Chilcot Inquiry and Parliamentary Accountability

Paul Flynn Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

It is a matter of regret that this is being turned into a party political debate. It is worth remembering that 139 Labour MPs voted, against a strong three-line Whip, against the war, including Members who are present now. The great majority of Conservative MPs did not, but with honourable exceptions—half a dozen of them. Three Select Committees of this House were gung-ho for the war, and what is on trial today is the reputation of Parliament. It is Parliament who voted for an unnecessary war that ended in the deaths of 179 British soldiers, as we have been reminded. The loved ones of the British soldiers need the truth and they need a debate, and a serious debate, not a party political row, which this is turning out to be.

[Alex Salmond]

I very much welcome the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. As I have been trying to point out, that is why Members from seven parties in this House have put their names to this motion.

There is a real argument, which has been put forward by the hon. Gentleman, me and others who voted against the conflict, that if we suspected there was something grievously wrong with the Prime Minister’s case, why did other people not come to the same conclusion as the late Robin Cook—that in his estimation weapons of mass destruction did not exist in respect of a clear imminent threat being commonly expressed? Why did other people not see that? The hon. Gentleman and I have to understand that when the Prime Minister went to the Dispatch Box in March 2003 and told the House conclusively that a real and present danger to the United Kingdom existed, it was reasonable even for those with misgivings to think that he must be seeing something that they were not seeing and that he must know something that they did not know. Those Members were thereby misled into the Lobby to vote for the conflict.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale), because we went through the same experience of this House at that time. Although we like to feel that we take our decisions on an intellectual basis, I know that my feelings on this are motivated by strong emotion and what happened to my father in the war. He volunteered as a 15-year-old—he lied about his age—to go to the continent and stop the Huns bayoneting Belgian babies. He returned broken and badly wounded in 1919, extremely grateful to the Germans for having saved his life when he was dying in a foxhole. He could have bled to death.

My motivation—this should be our highest motivation —is the interests of our armed forces. They need an absolute assurance that any decision to put their lives at risk is taken in the most serious way after the most searching inquiries are carried out. We owe them that. I believe that another inquiry is necessary, and that is one on the decision to go into Helmand province in 2006 at a time when only six members of the armed services had been killed in the war. We went in in the hope that not a shot would be fired and 450 of our servicemen died as a result. That is what we must do now—that is what we should be taking on, not a tribal party row in this place. It is not appropriate; it is not right. We must look to the reputation of Parliament.

As has been said, we were misled. Whether it was deliberate or not—the expression “sincere deceivers” has been used in the United States about what happened in that war—we know that after that debate 139 of my comrades on the Labour Benches voted against the war, which was a very courageous thing to do as we were under great pressure, but 50 others had grave doubts about the war. They were, in my view, bribed, bullied or bamboozled into voting the wrong way and many—

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

Bribed? You can’t say bribed; that’s outrageous.

[Paul Flynn]

They were induced—

[Ian Austin]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for a Member of this House to allege that other Members of this House were bribed—paid—to vote a particular way? Should he not produce evidence for it? What a disgrace.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

The hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) did not accuse a specific individual of taking a bribe. The hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) is perfectly entitled to ask him in an intervention whether he will withdraw what he has said, but this is not a matter for the Chair.

[Paul Flynn]

I am not suggesting that anyone took any money. There are such things as political bribes, with inducements and offers, of which we are well aware in this place. There was a very heavy operation here to convince Members to vote for war. We must look at the situation then.

One Back Bencher wrote to Tony Blair—I speak of Tony Blair with no animus against him. I campaigned for him to be Leader of the House. I have congratulated him again and again on the work that he has done for the Labour party, but it is not the case that there was one failure. It was a failure of the three most important Select Committees in this House, who were all cheerleaders for the war. There were all those who went around saying, “If you knew what we know—we’ve got this secret information—you would certainly vote for war to go ahead.” I believe it was in that circumstance that the decision was taken.

One letter to Tony Blair warned in March:

“Our involvement in Bush’s war will increase the likelihood of terrorist attacks.”

It said that attacking a Muslim state without achieving a fair settlement in other conflicts in the world would be seen by Muslims from our local mosques to the far corners of the world as an act of injustice. I believe we paid a very heavy price for seeming to divide the world between a powerful, western, Christian world which was taking advantage of its other side, who were Muslims.

I am certain that in his mind Tony Blair was sincere. He was proved to be right on Kosovo when many people criticised him, and on Sierra Leone he was right. He was convinced on that that the others were wrong and he was going to prove it. One of the pieces of information that he quoted was an interview with Hussein Kamel, who was the son-in-law of Saddam Hussein. It was quoted in the document as evidence of weapons of mass destruction. According to the interview, Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons, biological weapons, nuclear weapons, which he did say in the evidence. But in the same interview, which was conducted in 1995 and was already old news, Hussein Kamel said, “Of course, we got rid of them after the Gulf war.” What was in that dodgy dossier was half the story—evidence, yes, that Saddam had had such weapons, but also evidence that he no longer had them, and that was never published.

