Bearskin Hats: Queen's Guards

John Nicolson Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[John Nicolson (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) for introducing this important debate. It is clear that none of us likes the idea of a bear being killed to make a hat. Some of us think it is unforgivably cruel and inexcusable. Others think that while it may be unpleasant, it is justified by tradition. It was previously impossible to reconcile those two positions, but no longer.

We are told by Ministers that the bear hunt is not the purpose of the activity. It is not like foxhunting, where red coats, an exhausted fox and blood are—apparently—part of the fun. The hunting of bears serves only one purpose: to procure fur for a hat that, it is argued, looks good and honours a tradition going back centuries. Therefore, if a product involving no death can be found that is in every way as handsome and durable as that obtained from a living creature killed for the purpose, surely we can all agree that that is the ideal outcome. Why do we seem to be making so little progress moving from bearskins to cruelty-free synthetic alternatives? In April this year, I hosted a reception in Westminster, in conjunction with the charity PETA, to raise awareness about the issue. I can confirm to the Minister that the hat he has asked several questions about was there. I got to hold it. I got to wear it. Others, I am sure, looked much better in it. However, it exists—so we can clear that up, immediately.

Importantly, on the day of the reception, the Secretary of State for Defence wrote to all MPs attempting to justify the continued wearing by soldiers of hats made out of real fur. His defence of the practice had two principal grounds. First, that synthetic alternatives still failed the Ministry of Defence’s quality control, which living bears sadly pass. Secondly, bears are not wantonly killed for the purpose of making caps; the bears would be killed anyway as part of a regulated licensed cull by the Canadian authorities to manage the wild bear population.

Those two claims should not be hard for the MOD to prove. Nonetheless, it took a freedom of information request to extract some answers. PETA, the animal rights charity, asked whether the hunts killed bears to order for the MOD. In other words, if a certain number of hats are required, would a certain number of bears be killed to make them? We can see why that matters; if it is about managing the bear population, the number killed would not be based on the number of hats needed. The MOD’s answer was,

“No information in scope of this element of your request is held by the department.”

That sounds like a computer writing.

There is no basis for the Secretary of State to assert that the bears would be killed anyway. He does not know.

[Jeremy Quin]

I want to try and help the hon. Gentleman on that point. The last research I have seen was from 2007, which was by H. Hristienko, and J. E. McDonald, who estimated the Canadian black bear population to be around 434,400. I understand that a report from 2017, not by the Ministry of Defence but by the Canadian Government, said that there was 5% to 6% human-induced mortality among black bears, including car and train crashes involving bears. The hon. Gentleman can do the maths; in the last financial year we bought 31 bearskins. I totally appreciate that there is a point of principle here, and I am sure that is the point that the hon. Gentleman is driving at. However, I do not think the numbers would suggest there is an appreciable impact on bear numbers—killed through licensed culls—because of orders from the Ministry of Defence. I fully appreciate that it is a matter of principle—which I respect.

[John Nicolson]

It is a matter of principle. It is not about the number of bears killed, but the principle. It would not be a difficult question for the MOD to answer, but the MOD chose not to answer. It said that it could not answer because it did not have the information. Perhaps the Minister could update the MOD on that.

It is clear that there is no basis for the Secretary of State to assert that the bears would be killed anyway. He does not know. It may well be that the bears are only killed because he orders a certain number of hats—whatever that number is. In fact, that seems highly likely. In truth there is not, and never has been, any evidence of a widespread licensed cull authorised by the Canadian authorities. It just sounds better, when MPs and campaigners ask awkward questions—as we are doing today.

To address the Minister’s point, the evidence is that most bears in Canada are killed by trophy hunters who know there is a market for the skins. Canadian Government culls are infrequent and only authorised to kill the small number of bears straying too close to human habitation. The MOD has no idea about the provenance of the dead bears it buys. The evidence, again, is that they are often nursing mothers. When they are killed to make a hat, their cubs starve to death.

That deals with one MOD claim—it does not stand up. Let us turn to the other claim made by the Defence Secretary in his letter to MPs. Hon. Members will remember that that was about the look, quality and durability of faux fur alternatives to a living bear’s skin. PETA has commissioned an alternative faux fur product called ECOPEL. It has been tested to rigorous standards, and it lasts longer than real animal fur, which has a short post-mortem lifespan. That is why we have to keep killing bears. One generation of soldiers cannot pass on caps made from real bearskin to the next generation. Real bearskins fall apart. By contrast, faux fur does not wilt or decay—it lasts longer. It looks indistinguishable from real fur: I can attest to that. My partner has been abused in public by animal rights activists—hooligans, no doubt—for wearing what they thought was real animal fur. It was not; it was faux fur.

