Iraq Inquiry

Lord Morris of Aberavon Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab)]

My Lords, I have been very critical of what I have called the scandalous delays in the publication of this report. I was not the only one. The Prime Minister was a prisoner of the mantra that this was an independent inquiry and therefore untouchable. I promised in the debate in October 2015 that, if the committee members turned out to be knights in shining armour and produced an authoritative report, I would withdraw my criticism. I am satisfied, subject to more leisurely reading, that all paths have been followed to the point of exhaustion. The committee deserves our thanks for its masterly analysis.

I intend to concentrate on some of the lessons to be learned. First, the families of those killed and grievously injured did not deserve such a delay in finding out what happened. My sympathies are those of a former Defence Minister and a former young soldier of many years ago.

The second lesson flows from the way the inquiry was set up. I was a member of a Select Committee of this House, under the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, that suggested a more permanent machinery in the Cabinet Office to give guidance to Ministers and provide continuity in materials. That was rejected by the coalition Government. It is time to think again.

The third lesson flows from the inquiry’s terms of reference. Respect for good government is undermined if reports do not see the light of day because of their breadth and before issues become dimmer and dimmer in the public memory. I have said previously that Sir John was not given the opportunity to discuss the scope of the inquiry. The Cabinet Office was in such a hurry that he was given only 10 minutes to decide whether to accept the chair. I suspect that Prime Minister Gordon Brown had no more than limited experience of setting up inquiries of this kind, having heard the arguments for choosing tightly drawn terms as opposed to all-encompassing ones. What he had in mind was about a year for the inquiry to report. The Butler inquiry took five months. As a young man, my name was proposed for the Falklands inquiry. I was in busy professional practice at the Bar, and I cleared my desk for the intended six months. I was very relieved when somebody else was preferred.

My fourth point concerns the fact that there was no lawyer on the committee, which shows up a little in the cross-examinations I have seen and read. The Leveson inquiry was a good example of a senior judge taking the chair, although this is not essential. Equally important was the advantage of having as counsel Sir Robert Jay, who could ensure and marshal the evidence, and undoubtedly shortened the proceedings.

I fully understand the concept of the independence of the inquiry, but surely this does not mean a free rein, without any parliamentary consideration when things are going wrong and costs are mounting year by year. There is a mechanism for control under Section 13 of the Inquiries Act 2005. For some reason this path was not chosen and we had an unbridled, non-statutory inquiry. It is the second major inquiry—the Londonderry inquiry being the other—that has grossly exceeded expectations in its length and costs. Have lessons been learned for the current historical sex abuse inquiry under Justice Goddard?

The Attorney-General had the very difficult task of ruling on the legality of the war and gave his honestly held views. I have never commented on the legal position. In my book I advocated that, despite the equivocation of the French, we should have tried for a second resolution. This was not a war of last resort. I do not find the consideration the Cabinet gave to the basis for going to war attractive, and the noble Lord, Lord Butler, has ruthlessly demolished it for lacking appropriate processes. Mr Blair has accepted responsibility—and rightly—for the way the decisions were taken. The Attorney-General was not asked why he had changed his mind that it would have been safer to obtain a second resolution because of the risk of legal challenge. He was surprised at the lack of interest. He is independent of the Government in this role, but the office is sometimes regarded as the fifth wheel of the coach by his political colleagues.

I was Attorney-General during the Kosovo war. In two war Cabinets I invited myself to speak—this was probably presumptuous. I also put all of my important arguments to No. 10 in writing. We were indeed, and as I had advised, challenged and, with eight other NATO countries, appeared as defendants before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where I was leading counsel for the United Kingdom. There is always a danger of a challenge, and we were indeed challenged for one long week. I find the attitude of the Cabinet consistent with the Attorney-General’s evidence—it can be nervous of a legal spanner in the works.

Finally, I turn to post-war planning. We could all go into some detail on this issue, but there are more expert minds regarding the appropriate amount of equipment that should have been available. The Americans mainly bear the responsibility for the lack of planning but we share it, too, and are paying the price now.