Report of the Iraq Inquiry

John Bercow Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The House must come to order. The right hon. and learned Gentleman has made it perfectly plain that at this point he is not giving way. Therefore, the House must listen to the development of his argument.

[Mr Clarke]

Mr Speaker, I have already spent more time than I intended to on Tony Blair. Members who wish to argue about the French veto in 2003 can do so between themselves.

The political background to what was being decided and what the politicians wanted to do was key. I was a Back-Bench Opposition Member at the time, but I followed the events with some care. I had one advantage: I did not have access to what was going on inside the Government, but I knew a lot of American, as well as British, politicians. At various political gatherings—Bilderberg, Davos and so on—I knew and was on friendly terms with quite a few of the key American neo-cons. I was arguing against the merits of the invasion of Iraq before the debate ever even started here.

That is important background. In the Bush Administration, the key policy makers wanted to invade Iraq immediately after 9/11. By 2001, there was not the slightest doubt but that they would invade. They had a rather naive, idealistic approach that faintly shocked me: they thought the previous Administration had not used American military power for all the benefits it could produce in the world, but they were going to use it for good, and they thought they would be treated as liberating heroes when they arrived in Baghdad and set up a better regime.

They thought that a man called Chalabi would win the election held thereafter. I met Chalabi once or twice. He once got about 2% in an Iraqi election. They thought he would be in charge but that he would need supervision, so there was going to be a US general—constant comparisons were made with General MacArthur turning Imperial Japan into a democracy after the war. Much was also made of the importance of denazification following Hitler’s fall, hence there was going to be de-Ba’athification in Iraq to get rid of all these people in the army and the security services and so on. The House will be reassured to know that I fiercely disagreed. I liked these people, but my thought, during such a discussion, was always, “One of us isn’t on the same planet.” I formed a fairly hostile view, therefore, long before it arrived here.

If I knew in 2001 that the Bush Administration was going to invade Iraq, I am quite certain that Tony Blair and the British military knew, and that they had a long time to work out how they were going to join in. That explains a lot. Why did the Americans want the British to join in? They did not need us for military purposes. They could defeat the Iraqis without our military assistance. They did not rate our military that highly—although they thought our special forces and intelligences were very good—but we were a very valuable political ally. They thought that the presentation would be greatly improved if the British, of all people, were at the heart of the alliance, and as I have said, Tony Blair was very keen to join them. I doubt he bought all the neo-con theories, but he clearly thought that getting rid of Saddam Hussein’s regime was one of the best contributions he could make to the future of the Iraqi people and he was determined to join in.

Reading these mysteries, one must ask, “What was the snag for Tony Blair and the Government?” I am confident I knew enough, through my contacts, to know that the snag for Tony Blair, who wanted to take part and who—it seems—had already told George W. Bush that he wanted to take part, was that it was not legal for the UK to take part in a war being launched for the purpose of changing the regime in another country. When he received that advice, with which I think every lawyer in the place agreed, it was undoubtedly right.

As somebody said, however, that was not the view the Americans took. American neo-cons are not so impressed with international law. Their constitution does not constrain them. I once had a key American official tell me, “We have all the legal authority we need to invade: we have a large majority in both Houses of Congress.” And that was it. But they were so keen to have the British that they were prepared to give Tony Blair some time to tackle this problem of whether it was lawful for him to take part, and to work out a basis upon which the British could join.

At this point, I think, these people’s motives were virtuous. They believed all this. They were making the world a better place by removing a tyrant and installing a pro-American, pro-western, pro-Israeli, democratic Government in a liberal society. They were going to change the regime, and we were going to do it lawfully, so we had to turn to the question of the dreadful weapons that Saddam Hussein undoubtedly had used against his own people years before, and whether they had all been disposed of or whether we could demonstrate that he was a continuing threat. If we could demonstrate that he had weapons of mass destruction, that they were a threat to British interests and our neighbours, and that he was not co-operating with weapons inspections and so on, and if we could get a UN resolution, then we had a legal basis for invading.