Faux fur is more water resistant. It would also, as we have heard, be free to the public purse. ECOPEL say it will provide custom-made hats to the MOD for a decade without cost. Those hats now exist—I have seen them. I would advocate that the Minister has a look. I would have thought that this all sounds good, but apparently not for the Defence Secretary. He said the faux fur did not meet necessary standards. What are those standards? How do we test them? I do not think it is unreasonable to ask that the Minister shares the analysis: he did not do so. If the MOD shared the specific detailed requirements that ECOPEL needs to address, it and PETA would undertake to meet them. There is some agreement on that point—we could move forward.

This is the first of two animal welfare debates today. The second is a debate looking at the violent whaling and dolphin killing in the Faroe Islands. Both debates come at a point of friction between tradition and animal welfare, but for traditions to be transferred from generation to generation, they must evolve and adapt. We cannot defend cruelty on the basis of tradition, otherwise we would still be bear-baiting. Come to think of it, we may still be. My constituents in Ochil and South Perthshire and the country at large care passionately about animal rights, as I know from the correspondence I have received. People find it jarring to see soldiers wearing hats made out of dead bears when a viable, affordable and ethical alternative is available. They have pressed me to get answers today, and they are watching. Of course, it may well be that we are all shadow boxing. The Secretary of State and the MOD may well have no intention of ever replacing real fur with a cruelty-free alternative. They may not care how the bears are killed or whether faux fur is as good as, or better, than real fur as a product. However, that is not what they say, so will they please say what they mean and mean what they say?

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[Jeremy Quin]

Absolutely. As I said at the outset, we are not wedded to the material used but we are wedded to this iconic symbol of the British Army. If there is an alternative that works, it will be taken seriously. Affordability, sustainability and other criteria are important, but whether the other material works is key.

[John Nicolson]

It sounds as if we are making progress, which is a rarity in such debates and quite exciting. Will the Minister give us a pathway and agree to a meeting, so that the manufacturers can turn up, provide the hats and agree to a timetable for them to be analysed? If they pass, that will be great and we will all be happy; if they fail, will the Minister provide the manufacturers with a breakdown of how they have failed so that they can address the problems and we can make progress?

[Jeremy Quin]

I can perhaps help the hon. Gentleman by explaining the pathway that we have already trodden, right up until today, and we can see where we can go from there.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Nicolson Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. The defence estate optimisation programme was and is planned to unlock £1.4 billion, to be reinvested in an overall plan of a £5.1 billion investment in the defence estate across the board, helping soldiers, sailors and air force personnel with better quality accommodation and a better training estate. He is right to point out the challenges relating to historical problems with both private finance initiatives and the Annington home deal at the end of 1997. Some of the PFI schemes introduced under his Government lay a heavy burden on the defence budget. We are both examining and negotiating on a number of those areas to try to reduce the overall burden on the taxpayer.

[John Nicolson (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)]

Which overseas armed forces have received military training in the UK since 1 January 2020.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (James Heappey)]

In this period, about 2,000 personnel, from more than 100 countries, have received some form of defence training in the United Kingdom.

[John Nicolson [V]]

The Biden Administration have halted the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia, with many Democrats citing the killing of civilians, including children, by Saudi forces in Yemen. A freedom of information request by The Guardian revealed that the Government provided training on UK soil for Saudi military. Will the Minister ensure that the Government expose the widely documented crimes committed by Saudi personnel with US counterparts as they undertake this review? Will he take a leaf out of the American book and reassess whether we should be enabling the Saudi regime, given the awful crimes it has committed?

[James Heappey]

The hon. Gentleman will know from the many parliamentary questions that have been asked on this that much of the information relating to licensing is subject to ongoing legal proceedings, but our defence relationship with Saudi Arabia on training includes courses, advice and guidance. This supports the efforts of Saudi Arabia to protect national and regional security, as well as its military’s compliance with international humanitarian law. The UK is not a member of the Saudi-led coalition and we played no role in setting Saudi-led coalition policy.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Nicolson Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2017 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[John Nicolson (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

1. What discussions he has had with his new US counterpart on US-UK defence relations.

[The Secretary of State for Defence (Sir Michael Fallon)]

I had an introductory call with Secretary Jim Mattis last Monday. We discussed our joint leadership in NATO, including modernising the alliance and encouraging all members to meet the 2% spending commitment. On Friday, President Trump confirmed he is 100% committed to NATO. We also plan to work together to accelerate the defeat of Daesh in Iraq and Syria. I look forward to meeting Secretary Mattis at the NATO Defence Ministers meeting in a fortnight’s time.

