Report of the Iraq Inquiry

Philippa Whitford Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

I, too, pay tribute to the troops. Those who have ended up with broken lives because of the war should be looked after through the covenant for the long term, not just while they serve. We all know of cases of troops and their families who continue to suffer.

The two things that come out of this process are that, in essence, what was being carried out was regime change, which would not normally be considered a legal basis for going to war, and that the planning for the peace afterwards was inadequate. Does that not apply to Libya? What we predominantly got caught up with in Libya was getting rid of Gaddafi and we have invested on nation building a fraction of what was spent on the war.

The other thing is that Saddam Hussein was known to have attacked his own people, yet we still sold him weapons after that. We are still selling weapons to Saudi Arabia and have personnel involved. We are also getting involved in Yemen, yet there has been no decision about that.

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady is right to say that the bit of the report that deals with the issue of whether the Government were involved in coercive diplomacy to try to make Iraq go down a different path or whether this was regime change needs very careful reading, but I disagree with her on Libya. It was a humanitarian intervention to stop the slaughter of innocent people. We then assisted as forces in Libya strove to get rid of a man who was a brutal dictator and who had delivered Semtex to the IRA—Semtex is probably still available to some people in Northern Ireland today—so I defend that. However, as I said, we can put all the processes and procedures in place and put money in, as we have done with Libya, and it can still be difficult to get a good outcome.