Iraq Inquiry
Lord Owen Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Owen (Ind SD)
My Lords, I deeply regret my own decision to support the invasion of Iraq in 2003. When I look at Iraq today, the spillover into Syria and the emergence of Daesh, I believe that it is incumbent on us not just to praise the Chilcot report, but to apply the same forensic examination to what we are to do about it that it gave to providing us with the facts.
I say immediately that the decision of the young leader of the Liberal Democrats, Charles Kennedy, to oppose the war was an outstanding example of political integrity and courage. The judgment of Robin Cook, when he exercised his right to look at the actual intelligence reports and came out against the war, was also a vindication of his intelligence and his integrity. I would furthermore say that the left and the pacifists, which are essential elements in our political society and have often got wars wrong, got this war correct—and all credit to the present leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, for doing so. I have one measure of pride in all this: that my own daughter and son-in-law marched on the protest.
There is one positive element, which came out from the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones. Having chaired the JIC extremely skilfully and with a deep knowledge for many years, few are better equipped than her to draw attention to what must be done. That is the National Security Council, which has been established and which the Minister spoke about. I hope that he might deal with this question a little in his closing speech: how can we entrench that mechanism whereby Prime Ministers and politicians have to be involved in direct dialogue with senior defence chiefs, and in a disciplined framework with papers presented to the National Security Council in advance, assessed accurately and concrete, detailed and specific notes taken? None of this was done during the Iraq war, which was exceptional. It was done in the first Gulf War and even in the Suez crisis, when the Cabinet was told about collusion even though the House of Commons was lied to. It was a terrible mistake not to have a serious examination in Parliament of what had gone wrong in Suez; let us not make the same mistake again.
In some parts of this debate, it somehow seems that this is all over. Chilcot made very few actual judgments but presided with great skill over the facts. Here I must say something direct to the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, whose speech today we listened to with attention, as always. Not only was he the chairman of the first report on intelligence but, on 22 February 2007, he made a very powerful speech in this House. Listening to it at the time, he made me feel that he too had learned some lessons from his own report. He said:
“But here was the rub: neither the United Kingdom nor the United States had the intelligence that proved conclusively that Iraq had those weapons. The Prime Minister was disingenuous about that. The United Kingdom intelligence community told him on 23 August 2002 that, ‘we ... know little about Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons work since late 1988’. The Prime Minister did not tell us that. Indeed, he told Parliament only just over a month later that the picture painted by our intelligence services was ‘extensive, detailed and authoritative’. Those words could simply not have been justified by the material that the intelligence community provided to him”.—[Official Report, 22/2/07; col. 1231.]
I agreed with the noble Lord’s statement when he made it in 2007 and it is a pity that it was not reiterated today.
Let us now go to the question of what to do. It would have been much easier if the former Prime Minister had made an open confession that he had made many mistakes. Unfortunately, on the day of the report, having no doubt had access to it for some time, he produced a written statement of defiance. That defiance—the only word to describe it— cannot be left unchallenged. He said:
“If I was back in the same place with the same information, I would take the same decision”.
If that is left to stand unchallenged, Chilcot will have failed. Let us be quite clear: that statement is unacceptable and it is no honest reading of the Chilcot report. Some people say that there should be no scapegoating. No, there should not, but it is the duty of Parliament, and particularly the House of Commons, to examine this report and make judgments.
The Times editorial “Catalogue of Failure” on 7 July charges that we went to war,
“on the basis of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction that remained privy to the prime minister and his closest aides but which he insisted, in private as well as public, was incontrovertible”.
I may say that he did so in private to me, on privy counsellor terms, on 24 July 2002. The editorial goes on to say:
“It was anything but. Still defiant 13 years on, Mr Blair insisted in a written statement that the Chilcot report alleged ‘no falsification or improper use of intelligence’. In fact the report states that the intelligence ‘was not challenged and should have been’. Many will conclude that amounts to improper use”.
I am one who believes that it implies improper use. The question is: what to do?