[John Nicolson]

The new American President supports the torture of prisoners of war. We do not and neither does the new Secretary of Defence. May I ask the Secretary of State not to reiterate the Government’s position, but instead tell us why he thinks a proponent of torture is an appropriate recipient of a state visit?

[Sir Michael Fallon]

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made the Government’s position absolutely clear. We do not condone the use of torture in operations and nor does the new American Secretary of Defence, Jim Mattis. As I understand it, the President of the United States has made it clear that he will be guided by those in his Cabinet. On this issue, they are taking a different view.

Report of the Iraq Inquiry

John Nicolson Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

I have had a very long involvement with Iraq. For Members who were not here in the 1980s, the 1990s and even the beginning of the 2000s, let me say that I spoke many times in this Chamber about the regime in Iraq. I chaired an organisation called CARDRI—the Committee against Repression and for Democratic Rights in Iraq—which had many members in this country and overseas. We published several books by academics and people who lived in Iraq about the situation in the country. Somebody who is now the representative of Iraq in South Korea would come here almost every other week with a list of people who had been executed at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Sometimes the accounts of their executions and their torture were so dreadful that I would say to him, “Are you sure this is right?” He would then come back, perhaps a week later, and say, “Yes, it was right, and here’s another long list.” We therefore had no doubt what the situation was in Iraq, and CARDRI existed for a number of years.

When I came back from the European Parliament in 1984, I was asked to chair an organisation called Indict, which was set up with American and Kuwaiti backing. The Kuwaitis, of course, had a particular interest in finding those Kuwaitis who had been captured during Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. For many years we searched for those missing people—or their graves.

The organisation had a team of researchers and its aim was to collect evidence against Iraqi war criminals. In particular, we had a list of the 12 most wanted, and we collected detailed evidence about a great number of them because the idea was to bring them to court. By the mid-1990s, a body of law existed that allowed human rights abusers to be brought to court. The development of international law was slow; even though laws existed, their application depended on institutions and Governments that had their own political agendas. A new ruling by the International Court of Justice, for example, blocked indictments of ruling heads of state. Therefore, whatever evidence we had against Saddam Hussein, we could not use it in a court of law, unlike in the case of Slobodan Miloševic, who was brought before an international court.

That still left key members of the regime open to indictment, however. We had a great deal of evidence, for example, against Tariq Aziz, who was then the Foreign Minister in Iraq. We also had plenty of evidence against Ali Hassan al-Majid—Chemical Ali. I had meetings with the UN special rapporteur on torture, Max van der Stoel, with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, and with Secretary-General Kofi Annan. I also addressed several international conferences and tried to spell out what we were doing.

We needed evidence that would stand up in court, so we dismissed a lot of the evidence that we felt would not. We had guidance from a top human rights barrister, Clare Montgomery, QC. Our researchers worked hard interviewing thousands of people over five or six years to collect testimonies. Once the evidence had been gathered and analysed by our legal team, the role of myself and Indict’s other board members was to persuade lawmakers in the relevant country that there was enough evidence to indict the people concerned. We came close to a prosecution in Belgium, but it changed its laws at the last minute because someone had tried to indict Israeli leader Ariel Sharon.

[John Nicolson (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

The right hon. Lady is trying to persuade us that Saddam Hussein was a vile dictator. We all accept that, but that was not the case for war. The case for war was based on weapons of mass destruction. She argued strongly in favour of the war. Has she changed her mind on the basis of the evidence?

[Ann Clwyd]

When I come to the relevant section in my speech, the hon. Gentleman will get his answer.

We went to Switzerland, Norway and Belgium. We had a good case in Norway, and I travelled there several times to meet senior law officers. However, just as in Britain, there were lots of warm words, but there was no action. We were therefore trying hard to avoid a war; we thought there was an alternative. We tried to make the case—I made it in this Chamber over many years, and the hon. Gentleman would have heard it had he been here—that there were alternatives. Unfortunately, all the authorities prevaricated, and the issue dragged on without getting anywhere.

Meanwhile, our main funders, the Americans, were having a change of heart. The Clinton Administration had originally been enthusiastic, wanting us to campaign in the US as well as in Europe, but they suddenly changed their mind. They had moved to a policy of containment, not indictment, so our activities no longer really fitted in with their plans. However, the organisation had been set up in this country, so we continued collecting the evidence.

We turned our attention, in particular, to Tariq Aziz, because of his involvement in the taking of British hostages. People forget that British hostages were taken in Kuwait, and we never had proper answers about why they were there and why their plane landed there. Saddam Hussein had already taken Kuwait, and those people were taken as human shields.