Once one realises that that was the—perfectly worthy and well-intentioned—mindset of most of the British people taking part in the process to intervene, one can understand why some of these extraordinary processes happened. I personally believe that the American Administration delayed the invasion for a month or few—

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[Steve McCabe]

In paragraph 402—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We cannot conduct debate with people yelling from a sedentary position in a disorderly manner, and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) must not do that. If the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) wants to give way later, he will, and if he does not, he will not. We will see how things go.

[Alex Salmond]

If the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) had been able to give evidence to Chilcot, no doubt the report would have concluded otherwise. However, we now have the report as it has been concluded. I am not talking about individual pieces of evidence; I am talking about the conclusion of the Chilcot inquiry itself. This is why The Times was undoubtedly right to describe the events as “Blair’s private war”.

On the question of collective responsibility in this place, I fundamentally disagree with the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe on one point. If Parliament is to hold future Executives to account, it will not just be a question of changing the process of decision making, although I accept that some changes have been made. I do not accept the Foreign Secretary’s confidence that the mistakes could never be repeated, and I do not believe that his distinction between a land campaign in Iraq and an aerial bombardment in Libya fully explains why this country—never mind its allies—spent 13 times as much on bombing Libya as we spent on the budget for reconstruction in Libya. That might be a lesson that has not been carried forward. The changes that must be made relate not only to the process of government but to parliamentary accountability, the most fundamental aspect of which is Parliament deciding whether it has been misled.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Speaker]

I am sorry to have to announce this to the House, but on account of the number of would-be contributors there will now be a 10-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches with immediate effect. That limit may have to be reviewed, but it is 10 minutes for now. I call Mr David Davis.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am trying to accommodate as many colleagues as possible, and after the next speaker it will be necessary to reduce the time limit to six minutes. I am sorry, but this is inevitable.

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[Natalie McGarry (Glasgow East) (Ind)]

I have visited Iraq recently, and I visited a country in economic meltdown because of the ongoing conflict in both Iraq and Syria. Iraq is still riven by religious sectarianism, led by what has been described to me as a corrupt and patriarchal family looting the country of its assets and getting rich on its hard-won natural resources. It is a country that has fought and is still losing against al-Qaeda, and that is now in the thrall of Daesh, which has crossed the border into Syria. It is a country where more than 200 people died in a car bomb two weeks ago with barely a mention in this place. Where are the half-mast flags? Where is the Iraqi anthem at football games?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. My apologies to the hon. Lady, but I should have done her the courtesy of telling her what I think she knows, which is that the time limit is now four minutes.

[Natalie McGarry]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am going through my speech quickly.

Where is the collective grief? Are we so inured to Iraqi deaths? Iraq is a country that cannot control its own borders; a country where its own people—the Yazidis—were, by most accounts, abandoned by Iraqi Government forces and left to Daesh; a country where men and boys were murdered and women and girls raped and passed into sexual slavery. That is the reality of modern, post-invasion Iraq. Is it better or worse than the Saddam regime? It would be entirely careless to speculate, as both are too horrendous to contemplate, and we should not have had to.

When the US and the UK planned for war—and they did indeed plan—peace should have been their objective, but damningly, Chilcot shows that it was the only objective that they did not plan for. I have heard many Members use the attacks against the Kurds as justification for the war on Iraq in 2003. The appalling attack on Halabja and Saddam’s use of chemical weapons on about 5,000 Kurds took place in 1988. The UK is alleged, with strong evidence—and the US too—to have continued to trade weapons to Iraq up to 1991. Then there was the first Gulf war. If enforcing regime change was ever appropriate or legal, that was the opportunity to do so with international support, yet the UK and the US allowed the brutal regime and dictatorship of Saddam Hussain to continue.

This House recently supported airstrikes on Syria, on flimsy evidence at best of 70,000 moderate ground forces actively opposing Daesh forces—the most active of them being the Kurdish YPJ and the YPG—yet it consistently fails to support my calls and those of others that the PYD of Rojava, the Kurds, should be given a place at peace talks on the future of Syria. Where is the support for the Kurds who are at the frontline of the battle against Daesh? It is hypocrisy.

The decision to go to war should be the most seriously contended proposition in this place. It should be the most rigorously tested, with every facet and every piece of intelligence investigated and every ramification explored. Chilcot has eventually exposed the myth about what happened, but a close look at the facts would have revealed the evidence to be flawed.

