Chilcot Inquiry (Costs)

Debate between George Howarth and Keith Simpson

Wednesday 29th October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Keith Simpson (Broadland) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I congratulate the Minister on his new appointment. He understands the problems of research, writing and getting things cleared, as the author of a much respected book, “5 Days to Power”, on the formation of the coalition in 2010. He had perhaps a slightly less happy experience on publishing “The Eye of the Storm: The View from the Centre of a Political Scandal” in 2014, as it might have delayed his promotion to the Front Bench. I am also grateful that the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), the main Opposition spokeswoman on this subject, made it—just in time—for the debate.

The full house we have here today enables me to range fairly widely over the important subject of the Chilcot inquiry. I should explain that when I applied for the debate, the Clerks quite rightly made it clear to me that I would not get a debate if I called it merely “The Chilcot inquiry”, as the Government do not have responsibility for the inquiry, which is independent. However, it is legitimate to ask about the costs of the inquiry, and I will be interpreting “costs” in a fairly broad way, so that we can have a proper debate.

My purpose is not to second-guess the content or conclusion of the inquiry’s report, nor, I emphasise, to raise the inquiry for party political reasons. As a Conservative Front-Bench spokesman at the time, I supported and voted with the then Government in nearly all the relevant major debates, including the one about going to war, even though, along with other colleagues, I expressed some concern or reservations about some aspects of the policy and the operational decisions.

I am raising the topic because the costs of the Chilcot inquiry do include not just the financial costs. There are the costs to relevance and timeliness because of the length of time the inquiry has taken so far, which is just over four years; costs to reputations, past and present, of Ministers, the military, the intelligence services and civil servants; the costs to public confidence in government, transparency and the decision to go to war; and, last but not least, the costs in terms of the anguish of relatives of those of our servicemen and women who were killed and wounded in the conflict, and who want to know why and how it happened.

A lot of expectations have built up about the inquiry’s final report. I fear that many members of the public have already made their minds up about the inquiry, and are not only allocating blame but have the fear that, somehow or other, it is an establishment stitch-up. That view was expressed at the time, even before the inquiry was announced by the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown). He announced the establishment of the inquiry in June 2009. Hearings began in November that year and the final public hearing was on 2 February 2011. To date, we have had no real indication from Sir John Chilcot of when he intends to publish the results of his inquiry, and we have received mixed messages about the delay.

Frustrations at that delay have been expressed by Members of both Houses of Parliament in questions and debates, as well as by the media and relatives of those killed and wounded. There may be good reasons for it, but neither Sir John Chilcot nor the Government have really adequately explained them. That has exaggerated the suspicion that the inquiry is an establishment stitch-up or is not a proper inquiry. At the end of the day, some people are asking: to whose benefit is it that there is a delay? I suspect that I am probably more of the view that there are understandable reasons and, perhaps, cock-ups behind the delay than I am in the camp of conspiracy.

Are the administrative costs of the inquiry related to its terms of reference? Do those costs reflect the fact that the riding instruction for the initial inquiry was too broad and comprehensive? I remind hon. Members of the instructions laid down by the then Prime Minister in June 2009. He announced that it would be

“an independent Privy Counsellor committee of inquiry which will consider the period from summer 2001, before military operations began in March 2003, and our subsequent involvement in Iraq right up to the end of July this year”—

meaning 2009. He went on:

“The inquiry is essential because it will ensure that, by learning lessons, we strengthen the health of our democracy, our diplomacy and our military…Its scope is unprecedented. It covers an eight-year period, including the run-up to the conflict and the full period of conflict and reconstruction. The committee of inquiry will have access to the fullest range of information, including secret information. In other words, its investigation can range across all papers, all documents and all material. It can ask for any British document to be brought before it, and for any British citizen to appear. No British document and no British witness will be beyond the scope of the inquiry. I have asked the members of the committee to ensure that the final report will be able to disclose all but the most sensitive information—that is, all information except that which is essential to our national security.”—[Official Report, 15 June 2009; Vol. 494, c. 23.]