I presented our evidence to the Attorney General, Lord Williams of Mostyn. I had several meetings with him and continually pressured members of his team to take action, because they were not moving fast enough. They kicked their heels for a number of years, and our top barrister could not understand why, given the evidence that we had presented. We had as much evidence as we could possibly need. Apart from getting a signed confession from Saddam Hussein in his own blood, there was nothing further, legally, we could have done.

I would occasionally spot Lord Williams at Westminster, and I would take off after him, chasing him down the corridors. He would frequently joke that he was having to duck into the gents to try to avoid me. One day he said, “I’ve got good news for Indict.” He said he was going to refer the case against Tariq Aziz to Scotland Yard. I looked at him and said, “You’re kicking it into the long grass,” but he denied that that was the case. The Indict team, which was obviously made up mainly of Iraqis, duly visited a Chief Superintendent Bunn in New Scotland Yard. We talked about the evidence we had and offered to help him by providing more, but we never heard a single word back. That is understandable in some ways; it was not Scotland Yard’s remit, and it had neither the resources nor the expertise, and certainly not the interest.

We came in for some ridicule from the British press —the typical tabloid fare, with cartoons of British bobbies apprehending Saddam Hussein—but a good opportunity was missed. I make that point because there were alternatives, but those alternatives, for whatever reasons, were not pursued in the way that I and many other Members would have wished.

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), who was of great assistance when we were looking at many of these matters. He was a very wise counsel, and he assisted the Iraqis in many ways.

I became aware of human rights atrocities in Iraq before I was a politician, in the 1970s. I met Iraqi students in Cardiff, and I am sure some of my Scottish friends will have met Iraqi students in Scotland. Some of those students had been imprisoned. I met a couple from Basra. One of them—he was a student activist—had been in prison and gone through a mock execution. I came to learn later on that that was only the tip of the iceberg.

In 1991, when I was the shadow Secretary of State for International Development, I stood up in Parliament and described what I had seen in the mountains of Iraq and Iran when the Kurds fled from Saddam’s helicopter gunships. Those scenes were appalling and typical of the attacks made by the Iraqi regime on Iraqis. Sometime later, I met an Iraqi who made the point that Saddam had killed hundreds of thousands of his own people. He said, “The biggest weapon of mass destruction was Saddam. Why did it take so long for him to be removed?” Many Kurds were killed during the genocidal Anfal campaign, including as a result of the barbarous use of chemical weapons in Halabja.

In 1988, I took some women Members of all parties to a London hospital to see a number of the horribly burned victims. Many people were killed brutally, in cold blood, in a maze of prison and torture chambers all over the country. Repression, abuse, ethnic cleansing and extra-judicial killings continued right up until 2003.

Saddam, without doubt, was a serious threat to domestic, regional and global stability. I had hoped that the international community could remove or neutralise him without force, but sanctions failed, international indictment never took place and UN Security Council resolutions were ignored time after time. All had been tried; all had failed. So from 1997 to 2003, I worked to get Saddam and leading members of his regime prosecuted under international law for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, on the basis of rock-solid witness testimony. The evidence was finally used in the trials of Saddam, Tariq Aziz and others when they eventually stood trial in Baghdad. I was very pleased to be there to witness some of those trials. I knew that our evidence was being used; I saw it in the rooms behind the chamber where they were being tried.

In February 2003, the Kurds were terrified that chemical weapons would be used against them again. I saw the rockets in mountains on the Iraqi-Kurdish border. From 2003 onwards, more secrets of this evil and despotic regime were revealed. I stood on a huge mound in the open air, on several acres in al-Hillah, near Babylon, where about 10,000 bodies were being disinterred from a mass grave, mostly Shi’a Muslims.

On one of more than 20 visits to Iraq as special envoy on human rights, I opened the first genocide museum in Kurdistan. It was snowing, the sky was black and people crammed into the building, where their relatives had been tortured, many to death. There were photos of skulls and shreds of clothing. Former detainees had written messages on the cell walls. Sometimes, the writing was in blood; sometimes, there were just marks to cross off the days of the week. One very old woman came up to me with a bit of plastic in her hand. I unwrapped it and saw three photos. They were of her husband and two sons, who had been killed in that place.

Over the past few days, since the report of the Chilcot inquiry, to which I gave evidence for a whole afternoon, very few voices of Iraqis have been heard. I have here the words of Dr Latif Rashid, who is currently the senior adviser to the Iraqi President. In 2003, he was appointed as Water Minister in Baghdad, and he was very successful. He managed, over a few years, to re-flood the marshes where the Marsh Arabs had been so cruelly displaced. This is what he says:

“It must be remembered that at the time not only did Prime Minister Blair and President Bush wish to remove Saddam Hussain from power in Iraq, but so did most of the entire spectrum of the Iraqi opposition (including Kurds, Arabs, Shia, and all other minorities that make up the Iraq) and most of the international community.