When this place sends men and women to war without adequate resources, sending some of them into perilous danger ill equipped and improperly attired, there is collective guilt. When the result of that decision is the death of soldiers serving their country and the indiscriminate deaths of innocent civilians—directly or indirectly caused by our military actions—the responsibility for that lies here, in this place, which should have more rigorously challenged the then Prime Minister and the intelligence that was presented.

The cost of the Iraq war is far greater than the £9 billion that the UK Government spent on the conflict. It is the 179 dead British service personnel, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed, the 1 million people displaced and the destabilisation of the middle east, the consequences of which we can see to this day.

We can all profess to regret what happened—indeed, I am sure that everyone does—but if lessons are not learned and we do not correct the collective arrogance that has meant thumbing our nose at the UN and at international partners, mocking them, deriding them and ignoring them, we will repeat the mistakes of the past and the loss of those lives will be even more in vain.

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[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

We now know that the decision to go to war in Iraq was wrong—not just flawed but utterly wrong. This place was misled; not everyone was fooled, but sufficient to sway the vote. Meanwhile, across the UK, 1.5 million people marched in protest against the war. Their cumulative voice was drowned out by a single voice and its abuse of power. Tony Blair said that those who marched against the war would have “blood on their hands.” I do not know one single person who marched against this war who regrets their action, while apparently Mr Blair now regrets his. One hundred and seventy-nine British servicemen and women, along with 24 British civilians, were killed; and let us never forget the tens of thousands—hundreds of thousands—of civilians in Iraq who were killed, the 1.25 million orphans this war created, and the destruction of buildings and decimation of communities. The outcome was to radicalise a generation of angry, grieving Iraqis whose lives we turned upside down.

All based on what? There was no evidence of WMD. There was no evidence of Iraq having links to al-Qaeda. Evidence of contact between Iraq and Osama bin Laden was “fragmentary and uncorroborated”. However, Tony Blair still felt fine telling his pal, George W. Bush,

“I will be with you, whatever.”

How did we wage this war? We did as we always do—we sent in our troops with “wholly inadequate military equipment”. This was not new. We had known for years that we had poor vehicles and a lack of body armour. Equipment was identified in 2001 to

“not work well in hot and dusty conditions…The MoD had insufficient desert combat suits and desert boots for all personnel…Standard issue boots were unsuitable for the task; 4 Armoured Brigade’s post-exercise report cited melting boots and foot rot as ‘a major issue’.”

What do we do for those who lost loved ones? We make them wait 13 years for answers. How well do we look after the welfare of those who returned? Appallingly.

On Monday, we will vote to spend hundreds of billions of pounds on weapons of mass destruction while campaign veterans are sleeping rough in towns and cities across the UK. Many more are physically or psychologically damaged, left by us without the support network they require. When will we put in place a package for our service personnel that looks after their long-term welfare? When will we ensure that everyone leaving the armed forces does so with a qualification or skill that will stand them in good stead for the rest of their lives?

In truth, so many mistakes were made that 2.6 million words are probably not enough. I will finish with a quote from a father who lost a son—a quote that is intelligent, informed, and dignified. Roger Bacon, whose 34-year-old son Matthew was killed by a roadside bomb in Basra in 2005, said:

“Never again must so many mistakes be allowed to sacrifice British lives and lead to the destruction of a country for no positive end.

We were proud when our husbands, sons and daughters signed up to serve our country. But we cannot be proud of the way our government has treated them.

We must use this report to make sure that all parts of the Iraq War fiasco are never repeated again. Neither in a theatre of war, nor in the theatre of Whitehall.

We call on the British Government immediately to follow up Sir John's findings to ensure that the political process by which our country decides to go to war is never again twisted and confused with no liability for such actions.”

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Before I put the Question, I thank colleagues for their stoicism and their succinctness. I would like particularly to thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for his typical understanding and good grace. He was not heard today, by way of a speech, but he will be heard tomorrow, and of that he can rest assured.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(George Hollingbery.)

Debate to be resumed tomorrow.