Iraq Inquiry

Debate between Rory Stewart and Tim Farron

Thursday 29th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I share with most Members of all parties a deep disappointment at the postponement of the release of the Chilcot report. It is massively disappointing to us, but emotionally exhausting for the families of those who lost their lives in Iraq as they wait for closure and for the answers to which they are entitled.

The former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), sanctioned the report in 2009 and, as we have heard, advised that there should be a report within one year. We are now six years on. Motions in the last Parliament on an earlier inquiry into the Iraq war were voted down by the Labour Government, including the current Leader of the Opposition, so it would have been entirely possible for the process to be concluded sooner. As things stand, the next general election after the Chilcot report is released will be in 2020—17 years after the Iraq war. As the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) said, that is an affront to democracy.

I have absolute sympathy for Sir John Chilcot and his inquiry team, not least because of the difficulties that they have experienced with the illness of some team members. I support the rigorous and forensic way in which Sir John has gone about the process and insisted on the fairness of allowing those who are likely to be criticised in the report the right to respond—the process that is referred to as Maxwellisation. That strikes me as fair.

It is worth the House reiterating and getting behind the offer that my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister made last week of additional resources for the inquiry team’s secretariat. That would ensure that Sir John Chilcot could speed up the process of communications between the team and those given the opportunity to respond if they are mentioned in the report. I have written to senior witnesses including the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to give them the opportunity to clarify that they have responded in a timely fashion to the letters from Sir John. That would enable them to make it clear that any hold-up is not their responsibility. That is important, and I hope that they will take the opportunity to do so.

I do not believe that the House needs to wait to know that the Iraq war was a disastrous episode in British and international history. We have heard that something in the region of 100,000 to 150,000 civilians in Iraq lost their lives as a result of the conflict, and that 179 British servicemen and women died in it. I strongly suggest that the narrative that Islamic State is able to hide behind and run with has been hugely fuelled by the illegal intervention by the United States and United Kingdom in Iraq from 2003 onwards. International law and international institutions were undermined as a consequence of that attack, and in these dangerous and unstable times, the importance of maintaining the integrity of those institutions could not be greater. British interests and influence overseas have been set back by our involvement in that illegal war.

I suspect that the Chilcot inquiry will confirm that the Labour Government were obsessed with the special relationship with the United States and allowed their judgment to be not just clouded but eclipsed, out of a desire to be part of the maybe exhilarating experience of being at one with the leader of the free world. I suspect that it will show that UK foreign policy, going back decades, has tended to be simplistic in simply snuggling up to the United States.

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

I am grateful to my Cumbrian colleague for giving way. Is there not a paradox at the heart of this? One way in which the United Kingdom has responded to the humiliation of Iraq is by reducing our capacity to develop our own foreign policy and missions. If we look at our current position in Iraq, we see that we are in even less of a position today to provide an independent assessment of the US mission and strategy than we were in 2003.

[Tim Farron]

My hon. Friend and neighbour makes a very good point. In many ways, the lessons to be learned from Iraq are about how we exert soft and hard influence throughout the world in a wise way, using methods of diplomacy but acting in concert with regional powers as well as those we have traditionally worked alongside.

It is important to state that I support our relationship with the United States. It is important, and we do have a special relationship. I believe that the United States thinks of the United Kingdom in a specific light, just not as being nearly as significant as we would perhaps like to believe. Our emphasis on the relationship with the United States has been at the cost of our relationship with Commonwealth countries and, particularly, with our colleagues, friends and neighbours in the rest of Europe.

Classroom Teaching Assistants (Cumbria)

Debate between Rory Stewart and Tim Farron

Wednesday 16th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

Is not the answer, then, to define a single status which gives the right salary, the right respect and the right position to teaching assistants, rather than grading them below where they should be?

[Tim Farron]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Someone without much human resources experience could see at first glance that the county council had botched the exercise by putting teaching assistants alongside talented, able, hard-working people who do a completely different job. It stands to reason that at the very least a different family needs to be created for teaching assistants to belong to. It is wrong to equate people who do teaching assistant jobs to a position that is on fixed hours.

Teaching assistants at the school my children go to in Milnthorpe are there helping with preparation at least half an hour before their working day begins. They are there afterwards if a child is in need or upset. They help with extracurricular work and child development. Crucially, from the point of view of the child, who will not differentiate, a teaching assistant is part of their teaching team. They should absolutely have a band of their own.

I want to quote a teaching assistant from Kendal in my constituency to point out the very different and intensive nature of the role that puts it beyond that of a regular fixed hourly job:

“I have been working with a child with severe autism. I support him every second of the day. He cannot be left unattended. I prepare all his activities and research different strategies to implement with him on a daily basis, often working late into the night. I have always felt valued by my school, but not now by my employer, Cumbria county council.”

That sums up the situation for many people in Cumbria.

The hon. Member for Workington rightly pointed out the issue of appeals. The county council, which is overwhelmed with appeals, says that it will look at only some of them. I am sorry, but it should either deal with them all, as a matter of justice, or get the message from the fact there are hundreds of appeals that they have got the banding badly wrong.

I understand that the Minister will probably say that that is a local government matter, but the issue is clearly about the impact on the quality of education in Cumbria due to a demoralised work force who are being deprofessionalised by a county council that has simply got this wrong. It is not too late to put this right. The lot of us here would like the Government to press the county council to think again.