Chilcot Inquiry and Parliamentary Accountability

Debate between Fabian Hamilton and Natascha Engel

Wednesday 30th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise the results of the freedom of information requests a few weeks ago that demonstrated precisely that the Chilcot inquiry had been designed to “avoid blame”. Sir Gus O’Donnell has been quoted as saying that he recommended using the inquiry’s terms of reference to prevent it reaching

“any conclusion on questions of law or fact”

or to attributing any blame. If we look at the Glen Rangwala report, which simply puts the evidence in front of us—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

Order. May I make a plea to those who are looking to catch my eye later on to keep their interventions to the minimum, as there are a very large number of people wishing to contribute to this debate?

[Fabian Hamilton]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, but no, I do not recognise those results, because I do not know the context in which those words were said. All too often speeches and phrases are taken out of context. I do not believe for one minute that Sir John Chilcot and his whole report and all the years and the time that he spent were there simply to mislead the public.

Let me try to make some progress. As I have said, I never for one second believed that the then Prime Minister was acting in bad faith, and I do not do so now. For those reasons, I will be urging my Labour colleagues to vote against today’s motion. I will urge them to do so to enable the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee to focus properly on the real job of its inquiry, which is to analyse the conclusions that Sir John has actually reached, based on the evidence that he gathered, and to look at the lessons that he says should be learned from his report.