bernard Jenkin(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
May I give the Government two sets of thanks? First, may I give them unreserved of thanks for the fact that I do not have to discuss VAT on caravans this year? More seriously, may I give them unreserved thanks for the action on Equitable Life pensioners which, while a little overdue, is morally right and exactly the proper thing to do?
With respect to the Government’s economic strategy, a number of Members have pointed out the difficult circumstances surrounding the Budget from various points of view. The Government clearly have a difficult deal to handle regarding the inheritance from the previous Government. Obviously, there is the borrowing, but it is not just that. The structural deficit passed on by the previous Government was much bigger than anyone understood at the time, and that is just economists’ technospeak for a society that has too much welfare dependency throughout, including even the middle classes, and too much inefficient—costly and expensive—delivery of public services, which are properly needed but badly delivered.
The second part, which is extremely important and has been alluded to slightly by a few Members who have spoken so far, is the international backdrop with which the Government have to deal. We are in a circumstance where world growth is probably about 6%, but that divides sharply into two sectors. The far east, the BRICs—Brazil, Russia, India, China—Vietnam, Indonesia, and so on, have growth rates approaching 10% or thereabouts. In the developed world, of which we are obviously a part, the growth rate on average is nearer to 1%. So we are in a 1% world, and the reason for that is pretty straightforward: it is the dramatic change in competitiveness between ourselves and the far east and other developing countries. That does not mean that it is inescapable, but it means that competitiveness has to be at the centre of the strategy that we undertake—competitiveness, pure and simple. Everything else, all the other macro-economic tricks, frankly do not work.
In that respect I am addressing the comments of the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson). If I may say so—and I do not mean to be rude—he talked very much like a classical Labour Member. He talked about stimulus, and about this being a balanced Budget. It is about £100-odd billion off being a balanced Budget. There is a vast amount of deficit finance in there. But my point is that, if we look at the historic examples of countries that have been knocked off the historic growth rates—3% or 4%—down to something lower and at what has been done with them, there are clear examples of success and failure. Let me tell him, just for a second, about the biggest failure in modern times, which was Japan some 20 years or so ago, which went from a 4% growth rate, pretty much for all the post-war years, to a 1% growth rate after a financial crisis not unlike our own. What did it try? It tried Keynesian expansion. It now has pretty much the biggest public debts in the world, with an annual deficit of 10% of GDP in recent years. Did it work? No, it did not. It also tried monetary activism. I hope that those on the Treasury Bench listen to this, because it had effectively zero interest rates for a decade. Did it work? No, it did not. It also went in for infrastructure spending—the fashionable item this week—on a grand scale. It spent 40% of its Government budget on infrastructure investment, more than was spent to build the entire Panama canal—in one year. Did it work? No, it did not. I am afraid that those macro-economic polices that people love because the arithmetic seems to work are a dangerous allure. We must focus first and last on competitiveness, because without that we will not be able to earn our way in the world.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is saying something that should be blindingly obvious. When a Government borrow some money and spend it, once it is spent it is gone. It does not create economic growth. Once they have spent that money, it might have a little bit of effect in the economy, but then it is over. What we need to generate is what the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) used to call endogenous growth, because that is what comes from within the economy itself instead of being stimulated by Government spending.
Voting by Prisoners
Debate between David Davis and Bernard Jenkin(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House notes the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in Hirst v the United Kingdom in which it held that there had been no substantive debate by members of the legislature on the continued justification for maintaining a general restriction on the right of prisoners to vote; acknowledges the treaty obligations of the UK; is of the opinion that legislative decisions of this nature should be a matter for democratically-elected lawmakers; and supports the current situation in which no prisoner is able to vote except those imprisoned for contempt, default or on remand.
The motion stands in the names of the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips), my hon. Friends the Members for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) and for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) and, of course, myself.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving us the opportunity today to have this debate. There have been many important debates in this slot, but I lay claim to this one being unique, because it gives this House—not the Government—the right to assert its own right to make a decision on something of very great democratic importance, and to return that decision to itself.
The motion before the House about prisoner votes splits cleanly into two parts. First, is the requirement to give prisoners the vote sensible, just, right and proper? Secondly, who should decide? Should it be the European Court of Human Rights, or this House on behalf of the British people?
Let me start with the substantive question: should prisoners be given the vote? I yield to no one in my commitment to the defence of the ancient freedoms and rights of this country, and I hope the House accepts that, but there is an important point about not confusing the rights that are properly held by everybody who is a British citizen or who lives in our country with those much more circumscribed rights that are given to prisoners. Prisoners of course have rights—the right to be treated decently, not to be ill treated, to be fed, and to be kept warm, given shelter and clothing—but those rights do not extend to the same rights of a free British citizen.
When someone commits a crime that is sufficiently serious to put them in prison, they sacrifice many important rights: not only their liberty, of course, but their freedom of association, which is also guaranteed under the UN charter of human rights and the European convention on human rights, and their right to vote. The concept is simple and straightforward: “If you break the law, you cannot make the law.”
The European Court of Human Rights argues that that is a blanket rule—that is its rather pejorative term. But, actually, that is untrue, and the Court is ill informed in saying so, because three categories of prisoner are excluded from losing the right: remand prisoners, contempt of court prisoners and fine defaulters. None of those loses the vote, and for different reasons. The remand prisoner does not because they have not been convicted or sentenced, so it is inappropriate for them to lose it until they are sentenced. That is a logical exception. The other two do not lose it because their crimes are below the threshold of seriousness that we judge means that they lose the civic right to vote.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on obtaining the debate and on seizing upon the issue. I served on the Centre for Social Justice task force on prisons, chaired by our former friend Jonathan Aitken, and we discovered absolutely no demand from prisoners for that so-called right. Indeed, it was never an issue in the British prison system until the lawyers got hold of it through the European convention on human rights, and to that extent it is completely irrelevant to the real issues that face our prison system and the prisoners in it.
Mr Davis
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. Indeed, if there were an argument that giving prisoners the vote would cut recidivism, cut re-offending rates and help the public in that way, I would consider the matter, but giving prisoners the vote would not stop one crime in this country, and that is after all the point of the justice system in the first place.
Let me return to the main text. Other prisoners do lose the vote, but we must understand that for someone to be sent to prison in this country in this day and age requires a very serious crime or series of crimes. There are convicted burglars and convicted violent criminals, who have never been to prison, walking the streets today, so there is a very serious threshold.