What Chilcot said in his report was not the absolution that people believe it to be. He said that the decision to invade was taken

“before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted”

and that military action was

“not a last resort”.

According to the strictures of modern philosophy, that means it is not a just war. Chilcot said that Saddam posed no “imminent threat”. In effect, he declared the war needless.

Colin Powell has confessed that he was fooled and lied to, and that he regrets bitterly that he did not follow his natural instinct and avoid the war. Strangely enough, most of the people who were advising him at the time have said that they were wrong and the war was a terrible mistake.

I believe that this House must accept what Chilcot is saying and not take an aversion to it that pleases our political point of view. The issue is one that the loved ones of the 179 have been following. They have gone through years of torment asking themselves, “Did our loved ones die in vain?” Chilcot has reported, and his report was that the decision was taken not just by a Prime Minister but by all those who were gullible enough to believe that case. There were a million people who walked the streets of this country and demonstrated. It was not a clear decision.

We fall into the trap time and again of believing that our role in Britain is to punch above our weight militarily. Why should we do that? Every time we do, we die beyond our responsibilities.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

I obviously was not here in 2003, and as a student at the time, was part of that anti-war generation that my hon. Friend describes. I am troubled by his language in describing colleagues, some of whom are still here today, as “gullible” in voting for the Iraq war. I never agreed with it then and with hindsight I certainly do not agree with it, but I never doubted either the integrity or the intelligence of the people who took a different view then and continue to take a different view today.

[Paul Flynn]

I am not questioning their good faith in any way; I am sure that they voted that way.

[Wes Streeting]

You said earlier that they were bribed.

[Paul Flynn]

I will stick to the word “gullible”. Three Committees of people who are great experts—the Intelligence and Security Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Defence Committee—all took the same view. They were all told stories about the weapons of mass destruction. The evidence was, and the evidence is there now, that those did not exist, and there was a very selective choice of evidence—as in the quotations of the son-in-law of Saddam Hussein—that the Committee members believed and chose to believe.

If we do not recognise that as a problem for this House, we will make the same mistakes again. We are going to face such decisions in future. The House will have to decide whether we are going to order—that is our power—young men and women to put their lives on the line, on the basis of what? Faulty evidence, ineffective evidence. That was the conclusion of Chilcot.

I am on the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee and I look forward to taking part in the inquiry, but I do not welcome the kind of debate that we have got.

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman makes a compelling case, to which I am very sympathetic, but I wonder, given the case that he is making, if he agrees that it is a matter of some disappointment that a majority of his colleagues in the parliamentary Labour party have decided to set themselves against the motion before the House today, and that this will look like they are closing ranks to protect their former leader?

[Paul Flynn]

There is a great deal that I regret about things that are happening within the Labour party at this moment. In the brief cameo appearance that I had on the Front Bench, I called for this debate. I called for a debate to take place on these lines. Of course I want to see the debate. We cannot pretend that after all these years of investigation, the Chilcot inquiry is a trial without a verdict at the end. We must take that responsibility ourselves and we must reform this House to make sure that we can never again take such a calamitous decision, which led to the loss of 179 British lives and uncounted numbers of Iraqi lives. That was a terrible, terrible mistake and we must not repeat it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

The Iraq war is one of the great disasters to befall the world in this century. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed and injured—men, women and children, the culpable and the innocent alike, the invading forces and the often unwilling defenders. Saddam’s vile tyranny was replaced by endless war. Here in the United Kingdom families grieve for their loved ones, lost forever, and survivors who served their country so faithfully suffer terribly. Terrorism spreads across northern Africa and Europe and is indeed a menace worldwide. Today the threat level here in the UK is again at “severe”; an attack is highly likely.

Compared to all that, misleading the House of Commons and the damage done to our reputation might seem to rank somewhat lower, but it is significant none the less, and damage has been done. Trust in Parliament, in Government and in individual MPs has declined disastrously, which is coupled with at best scepticism, and at worst widespread cynicism, about our democratic processes.

I was a Member of this House at the time of the march to war and I have a particularly vivid memory of Mr Blair presenting the House with the so called “dodgy dossier”. Even on first reading, it seemed to me it was a cut and paste exercise. I also took part in the enormous protest against going to war and was astonished by the variety of people joining in—not just the usual suspects but a true cross-section of society. There are many causes of the steep decline of trust in politicians and in our work, but some of the blame can be traced back to the way we were taken to war in Iraq, to subsequent disastrous events there, and to the public perception that no one has really been held to account.

As The Observer revealed last Sunday in a report concerning this debate:

“A spokesman for Blair declined to comment. But, privately, his supporters say similar motions have been tabled before without gaining significant traction among MPs.”

[Paul Flynn]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Hywel Williams]

I will not, as time is short.

Unsurprisingly, there is much cynical public resignation. Last summer, we had a two-day debate and there was a debate in the other place. On 26 October, the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) asked the Prime Minister for reassurance that, in respect of the Chilcot report, she had, as he put it,

“a cunning plan to ensure that action is taken”.

