Iraq Inquiry

Lord Jay of Ewelme Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jay of Ewelme (CB)]

My Lords, it is always a challenge to follow the trenchant words of the noble Lord, Lord Jopling.

I strongly supported the setting up of the inquiry into Iraq, as I thought it important to learn the lessons for British involvement in future conflicts. I said in the past in your Lordships’ House that I regretted that the report had not been published much earlier. Having now read it—or much of it—and seen the responses to it, I think it was right for the inquiry to take the time needed for a full and proper investigation.

I want to focus on three issues. First, the inquiry is critical of the Government and, among others, of the Foreign Office, for the degree of preparation for the aftermath of conflict. As Permanent Secretary to the Foreign Office at the time, I accept that criticism. As I said when I gave evidence to the inquiry, we could and should have carried out a more thorough assessment ourselves of the possible consequences of the invasion than we did. We should not have relied as heavily as we did on our ability to persuade the Americans, as leaders of the coalition, to do the preparation themselves.

But we must be realistic about this. The Chilcot report itself says that,

“better planning and preparation for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq would not necessarily have prevented the events that unfolded in Iraq between 2003 and 2009”.

As the Prime Minister said in the Commons last week:

“We should not be naive to think that just because we have the best prepared plans, in the real world things cannot go wrong”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/7/16; col. 888.]

In the real world, things do go wrong—as they did in Iraq and as they did in Libya.

That leads on to my second point. Many have said in this debate that it would be wrong to conclude from the conflict in Iraq that Britain should never again get involved in conflicts abroad. Of course this is right. We can all think of successful British involvement in conflicts—in Sierra Leone and in Kosovo. There are conflicts in which we should have intervened but did not, such as Rwanda or Bosnia. But there are also conflicts in which, with hindsight, British intervention looks either wrong, such as Iraq, or at least questionable, such as Libya and, perhaps, Afghanistan.

The difficult question is: when is intervention justified? In my view, there needs to be, first, agreement that all diplomatic avenues are effectively closed—although, as the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, said, that may be a matter of judgment. Secondly, there needs to be a convincing argument that intervention will leave things better than if there is no intervention: that intervention will succeed—which, as I said, was not the case in Iraq nor, as I argued at the time, when the Government sought authority for a bombing campaign in Syria in 2013. Thirdly, there needs to be unambiguous UN Security Council authority: or, if that is impossible—I accept what the noble Lord, Lord Soley, said about the difficulties of getting it—there needs to be a powerful humanitarian justification, as in Kosovo. Finally, Britain needs to be acting as part of a strong international coalition, such as a NATO intervention—again, as in Kosovo.

Decisions to intervene are never easy, but I believe that criteria such as these can provide a necessary and coherent justification for intervention and avoid the easy but naive conclusion that intervention that succeeds is always right and intervention that fails is always wrong.

My last point is in some ways the most important, at least for me. Much has rightly been said about the bravery of our soldiers in Iraq. Less has been said about the courage and professionalism of the many members of the civil and diplomatic services, men and women from many departments, who volunteered for service in Iraq out of a commitment to help rebuild the country. In early 2004, I visited them in Basra and Baghdad, where many British civil servants lived in containers on the ground floor of a concrete multi-storey car park. I witnessed the good humour, professionalism and bravery with which they worked every day in the most difficult and often dangerous circumstances. They, too, deserve our gratitude.