The Iraqi opposition lobbied Governments throughout the world, and we, as representatives of the Iraqi opposition, believe that Prime Minister Blair and President Bush were acting in response to the Iraqi people and to protect them, on the basis of evidence available at that time.

There was concrete evidence that Saddam Hussain was complicit and had instructed organised campaigns of genocide, torture, war, ethnic cleansing and use of chemical/biological weapons against the Iraqi population as well as neighbouring countries. We are still finding the mass graves of the nearly one million Iraqis murdered as a result of his actions.

Although Iraq currently has its problems, I believe they are the result of Iraqis themselves. We will always remain grateful for the support shown by Tony Blair, and the British Government and British Parliament at that time.”

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[Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

I listened with great interest to the speech of the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess). I was here in 2003 and I am one of the people who got it right. I sat on the Back Bench—I was not called to speak, but I heard the entire debate—and listened to the evidence presented to me by the then Prime Minister. I made my decision based on the evidence, and I believed then, as I believe now, that I made the right decision. I know that the report has taken an awful long time to arrive, but it is very good and valuable.

I want to talk about the context and where we found ourselves in 2003. It is very important that we remember what happened on 9/11 in 2001, because much of what we discussed in the period leading up to the war was seen through the prism of the attack on the World Trade Centre. As a new MP, I visited the United Nations in New York in November 2001. It was an extraordinary time and the visit was a moving experience, but we could also feel the entirely understandable strength of feeling in the United States about what had happened. That resulted in military intervention in Afghanistan, which was broadly supported, not just in this House, but right across the world.

One of the most extraordinary things that I saw at the UN in November 2001 was a committee chaired by UK Special Representative Sir Jeremy Greenstock taking evidence on and auditing terrorist activity in countries across the middle east. For a very short period before the Iraq war, there was a feeling and a sentiment that we could make some progress in dealing with international terrorism. Unfortunately, however, a linkage was very quickly developed between what happened in New York in September 2001 and the issue of Iraq. There were people who developed an agenda trying to draw together what happened at the World Trade Centre and the problem of Iraq. That was in the air, and was referred to in the various discussions that we had. So although there was no direct evidence of any links at all between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, there was usage of a broad description of international terrorism to justify the steps that were being taken.

[John Nicolson]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that it was risible to try to associate the secular Saddam Hussein with fundamentalist Islamists, given that the two had a mutual loathing for one another?

[Ian C. Lucas]

That is absolutely right. It would have been very convenient for those who wanted to take military action in Iraq if they could have made a linkage, but clearly there was none. In all the discussions we had in the lead-up to the war, no linkage was established.

Immediately after the vote in 2003, there was, for me, a terrible sense of inevitability about the military action in Iraq. I am reminded of the fact that the historian A. J. P. Taylor talked about the importance of railway timetables at the beginning of the first world war. When approaching the vote in March 2003, I had that idea in my mind. It seemed to me that we were on a road that was leading to an inevitable conclusion. Very interestingly, paragraph 830 of Sir John Chilcot’s report states:

“A military timetable should not be allowed to dictate a diplomatic timetable”.

I believe that, at the time of the vote, that is exactly what happened.

I recall very well the work of Hans Blix and the UN weapons inspectors. I watched Hans Blix very closely in the build-up to March 2003, when I was deciding how to vote. It seemed to me that he was doing his best to establish the position on weapons of mass destruction. On 18 March 2003, he was asking for more time. On the basis of the information that I heard in the debate, I thought it was right to give him more time. That is why I voted in the way that I did and why I supported the amendment.

Interestingly, a couple of years after the vote, I attended a meeting in the House of Commons at which Hans Blix spoke. I recall that he said that, in March 2003, he believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. I had not known that on the day that I cast my vote, and it is extraordinary that he said it. It seems that he had a similar view to the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair: he had a genuine, honest belief. The difference was that he wanted more time to investigate it further, and the Prime Minister did not allow us more time so to do. In March 2003, the drum beat to war quickened, and that is why military action happened. That is not a good reason for military action.

The then US Government, acting in the long shadow of 9/11, included people with an agenda to intervene in the middle east. They used that context to justify the intervention. In the immediate post-9/11 period, they made some really bad judgment calls. In Iran, moderate forces had been holding sway before 2003. George Bush then made his dreadful “axis of evil” speech, which was part of the process that shattered any chance of a unified response to 9/11. The alienation of Iran also had a massive negative impact on the post-war period in Iraq and undermined progress towards reconstruction. It was a massive mistake for the UK Government and Tony Blair to support the Bush and US agenda at that time.