It is important to note that, in that original riding instruction, the then Prime Minister kept emphasising “British”. One problem the Chilcot inquiry has faced is that a considerable amount of evidence and a considerable number of individuals were from or in the United States of America. Understandably, that caused major problems.

Sir John Chilcot, in replying to then Prime Minister, wrote:

“Our terms of reference are very broad, but the essential points, as set out by the Prime Minister and agreed by the House of Commons, are that this is an Inquiry by a committee of Privy Counsellors”.

He went on to explain that the inquiry would consider the long period stated. He also emphasised the importance of the lessons of the inquiry:

“Those lessons will help ensure that, if we face similar situations in future, the government of the day is best equipped to respond to those situations in the most effective manner in the best interests of the country.”

There is a problem with that. The Chilcot inquiry has not reported and we do not yet know what lessons have been learned. Yet, ironically, in the past year, roughly, we have faced two situations in which the Prime Minister has tried to get the House of Commons to support military action. The first, last year, was over Syria, which—

[Mr George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Order. The title of the debate focuses on the costs of the Chilcot inquiry. In his opening remarks, the hon. Gentleman chose to interpret “costs” in quite a wide way, and I am mindful of that. However, the direction of his speech needs constantly to refer back to the title of the debate. He is not out of order, but I am trying to be helpful by steering him in a direction that will keep him in order for the remainder of his speech.

[Mr Simpson]

I am grateful, Mr Howarth, and take note of that. I am not going off into a byway—one of my interpretations of “costs” is to do with the lessons of the inquiry, which I think have direct relevance not only to this debate but to the interests of nearly all colleagues in the House of Commons. Naturally, I will take note of what you have said.

The problem always was that the inquiry’s sheer breadth would incur extra costs in every possible sense of the word. Interestingly, the Government considered the historical precedents for the inquiry. They included the two inquiries from the first world war—the special commissions on the Dardanelles and on Mesopotamia—both of which were relatively cheap. The Mesopotamia inquiry reported within a year, and its lessons were immediately applied in 1917, while the financial costs of the Dardanelles inquiry, which lasted until 1919, were also pretty reasonable, although the inquiry did not, of course, have an impact on the conduct of the war. As far as the Government were concerned, however, the immediate precedent was what was called the Falklands inquiry, or the Franks inquiry, which was also a Privy Council inquiry. It reported within six months of being established and, once again, cost a relatively small amount. Once again, however, there was controversy because of the different interpretations regarding how the inquiry was set up and what lessons could possibly be learned from it.

In historical cases, as well as in the Chilcot inquiry, terms of reference are crucial. The important point about the Chilcot inquiry is that it is independent of the Government but relies on them for resources, so there is a cost factor. It is also reliant on them in terms of the cost of clearing secret and confidential documents, including those between the United States President and the British Prime Minister and those involving Departments and intelligence agencies. Will the Minister tell us, based on Government sources, the extent to which such procedures have held up the drafting of the final report, and whether Sir John Chilcot is satisfied that all those matters are now resolved? I will return to that point in greater detail.

In a letter Sir John Chilcot wrote to Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, dated 28 May 2014, he said that, in principle, agreement had been reached with the Government on the intelligence and other materials that might be released. Can the Minister tell us what documentation and information has been withheld? If any has been, will that be reflected in the final report? In other words—this may cost more—will sections of the report be flagged up as having been redacted?

A great deal of the delay has been attributed to what is called the Maxwellisation process. For those colleagues who are not too sure what that means, it is the process of warning those who have been criticised in a report and allowing them to respond before publication. It takes its name from the experience of Robert Maxwell, who was criticised in a Department of Trade and Industry report in 1969 and took the Department to court, where the judge ruled he had been unfairly treated. In future, therefore, individuals who were to be criticised would be given advance notice and a chance to comment. Obviously, the Government wanted to allow that not only because there had been a legal judgment, but because they did not—once again, Mr Howarth, I am following your direction—want to incur the costs of legal action.

