UK Military Action in Iraq: Declassified Documents

Debate between Karl Turner and Neale Hanvey

Wednesday 13th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under you in the Chair, Mr Dowd. It is also a great pleasure to welcome to his place the new Solicitor General, the hon. Member for Witney (Robert Courts). We are both relatively new to our roles, although I have had the benefit of this being, I think, my second tour in this particular circuit. I am sure that the tone of our debate will remain as thoughtful and constructive as that which was maintained by the previous occupants of our roles—just as it has been today—and I look forward to those debates in the weeks and months ahead.

I commend the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Neale Hanvey) on his determination in securing this debate. I know that he has previously made attempts at securing urgent questions on this important issue, and no one can doubt the sincerity of the concerns that have led the hon. Gentleman to pursuing this matter and securing this debate. Whether or not we reach the same conclusions, I applaud and commend him for his persistence in raising this issue.

The hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath argues, powerfully, that there is a through line from the discussions that took place within Tony Blair’s Government in 1998 over the decision to carry out airstrikes against military assets in Iraq, without authorisation from the United Nations, and the decision, five years later, to take military action against Saddam Hussein. The contention is that that decision in 1998 paved the way for the decision in 2003 and that, despite the 12 volumes and more than 2.5 million words of the Chilcot report, we cannot fully understand the process that led to the 2003 decision until the 1998 decision is subject to the same level of scrutiny, including the release of all outstanding papers on the issue.

Let me say that I understand the point that the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath is making. As I have said already, I do not doubt the sincerity of the concerns that lie behind his campaign on this matter. It is worth saying, however, that there is another, more immediate throughline from the decision taken in respect of Iraq in 1998, which was the decision taken by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton just a year later in respect of the intervention in Kosovo.

There again, a UN resolution in favour of action could not be achieved because of the permanent Russian veto; there again, as we will surely discover when the relevant papers are released, there were debates both inside and outside Government about the legality of acting without the cover of a UN resolution; and there again, the judgment ultimately made by Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and other NATO allies was that the air strikes they authorised against military assets were justified because of the civilian lives at threat if those assets were left intact.

People may disagree with the air strikes in Iraq in 1998. They may even disagree with the air strikes in Kosovo in 1999. But it is important to recognise that what was going on in that era was not some specific obsession with the regime change of Saddam Hussein, which would lead to the tragedy of the Iraq war in 2003, but a constant debate about whether the world could afford to wait for action from the United Nations following the tragedies of Rwanda in 1994 and Srebrenica in Bosnia in 1995.

I hear what the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath is saying, but while he may maintain that the willingness to set aside legal concerns over the 1998 action was the precursor to what happened in Iraq in 2003, we must also remember that if that same willingness to act had not been present in 1999, we would still be talking today about how the world stood by and allowed the genocidal destruction of the Kosovan people.

[Neale Hanvey]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Karl Turner]

I will not, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind, because I want the Minister to have the full opportunity to respond to him.

The final point I want to make relates specifically to the issue of which documents have been published in relation to the 1998 action and which are still being withheld from publication. I have no knowledge of how those decisions were arrived at, but I would urge a bit of caution before we leap to any conclusions or encourage any theories that already exist out there about what the still-unpublished papers may or may not contain. In my experience, when officials—in whichever Department it is—sit down and sort through these documents, and decide what to publish and what to withhold, they are always rather more concerned with what precedents will be set for the future and whether there are any security implications for individuals still alive in the present, and rather less concerned with what revelations will emerge about the past.

Personally, I am in favour of maximum transparency wherever possible. I am also in favour of Government Departments being clear about the broad reasons for their decisions when they feel obliged to hold material back from publication. If there are any more concrete reasons that can be provided today as to why the particular papers at issue have not so far been published, then I would welcome that too. That is not because I think there is any great mystery being covered up, but precisely because I think the opposite is true and the Government could dispel a lot of unnecessary and ill-founded speculation if they were clearer about the broad reasons why some material is withheld. If that were to be one positive outcome from this debate, I would welcome it. Another would be to recognise that what motivated much of the action during that period in history was not the desire for regime change in Baghdad, but a compulsion that many leaders rightly felt not to repeat the grave mistakes of Bosnia and Rwanda.

Finally, I offer my sincere commiserations to the loved ones of those military personnel and civilians who lost their lives in these terrible and tragic conflicts.