Iraq Inquiry

Debate between Pete Wishart and Andrew Mitchell

Thursday 29th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

I am grateful for the chance to take part in an important debate that strikes at the heart of our role as Members of Parliament, for many of the uncomfortable reasons presented by the hon. Members for Newport West (Paul Flynn) and for Bradford West (George Galloway). It touches particularly on our responsibility, as the legislature, to our constituents. Our reaction, therefore, as Members of the House of Commons and on behalf of our constituents, to the grotesque delays in producing the report is a matter of great importance.

This debate is not about former Prime Minister Tony Blair. However, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway), the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, I was here for that debate in 2003. Although advised by the Opposition Whips, I had not made up my mind how to vote when I entered the Chamber. I could not get a seat, so I sat in the Gangway, and I listened to the Prime Minister. To some extent, this answers the important question from the hon. Member for Bradford West about how we, who were supposedly well educated and informed, knew less than the phenomenal number of people out on the streets demonstrating against the Iraq war. Sitting in the Gangway, with the Prime Minister a few feet away, speaking about the threat to Britain and the international order and the importance of military action, I was persuaded.

[Pete Wishart]

May I suggest that the right hon. Gentleman was not persuaded by the Prime Minister, but duped by the Prime Minister, with a fabrication, a fallacy and a pack of lies? Does he not now see that he was misled?

[Mr Mitchell]

The question whether we were duped is exactly the reason the process of this inquiry is so important. As I sat there, I firmly believed that the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was making a case that I had a duty to support.

This was a hugely divisive matter. In my constituency, there were very deep divisions that had nothing to do with party politics. I remember the bizarre occasion when the entire executive committee of the Sutton Coldfield Labour party—not a large body—came to urge me as their Conservative Member of Parliament to vote against the Iraq war and their own party’s Prime Minister. During the debate, I remember going home to have dinner with my wife, who has always been viscerally opposed to the war and believes it was a terrible mistake. So these divisions run deep.

At the end of the day, however, this is not an attack on the former Prime Minister. It is inconceivable—this is an incredibly important point—that he could have made the case he did that afternoon without the passive acquiescence, if not the active support, of the full panoply of the Government machine. In my judgment, the Chilcot report is required not to expose an idiosyncratic Prime Minister—if that is the charge—but to hold to public account the workings of our Government machine.

Last December, we saw the long-awaited publication in the US of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report into the CIA’s use of torture in the aftermath of 9/11. It was certainly controversial, possibly flawed, but such reports, and the problems they throw up for politicians and Administrations, are crucial to the democratic process and our ability, as the legislature, to hold to account those who make these decisions. There is a clear benefit to be derived from revisiting these profound and significant decisions and actions, and although it might leave us open to criticism and reopen old wounds, it is a fundamental step in the process of moving forward and building on past actions.

For this House, therefore, this debate is an important and timely one. It follows the pertinent and important comments made in the other place by former Foreign Secretary Lord Hurd. His remarks should ring around the political establishment. I also congratulate the three promoters of the debate, and as ever my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) did the House credit in introducing it. It is a debate not about the substance of Sir John’s report, which none of us should prejudice, but about the manner of its conduct and timing and the way these issues have been pursued.

In allowing the inquiry to drift on in this way, Sir John and all of us are doing great damage to the process of accountability—a process that Parliament has a right to expect and a duty to pursue in order to hold the Government to account. It really matters that it is taking so desperately long for the report to be delivered. The failure to have this report before us will undoubtedly have had some impact—probably both ways—on the way in which Members voted on the Government motion for action on Syria.

On the Libya campaign, when I was the International Development Secretary, I had responsibility for the Government’s humanitarian duties and role, and my first question to officials in my Department was about the lessons to be drawn from the Iraq war, most especially on the plans for the aftermath of that conflict, which were fundamental to the plans we were making in respect of Libya. The lack of a proper inquiry meant relying on the memory and understanding of officials, which is what we had to do.

We come to the meat of the matter. This inquiry is entering its sixth year; it has already cost £9 million. That is clearly not the fault of the current Government. The events did not take place on our watch. Indeed, both the Prime Minister and I voted to set up this inquiry in 2006. The delay is an insult to every one of our constituents, to every taxpayer in the country and to every parent, spouse and loved one of the 179 servicemen and women who died in the Iraq war and of the many who were wounded and still live with those wounds today.

The Foreign Affairs Committee, led so ably by my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South, is absolutely right to call Sir John before it next week to ask him not for the contents of his report, but for a full and detailed explanation of the delays, the timing and the process over which he has presided. It is essential that we, the legislature, prosecute this matter vigorously and fully if we are not to bring ourselves into considerable disrepute. It is our role to hold the Government to account, and what could be more important than the issues surrounding a decision like this one—to go to war?