I am quite certain that Tony Blair acted in good faith. In March 2003, I think he believed, like Hans Blix, that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. I believe that it was through UK insistence that the US agreed to involve the UN as much as it did. However, when the UN weapons inspectors asked for more time in March 2003, the allies should have given it to them. As Sir John Chilcot concludes at paragraph 339 of the report:

“At the time of the parliamentary vote of 18 March, diplomatic options had not been exhausted. The point had not been reached where military action was the last resort”.

On the information available to me, a Back Bencher, at the time, I voted against the Labour Whip for the first time, along with many of my Labour colleagues. The Liberal Democrats—the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) is sitting next to me—the nationalist parties and some Conservatives did the same. The official Conservative Opposition, however, supported military action in a largely unquestioning way.

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[John Nicolson (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) and hear the historical background from his perspective.

Two weeks ago, many of us spoke in a moving debate on the centenary of the battle of the Somme. Throughout these islands and beyond, the events of 100 years ago were commemorated, and one recurring theme in this House and elsewhere was the importance of treasuring the young lives of our soldiers. When we read about the senseless slaughter of the Somme, we like to think that we are more sophisticated and less gullible than previous generations—that we are more concerned with the lives of others, whether our own soldiers or civilians abroad. Yet in this House, in very recent history, we voted for a war that was an unpardonable folly.

On 18 March 2003, 411 MPs followed Tony Blair into the Aye Lobby, unleashing the forces of hell in Iraq; 139 of those MPs still serve in Parliament today. It must be difficult to live with that vote. But rather than accept personal responsibility, too many say, “If I had known then what I know now, I would never have voted for the war.” That is what I want to focus on, because I do not buy it. It is too easy a cop-out. Tony Blair has become so discredited that he is a convenient depository for shared guilt. “It was his golden oratory that bamboozled me,” say some MPs. They talk of seductive mendacity, or ask who could have questioned our security services in all their wisdom. They say that they believed Colin Powell and his illustrated talk at the UN with its cartoon mock-up of mobile laboratories on trucks and that they fell for his dire warnings that the secular Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with the fundamentalist Osama bin Laden, however culturally illiterate that claim was. It was just all so convincing, they say—if they had only known then what they know now. It is all nonsense.

We did know then much of what we know now, and if we did not, it was because we chose not to absorb the expert opinion available at the time. We knew then that Saddam Hussein had once possessed chemical weapons. He had used them in the 1980s against the Kurds, the Iranians and the Shi’a. However, we also knew that the implementation from 1991 until the war in 2003 of two no-fly zones, one in the north of Iraq and one in the south, prevented any further chemical attacks, as those chemical weapons could no longer be dropped. Even at their height, Saddam Hussein’s powers had limits. In 1991, 39 scud missiles were fired at Israel—I was there at the time, as a journalist. They were crudely targeted at Tel Aviv, and killed no one.

Even if Saddam Hussein could not fire his chemical weapons, might they somehow have become a threat on the battlefield? In the aftermath of the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the Gulf war, the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq was set up to inspect Iraqi weapons facilities. It maintained a presence in the country for several years. There was broad agreement among experts that Iraq was not an imminent threat. Those weapons that had been used against Iranian and Kurdish opponents had been destroyed or were degraded beyond use.

Let us remind ourselves of what the experts said at the time. Scott Ritter, a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, stated in 2002 that

“since 1998 Iraq has been fundamentally disarmed: 90-95% of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capability has been verifiably eliminated… If Iraq was producing weapons…we would have…proof, plain and simple.”

Experts told us repeatedly that chemical weapons do not have a long shelf life. Ritter stated that Iraqi sarin and tabun had a shelf life of approximately five years. Botulinum toxin and liquid anthrax last about three years. As Members debated the war in this House, they knew that at the height of his powers Saddam had never had the capacity to fire chemical weapons long range and that, even if he had had that power, after years of no-fly zone restrictions and the passage of time, his weapons were degraded and beyond use.

[Bob Stewart]

I seem to recall that the hon. Gentleman and I were together in the television studios at the time and that we laughed at the mock-ups of the vehicles that he mentioned. We agreed that if those vehicles existed they could easily be photographed from the skies. We therefore thought that they could not exist: why would they need to make drawings of them when they would be able to get photographs of any actual vehicles?

[John Nicolson]

The hon. Gentleman remembers well. We did indeed sit together in television studios, because we journalists called in experts to ask them for their evidence. It was relatively easy, even as a journalist, to pick apart many of the absurd claims.