It is arguable that the statement which the Prime Minister made on 28 July 2002 that he would support President Bush “whatever” is almost an impeachable offence. Certainly, Lord Sanderson made it perfectly clear, in describing what impeachment meant in February 1906—when he was dealing with the question of the military conversations in that year in which the French and British staff forces got together to plan a British expeditionary force, but did not tell the Cabinet for five years—that the terms of an impeachable offence would be,
“to go to war in certain circumstances, and were not to mention this pledge to Parliament, and if at the expiration of some months the country suddenly found itself pledged to war in consequence of this assurance, the case would be one which would justify impeachment”.
I do not believe that impeachment is the right solution to our present problems. I make it quite clear that I do not think you can do that in the 21st century.
We now have a body of civil law to represent a civil society. It is for the courts to decide on that for the families of the soldiers who tragically lost their lives, or those suffering appalling injuries, much of which we still do not really know about. There is the question of bringing Parliament into disrepute. That is why in another place they are perfectly right and proper to examine whether this represents contempt of Parliament; otherwise, what do we do? Do we just leave it? How many people ever knew, years on from the Suez crisis, that we had colluded with the Israelis and the French to occupy the Suez Canal? It is absolutely essential that this much is learned, because I am one who believes that we may have to intervene in the future. I do not want what happened in the aftermath of this war to condemn all military interventions in the future. Let us be courageous enough to face the need to examine this issue in Parliament, in another place if not in this place.
Queen’s Speech
Lord Owen Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Owen (Ind SD)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jowell, on an extremely moving maiden speech. I shall listen to her future contributions with great respect.
A Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Bill—TTIP, as it is commonly called—is vital for this country as the Government have only to sign this treaty and we lose all chance of amendment. The problem with the treaty is not that it is a trade treaty—I have supported every trade treaty in my political life—but it binds into a trade agreement a regulatory activity which could have very profound implications for many of us. It is this aspect to which I particularly wish to draw attention.
First, I pay tribute to the UNITE union, which put the money forward to ask Michael Bowsher QC to make a fully detailed analysis of the treaty. Without this, we would still not have the clarity that is needed. I will quote from what he has said. He is the ex-chairman of the EU Law Committee of the Bar Council and I am told—I do not know whether it is true—that he wishes to remain. So, this is not an issue between remainers and leavers, it is a pretty important issue about how we use treaties to avoid parliamentary scrutiny in both Houses. It does not, therefore, surprise me that a similar Motion is being moved in the other place.
The conclusions of the Bowsher report are as follows:
“For the reasons set out in this advice, our conclusion is that TTIP poses a real and serious risk to future UKG decision-making in respect of the NHS”,
in England. We must remember that it is rather different these days in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. He has seen the most recent statements of Commissioner Malmström and remains of the opinion that:
“The content of the draft texts are such that they do not provide a bar to suit against UKG for substantial compensation—either domestically or within the arbitral Tribunal”,
itself a very new procedure,
“for regulatory changes to the NHS. We do not consider that the new ‘right to regulate’ changes this position”.
The second conclusion is that:
“The circumstances in which a viable claim for compensation will arise, and the extent and level of that compensation, is inherently uncertain under a multi-lateral treaty agreement such as TTIP. This is evidenced by the case-law in the Tribunal, as referred to below. Furthermore, remedies under TTIP may exceed those available under domestic contract law, human rights law and European Union law”.
Thirdly:
“It is the uncertainty referred to in (ii) above which we consider will have a direct ‘chilling’ effect on future action by UKG with respect to the NHS.
We consider that the solution to the problems which TTIP poses to the NHS—and which is likely to provide the greatest protection—is for the NHS to be excluded from the agreement, by way of a blanket exception contained within the main text of TTIP”.
That cannot be done by a Bill, but it could be done by an instruction to the Commissioner, who at times has sounded as if she wants some stern guidance from the member states.
“In the event that this cannot be achieved, we consider that the NHS should be the subject of a carefully worded reservation contained within Annexes II and III of TTIP”.
Much reference has been made in dismissing the concerns that are now beginning to be expressed from all parties and all views. In particular, it reposes on evidence given to the House of Commons Select Committee on 16 October.
