Report of the Iraq Inquiry

Roger Gale Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

On 18 March 2003, Mr Blair told the House of Commons that he judged the possibility of terrorist groups in possession of weapons of mass destruction as,

“a real and present danger to Britain and its national security.”—[Official Report, 18 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 768.]

When Sir John Chilcot presented his report to the families of some of those killed in the Iraq war—those families included the parents of Lieutenant Marc Lawrence, a young naval aviator and one of my constituents, who was killed in a Sea King helicopter—he was rather more robust than he was in the conclusions of the report. He said:

“The judgements about the severity of the threat posed by Iraq’s WMDs were presented with a certainty that was not justified.”

On the eve of the vote on the Iraq war, a number of us on the Opposition Benches had grave concerns about what we were about to undertake and what we were going to ask of our young men and women in our armed services. We were called into an office by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), who was then Leader of the Opposition, and by the shadow Foreign Minister, then the Member for Devizes, Michael Ancram. We were told by my right hon. Friend that he had been informed, on Privy Council terms, that there were weapons of mass destruction, that the United Kingdom, or the interests of the United Kingdom, faced a 45-minute threat from those weapons, and that it was imperative, in the interests of our national security, that we should support the motion that was to be put before the House. I think I am right in saying that, on that basis, all but one of us concurred.

I do not doubt the information that was given to me by my right hon. Friend, but I believe that he was misled on Privy Council terms. The House has heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) of the five items on which Mr Blair misled the House. Yes, we do have to learn from this. I must take responsibility, because I voted that way, for the death of my young constituent and, by implication, for the deaths of hundreds of armed personnel and many, many civilians.

Mr Speaker, if a motion for contempt is brought before you, you should look favourably on a hearing for it, because I believe that we owe that to the families of those who have lost their loved ones in this conflict.