Iraq War (10th Anniversary)

Debate between Mark Simmonds and Caroline Lucas

Thursday 13th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mark Simmonds)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on securing this debate and on her passionate introduction, in which she put on the record her strong views. Clearly, there is still significance and passions are still aroused 10 years on.

I also congratulate the other two hon. Members who have spoken, my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) and the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson). I agree strongly with my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay about the importance of removing the fundamentals that give support to al-Qaeda and other terrorist organisations. He will be well aware that the United Kingdom has done that not just in Iraq, but in other conflict states, with a particular focus at the moment on Somalia and Mali.

More broadly, the United Kingdom has contributed directly towards reconstruction in Iraq. We have helped to provide vaccinations for millions of children, improve access to safe water for more than 1 million people in southern Iraq and provide additional electricity equivalent to that used by a city the size of Leeds. We have also trained tens of thousands of teachers and approximately 20,000 policemen and women.

The hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn was right to point out that this matter was a significant part of the lives of those of us who were Members of Parliament in 2003, and that it exercised both ourselves and our constituents. I would suggest that it was almost the only point of debate at the point in time when the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and others were deciding what they should do.

As the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion set out in her opening speech, the decision to go to war in 2003 was one of the key foreign policy decisions of the last decade. As I have said, I and other Members who were in the House at the time will remember it for ever. However, it is important to state at the outset that the policy of this Government is not to comment on the decision to go to war ahead of the report of the Chilcot inquiry. I will therefore not do so here, but will look at the future of Iraq and the UK’s relationship with Iraq.

[Caroline Lucas]

I am grateful to the Minister for his reference to the Chilcot inquiry. Can he advise us when we might expect to see the report and whether he is aware of machinations in the background on issues of declassification that are holding it up?