In reply, the right hon. Lady said that the National Security Adviser was leading an exercise to learn the lessons from the Chilcot report, before adding:

“There is much in it, and we need to ensure that we do learn the lessons from it.”—[Official Report, 26 October 2016; Vol. 616, c. 277.]

Although that is most assuredly the case, for me there is a further question: who is this “we”?

I know nothing of the National Security Adviser. I have no doubt that he is a capable, industrious and conscientious public servant, but he is appointed by the Prime Minister and he reports to the Prime Minister. The House of Commons decides its own ways of working and of holding the Government to account, hence this proposed referral to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee

“to conduct a further specific examination of this contrast in public and private policy and of the presentation of intelligence, and then to report to the House on what further action it considers necessary and appropriate to help prevent any repetition of this disastrous series of events.”

Given that the Prime Minister’s answer of 26 October is only partially relevant, I will refer to two more recent matters on the presentation of intelligence information. First, on the basis of that information was it reasonable to conclude that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the UK and so go to war? In evidence to the Liaison Committee on 2 November, Sir John Chilcot said in respect of the alleged imminence of the Iraqi threat to the UK:

“As things have turned out, we know that it was not.”

That is, the threat was not imminent, but he seems to be saying that a correct judgment on the matter is only possible with hindsight—“as things…turned out”. Significantly, he concluded by saying:

“As things appeared at the time, the evidence to support it was more qualified than he”—

Mr Blair—

“in effect, gave expression to.”

That prompted a further question from the Chair, referring to the

“test of whether a reasonable man would conclude that this evidence supported going to war.”

Sir John replied:

“If I may say so, that seems an easier question for me to answer, because the answer to that is no.”

The second point I would have liked to make is on the question posed by the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) of absolving Mr Blair, but unfortunately I have no time.

Mr Blair said, famously:

“I think most people who have dealt with me, think I’m a pretty straight sort of guy and I am.”

Referral of this matter to PACAC will give him yet another opportunity to convince the world of his “pretty straight” credentials.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas]

I will make a bit of progress and then I will.

Chilcot also showed that Iraq posed no immediate threat to the UK, and, crucially, that hindsight was not necessary to see those things. That seven-year Iraq inquiry, which cost £10 million of public money, also officially recorded detailed evidence of the vast discrepancy between the former Prime Minister’s public statements and his private correspondence. If we do nothing about that and take no steps towards accountability for it, it is unclear to me how we begin to restore faith in our political system.

Sir John Chilcot made it clear earlier this month that Tony Blair did long-term damage to trust in politics by presenting a case for the Iraq war that went beyond

“the facts of the case”.

Sir John told MPs he could “only imagine” how long it would take to repair that trust.

That need to restore trust in politics is a key reason why I support the motion. This should not be pursued as a personal or party political attack, and this should be reflected in our language and approach. This process must be based on the facts and the evidence.

[Paul Flynn]

Does the hon. Lady recall that world public opinion, especially in the Security Council, was greatly influenced by a presentation by Colin Powell in which he showed photographs of what he thought was biological weapons equipment? He has since retracted and said he was hopelessly deceived, that the pictures were nothing of the sort and that there was no threat from those weapons. He has shown some penitence; would it not be better if those responsible in this House showed some penitence as well?

[Caroline Lucas]

I am grateful for that intervention and, unsurprisingly, I agree.

The evidence in the Chilcot report does show that Tony Blair was responsible for fixing evidence around a policy while telling us that he was doing the opposite. It shows he was treating his office, the Cabinet, this House and our constitutional checks and balances with disrespect amounting to contempt. For that he should be held responsible.

But more than that, accountability must mean ensuring that any future decisions are taken with systems in place that guarantee proper Cabinet and parliamentary scrutiny and discussion.

In his report Chilcot does not judge the former Prime Minister’s guilt or innocence, and, as we have recently learned, secret Cabinet documents show the Chilcot report hearings were set up precisely to stop individuals being held accountable and specifically to avoid blame, and that is another key reason why we need a Committee to look at the issue of accountability.

Hon. Members have already cited numerous examples of what could be called misleading statements, deception, untruths or whatever word we choose, but I want to add just one more. Tony Blair stated in March 2003 that diplomacy had been exhausted in efforts to seek to avoid an invasion of Iraq. Yet the Chilcot report shows, without question, that this was not the case, and central to his case was the role of France. To get support from his own MPs, Blair argued that diplomatic efforts to secure a resolution had been exhausted, because the French President was unreasonably threatening to veto any resolution. That was not true, and Chilcot shows that Tony Blair knew it. In a phone call with George Bush on 12 March 2003, Blair and Bush agreed publicly to pretend to continue to seek a second UN resolution, knowing that it would not happen, and then to blame France for preventing it. [Interruption.] I suggest that those who are saying from a sedentary position that that is not true look at paragraph 410 of page 472 in volume 3, section 3.8—