Of course, some journalists were screaming for war. The Sun ran the absurd headline “Brits 45mins from doom” about a supposed threat to troops in Cyprus. The Star wrote “Mad Saddam ready to attack: 45 minutes from a chemical war”. It was all nonsense. The journalists who wrote it knew that, but it was terrifying for some Members.

In January 2003, United Nations weapons inspectors reported that they had found no indication whatever that Iraq possessed nuclear weapons or an active programme of chemical weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency at the time found

“no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq.”

The United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission said at the time that it

“did not find evidence of the continuation or resumption of programmes of weapons of mass destruction”.

However, US Vice-President Dick Cheney retorted that he believed that Saddam Hussein

“has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. ElBaradei”—

the director general of the IAEA at the time—

“frankly is wrong.”

Who were parliamentarians to believe—the chemical weapons experts, the missiles experts, the IAEA, or Dick Cheney, George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and the neo-cons? The House had to make up its mind.

In the run up to the Iraq war, I was working as a journalist, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out. Among other things, I was presenting a three-hour daily radio news programme. We had access to experts, as any news journalists do. We called them in and asked them to outline their evidence. Now, I am not a pacifist. I supported NATO action in Bosnia and Kosovo due to the imminent threat to life and the need to save civilians; in fact, I was on the flight back from Iraq—mentioned earlier—with the returning hostages who had fled from Saddam Hussein. However, during interviews with experts and academics in the run-up to the House’s vote, I saw clearly that the case for war was built on exaggeration and deceit. It was blindingly obvious.

Tony Blair frequently told this House and the British people that he was working towards disarming Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. He repeatedly told the House that his aim was not regime change. The House could have been under no illusion about what it was being asked to vote on. Mr Blair said that Saddam was a “very brutal and repressive” leader but that the aim was

“disarmament of weapons of mass destruction, it is not regime change.”

Regime change was not the basis for war. The challenge for the House on the day of the debate was clear. Mr Blair was asking Members to vote on one basis and one basis alone: the imminent danger posed by Saddam’s weaponry.

What if all the experts talking in public were wrong? Was there an elevated group of experts—an inner core with extraordinary knowledge that was unavailable to the ordinary expert? As Members will recall, Tony Blair often said, “If only you could see what crosses my desk, you’d never doubt the danger that we are in and the pressing case for immediate action.”

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

Does my hon. Friend share my concerns about recent mission creep and the use of intelligence-led drone strikes that are notified to the House only after the event? What does that mean for lessons learned and transparency?

[John Nicolson]

Many Members keep saying that we have learned the lessons of war, but I am not convinced, and neither was I when we had the debate on Syria. Tony Blair made a direct appeal that he had seen privileged information that no one else had seen, and he asked the House to trust him. Many Members have said that that appeal for trust was what swayed them.

There was a direct appeal for Members to ignore the available scientific evidence, but there was one embarrassing hurdle in the way: Robin Cook. I had an extensive interview with Robin Cook after his resignation from the Labour Front Bench on 17 March 2003, and I asked him whether he saw the same briefings as the Prime Minister on Iraq. He said, “Yes, I do.” I asked him what it was that had crossed Mr Blair’s desk that he could not tell us about but that contradicted all the expert evidence. Robin Cook told me that there was nothing—nothing had crossed the Prime Minister’s desk that had not crossed his as Foreign Secretary and nothing had crossed his desk or that of the Prime Minister to suggest an imminent threat from chemical weapons. Robin Cook told me that, on that basis, the war could therefore not be justified. Every MP who listened to that interview, who met Robin Cook in the House or who took on board the opinion of experts at the time would have known that the case presented to this House was flimsy to the point of absurdity.

I am, of course, aware of the pressure that MPs were under. Setting aside their promotion prospects in the Government, tabloid newspapers had launched a vicious campaign against opponents of the war. The Sun published a traitors dartboard—I note that it has since deleted that from its website in the aftermath of the Chilcot report. It ran a front-page showing a picture of a snake and Charles Kennedy with the headline, “Spot the difference. One is a spineless reptile that spits venom...the other’s a poisonous snake.” MPs were frightened that they would be targeted as cowards and peaceniks.

As we survey the carnage of Iraq, with countless civilian lives lost, soldiers’ lives lost and family lives destroyed, it is easy to look for a single scapegoat. Although I share the disdain widely felt for Tony Blair, there is something gutless about attributing all blame for the votes of individual MPs to him and him alone. The truth is that expert information was freely available to any Member who chose to take it.

Trident

John Nicolson Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Toby Perkins]

I am going to crack on, because I know many Members want to contribute. I will try and take some more interventions towards the end of my speech.

