Chilcot Inquiry

Lord Morris of Aberavon Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Morris of Aberavon]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what are the reasons for the delay in the completion of the Chilcot Inquiry.

[Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to debate the reasons for the delay in the completion of the Chilcot report. I will confine myself to some specific questions. Despite repeated requests over the years, I have never commented on the legality of the Iraq war. My duties as Attorney-General during the Kosovo war were difficult enough and many law officers have decisions to make concerning international law which are not easy. My only comments were in my recently published memoirs in which I said:

“The equivocation of the French before the Iraq war is not an argument for the failure to try for a further sustained effort”,

in the Security Council. I added:

“Or was the die already cast? The Chilcot inquiry may tell us”.

My interest in public inquiries goes back a long time. Cabinet Office records show that my name was suggested for the Franks inquiry into the Falklands War. In the event, more experienced colleagues were chosen. The Franks inquiry took six and a half months in all. The Chilcot inquiry was set up in June 2009. Its final public hearings were in February 2011 and we were told that it would deliver its report as soon as possible. In 2009, Mr Gordon Brown told Parliament:

“No British document … will be beyond the scope of the inquiry”,

and 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”.

As a former Attorney-General, I fully understand those considerations. It is how they are interpreted that matters and whether the correct judgment is made in balancing. Mr Brown added:

“I have accepted the Cabinet Secretary’s advice that the Franks inquiry is the best precedent”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/6/09; col. 23.]

In the difficulties about publishing Chilcot, has there been any departure from that precedent?

At that time, Mr Cameron made a number of challenges. He said that the Franks committee reported in just six months and suggested that, because of the longer period for Chilcot, people would conclude that the inquiry had been fixed to tide the Government over until after the election. A year seemed too long for Mr Cameron in 2009. Unless progress is made, it will be more than four and a half years in the case of Chilcot.

On 7 November, the Daily Telegraph reported:

“The Cabinet Office is resisting requests to make public ‘more than 130 records of conversations’ between either Mr Brown or Tony Blair … and Mr Bush … There is also a wrangle about making public ‘25 Notes from Mr Blair to President Bush’ and some ‘200 Cabinet-level discussions’”.

First, who is responsible for the delay? Secondly, what precisely are the reasons for it?

Public inquiries are set up to deal with public disquiet, to establish facts and to learn lessons. Not to publish is to undermine the whole object. Delay is unjust and justice to the public is denied. In January, in a Written Answer, Francis Maude said that,

“the completion of its report is a matter for the Inquiry Committee”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/1/14; col. 1W.]

Later in the month, he said:

“The Iraq Inquiry has been provided with all of the documents it has requested”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/1/14; col. 32W.]

Your Lordships may consider, from the very tight drafting of both answers, that they are less than frank.

In December, the noble Lord, Lord Hill, said that the Prime Minister had been updated by Sir John Chilcot, who had,

“reported that continuing discussions over certain classified documents had caused a delay to the Maxwellisation process, and hence publication of the report”.—[Official Report, 12/12/13; col. WA 139.]

That was much more transparent. Maxwellisation is the name for the way the common law has developed of providing a person who is criticised in a report with an opportunity to comment. It is nothing more than fairness. If you cannot resolve what should be in the contents of a report, both the inquiry and the criticised are in an intolerable situation. Following freedom of information requests, the Information Commissioner ruled in favour of disclosing the minutes of two Cabinet meetings in 2003 prior to and concerning military action in Iraq. The Cabinet Office—would you believe it?—had curiously argued that the public interest in favour of disclosure diminished with the passage of time. That is risible. It is the original long-grass argument.

The commissioner considered that there was a presumption running through the Freedom of Information Act that openness in itself is to be regarded as something which is in the public interest. The commissioner concluded that, in line with recent legal authority, material which,

“can provide a better understanding of how the decision to go to war was made is subject to an exceptionally strong public interest in disclosure”.

The Library has failed to find any record of an appeal and I am particularly grateful for its help.

On 31 July 2012, the commissioner said that he was disappointed that a ministerial veto, as allowed by the Freedom of Information Act, had been used to override his recent decision on the two Cabinet meetings to which I have referred. Why was the route of a ministerial veto followed rather than an appeal to the court as in the recent case of Plowden—or were the Government, in whatever manifestation, afraid of another adverse finding? Perhaps I may remind the House of the background statement of the policy of the Freedom of Information Act. It states:

“The Government considers that the veto should only be used in exceptional circumstances and only following a collective decision of the Cabinet”.

Has that policy been changed by this Government? Was the Cabinet consulted? If not, who took the decision? Was it the Prime Minister or the Cabinet Secretary?

I surmise that each and every word of Prime Minister Brown’s statement announcing the Chilcot inquiry had the blessing of the then Cabinet Secretary—if indeed he did not draft it. The crucial question is: how much wider is the veto now being used than the actual words used by Mr Brown, to which I have already referred, that restrictions in publication would be limited to that which was essential to national security?

A blanket refusal to disclose Cabinet discussions, especially having regard to the commissioner’s carefully considered and balanced ruling of the need to publish, seems miles wider than Mr Brown’s promise to Parliament. Will the noble Lord give a categorical answer to my question: Has Mr Brown’s promise to Parliament been breached, either in form or in spirit? Parliament was deceived at the time of Suez. It would be most unsatisfactory if any similar allegation over Iraq were not cleared up in this independent inquiry, which Mr Brown promised,

“will receive the full co-operation of the Government”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/6/09; col. 23.]