From Sir John Chilcot’s letter to Sir Jeremy Heywood in May, we can see that the process of Maxwellisation has, in one sense, only just begun. Sir John Chilcot makes it quite clear that, now that everything else has been cleared in principle, it is possible to start the process of Maxwellisation. From reading the documents, I conclude that the delay has been in two parts. One was the negotiation between Chilcot and the Cabinet Office over the US-UK political and intelligence documentation. In addition, until that was resolved, the process of Maxwellisation could not seriously begin—in fact, it has only just begun. We will therefore see more financial costs one way or another.

Given the Cabinet Office discussions with Chilcot, what is the time scale for publication? Can we realistically expect Sir John Chilcot to publish his report before May 2015? That is important because there will be a cut-off date around Christmas—probably just into the new year—when the civil service will say that Chilcot forms part of the pre-election purdah, so the report will be postponed. That has financial costs, but I would suggest that it also has costs relating to the reputation of the British Government and the individuals concerned.

Of course, Chilcot is an independent inquiry into the Iraq war, but can the Minister tell us what departmental inquiries have been held into general or specific aspects of the war, from policy through to implementation and lessons learned, by the Cabinet Office, the National Security Council, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Ministry of Defence, the Department for International Development, and perhaps the intelligence agencies? We have no idea what individual departmental reports have been done, and whether Sir John Chilcot has had access to them. If he has, that might cut down the time he needs to investigate and the cost of the overall report. Does the Minister have details of any US Government or congressional inquiries into the Iraq war, which may have published documentation that would have been relevant to Chilcot or saved time?

I now return to—literally—the costs of the Chilcot inquiry. According to a House of Commons document, the total financial cost incurred by the inquiry, from its establishment on 15 June 2009 to 31 March this year, was £9,016,500. There is an additional cost of about £1 million for the rest of this year, so we are talking so far about £10 million. Compared with the cost of the major public inquiries, that is not a large amount. Nevertheless, it is a cost on the public purse.

There is also the cost to the reputations, past and present, of Ministers, the military, the intelligence services and the civil service. We in this House would want Sir John Chilcot to be as fair as possible in any criticism he makes of any individuals, so that they have the right not only in law, but in terms of natural justice, to respond. The trouble is that that could go on for a long time, and Sir John Chilcot must have a cut-off point in mind. Has he perhaps indicated what it is to Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary?

On the costs in terms of public confidence in Government transparency and the decision to go to war, I understand the practical problems behind the delay, which I have outlined, but the longer the Chilcot inquiry continues without publication, the greater will be the public’s suspicion that the process is not transparent. In addition, the central part of the report, which is about learning lessons, will become mainly historical, although we know that such lessons could have been relevant to more recent events.

Then there is the cost in terms of the relatives’ anguish. The Chilcot inquiry will perhaps not satisfy many of them, but there is a wound there that many of them feel. They want, as far as possible, to get at the truth, and Sir John Chilcot is only too well aware of that.

On the procedures connected with the eventual publication of the Chilcot inquiry, there will presumably be a press conference, and the full report and evidence will go online—we are talking about a report of, possibly, 500 or 600 pages, with several thousand pages of evidence. From Parliament’s point of view, the danger will be that a lot of this will be in the public domain. There will be headlines naming and shaming individuals or organisations before Members of this House and the other place have the benefit of being able to debate the issue. Does the Minister think that the Prime Minister of the day will make a formal statement to the House, which will be duplicated in the other place? Will there be an opportunity for a full parliamentary debate? Colleagues will expect that, and there may even be pressure to have a vote. Will the Government accept the recommendations of the Chilcot inquiry, or will they pick and mix? Does the Minister think that the process will be rather like what happens with a Select Committee, when the publication of a report is followed by a Government response that accepts, or does not accept, some or all of the report?