“The issue here is whether the new right to regulate affords UKG greater protection were it to seek to make major structural changes, to the detriment of foreign investors, to the NHS … However, despite the new right and the statements from the Commission, as set out above, our view is that the new right is very unlikely to afford UKG any greater protection. This is essentially for three key reasons: the ‘right to regulate’ is not new. Its substance has, in effect, already been recognised in arbitral case-law. The new right in Article 2 therefore adds very little”.
Bowsher traces this whole question:
“The Article 2 right itself is vague. Recognition of the state’s right to regulate and to make changes in fields affecting the welfare of persons, including healthcare, is subject to the inherent uncertainty in the interpretation of that right by the proposed Tribunal”.
Bowsher goes through various international cases and concludes:
“It follows, therefore, that the right to regulate provided for under Article 2 is unlikely to provide additional protection to UKG. Were the matter to proceed to a dispute in the future Tribunal the real issue would remain: is the effect of UKG’s measures such that the investor should be compensated? The right to regulate does not provide a bar to compensation”.
He asks whether an incoming Government would be able to make changes to the Health and Social Care Act 2012, which brought into force the National Health Service (Procurement, Patient Choice and Competition) (No.2) Regulations 2013, or amend the regulations themselves. He concludes that it would not be possible, saying that,
“we are of the view that the new right to regulate does not provide sufficient protection to UKG to ensure that no future government or Parliament will have its ability to increase the public sector provision of services limited”.
A lot of what we are going to debate, and the questions of whether or not the EU should be our partner and whether or not we should leave, relate to the way in which over successive years but particularly the past 10 years the EU has crept into the nooks and crannies of all aspects of our lives, including now the NHS. I am not going to make the arguments that are different between the political parties about what we should do with the NHS, but I will argue to my dying day the right of a new Parliament to change the legislation of a previous Parliament under a previous Government. Forfeit that right on an issue as important to us as the National Health Service and the tolerances of society start to break down. This is the great advantage of our system of government.
I will say no more about this and will now make a more partisan but short speech about what I think is—
Lord Owen
No, I am not going to give way to the noble Lord. I have taken seven minutes and I have two more.
I believe that the choice this country faces now has come about because of a grotesquely mistaken decision that you can introduce a common currency without a common country. It was opposed by the Bundesbank; it was opposed by the Conservative Government under John Major. We got an opt-out but once you get 19 or 20 countries in the eurozone in an EU of 28, it has effectively become an EU-eurozone grouping, and we should stop this belief that we are protected. We will be affected, as the former Governor of the Bank of England said, if the euro crisis continues and there is a euro collapse. The Prime Minister has accepted this. He gave away in his negotiation our treaty amendment rights to protect ourselves over euro changes. He said that we would not use those in order to get euro reform. It is understandable why he said that because it is of very great interest to this country that we get euro reform and an end to this stagnant euro crisis of the past six years.
It is important also to recognise that behind the wish for a single currency is the wish for a single country. It is quite a noble objective. It has been pursued for many decades. It is summed up by federalism or the “United States of Europe”. But in the development of the European Union—and I have watched it very closely since 1962—there will come a point that is not possible to come back from. You will be faced with a decision that you have to join and people will argue why that is. It may be 10 or 20 years down the track. The answer to this is: this is a once in a generation, once in a lifetime choice, just as it was in Scotland. You cannot have referendums repeatedly and we have to make a choice.
Can we really say to ourselves as we vote on 23 June that we are protecting this country from being sucked into a United States of Europe? I believe we cannot say that and for that reason, as well as the changes in Europe that came after the treaty of Maastricht, it is the right moment to say: go and have whatever you can get agreement on—a single state with a single currency in Europe—and good luck to you. But we in this country should not kid ourselves. This is decision time. Failing to take it will find future generations ending up in whatever looks like a European Union. I beg to move.
Lord Owen
My Lords, both Front Benches have accepted the amendment. We are at the start of a debate. Another place has exactly the same amendment down for discussion in a few days. I think it would be churlish to push the issue tonight, but I hope we will start to build a cross-party consensus that the treaty needs substantial changes through the negotiation process.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I ask the noble Lord to clarify. I assume that he will move the amendment formally.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, the Government have said that they are prepared to accept his amendment; I respectfully submit that the noble Lord should move it.