It would clearly be ludicrous for me to pretend that there are not differences of opinion within the parliamentary Labour party and the wider party on whether this is the right policy. In the end, national party conference and the NPF will decide what the Labour party’s approach to this question will be in the future, but this year’s Labour party conference concluded that there were more pressing contemporary motions to debate and so the NPF report reaffirmed the party’s support for the continuous at-sea deterrent.

[John Nicolson (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman mentions the Labour party UK conference, but I notice that he does not mention the Labour party Scottish conference, which voted against Trident. Does that count for absolutely nothing, as the hon. Gentleman’s boss told her Labour party colleagues? Scotland just doesn’t matter, does it?

[Toby Perkins]

I have to say that I think those kinds of comments are utterly offensive. The truth of the matter is—[Interruption.] Once again, we are discussing an important matter, and the people are watching and people’s jobs are on the line, and SNP Members are laughing their way through this debate. The truth of the matter is that the Scottish Labour party had a vote at its conference, and of course that will be considered as part of all the many contributions made to this debate. The views of many people with a whole variety of opinions will be considered. The vote that took place and the views of individual members will be considered as part of that.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Nicolson]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. May we have some clarification on whether the charming expression “robot” is parliamentary language or not?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Yes, Mr Nicolson, I was just turning over in my mind whether the description “robot” for a Member of this House would be considered derogatory. I have come to the conclusion that in some circumstances it might, and in some it might not. For the moment, I am concluding, for my own peace of mind, that the hon. Gentleman was thinking of a high-functioning, intelligent robot. Therefore, for the moment, I will not call him to order for the use of the word, but I am sure the House will be warned that we should be very careful in our use of language.

Britain and International Security

John Nicolson Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Bob Stewart]

I thank my very hon. Friend for her intervention, and I entirely agree with everything she says. Those matters are now considered very seriously in the SDSR.

Of course I support the military being given what it requires to defend our country properly. I remind the House that, at the height of the cold war, we were normally spending as much as 4.6% of our national income on defence. Although I understand and support the need for targeted overseas aid, I am none the less absolutely shocked that we spend the equivalent of a third of the defence budget on it each year. And I am afraid I do not subscribe to the argument that providing international aid can be a proper substitute for sufficient military power. Defence is too serious a matter to be fiddled.

[John Nicolson (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Bob Stewart]

Forgive me, but I am really up against the time and I want others to have time to speak. Because of you!

Defence is too serious a matter to be fiddled, yet NATO members, particularly in Europe, do so year in and year out. They most certainly do not pay their NATO club dues and we must give them no excuse not to do so. Surely what is happening in Ukraine is a wake-up call. The situation there is a total disaster. Militarily, the Foreign Secretary has already ruled out armed action by our Army, Navy or Air Force, but surely there are some measures we could take to help Ukraine, in addition to the military training we are already providing. Perhaps we could gift-aid non-lethal equipment such as night vision devices and range-finders, which would greatly help Ukraine’s military to see at night. Right now, Ukraine’s armed forces are almost blind after dark. At the same time I cannot see why we should not give Ukraine some of our vast reserve pool of military transport trucks and Land Rovers.

[John Nicolson]

rose—

[Bob Stewart]

I will give way, as the hon. Gentleman is a very old friend of mine.

[John Nicolson]

I thank the hon. and gallant Gentleman for giving way. We have identified cybercrime and terrorism as two of the things that threaten us today. Does he therefore agree that it is an absurdity to spend £100 billion on our nuclear so-called deterrent? It is a cold war defence system that is utterly unsuited to dealing with today’s problems.

[Bob Stewart]

He was my very old friend. [Laughter.] Of course I disagree with him. The point is that, when we are talking about nuclear weapons, deterrence works, whether in a cold war or a hot war.

I know that we provide aircraft to the Baltic patrols, but should we not also position British ground troops permanently in rotation in eastern Latvia, Estonia or Poland? Since 2010, Russian troop numbers around the Baltic have increased from 9,000 to around 100,000 today. Is it too late, colleagues, to stop the redeployment, back to the United Kingdom, of our last armoured brigade in Germany? It may even be cheaper to leave it there anyway—the Germans will be very happy with that. If we reversed that decision, surely it would send a strong signal to the Kremlin that its actions do have consequences. Many of us here will recall the wrong message that we sent to Argentina in 1982 when we withdrew HMS Endurance just before the Falklands war. Keeping an armoured brigade in Germany might be the right message to send today.

Russia would denounce such a move, but so what? Mr Putin and his cohorts have hardly paid any attention to our protests about what he has been doing in eastern Ukraine, the Crimea, or the Baltic. President Putin might protest long and hard, but at least it would prove that NATO still has teeth. Madam Deputy Speaker, I am finished in time.