Report of the Iraq Inquiry

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Alex Salmond (Gordon) (SNP)]

The parliamentary wounds of the Iraq war are still pertinent in today’s debate, but we should remember that they are as nothing compared with the wounds of the 179 families who lost servicepeople, the 23 British civilian staff who were killed, the 200,000 Iraqis and the thousands of American soldiers. The carnage in the middle east is still with us today—these wounds are still raw and open.

Like the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), I looked back at the debate on 18 March 2003, and I was struck by a number of things that we do not always remember. We all remember Robin Cook’s brilliant resignation speech of the day before, but we do not necessarily remember John Denham’s distinguished and measured contribution on the day of the debate.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman reminded us that public opinion at that stage was in favour of war, and those of us who spoke against it from the SNP, Plaid Cymru or Liberal Benches were not given a particularly easy time. I looked at the contribution that day of Charles Kennedy, who was barracked throughout his speech against war. “Chamberlain Charlie” was one of the more printable epithets, and the “toast of Baghdad” was flung at some of us who opposed the war.

I say that not just to make the point that Members such as the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe and others who argued against the war have been vindicated, but also to remind people of the nature and context of the debate we were engaged in. There are only 179 Members in this Parliament who were Members of Parliament on 18 March 2003; a little over a quarter of Members of this Parliament were present and voting in that debate. It is as well that people remember and understand the context if we are to understand the failings of parliamentary democracy—not of referendums, but of parliamentary democracy—that the votes on Iraq that day illustrated.

I have been checking the record, and I think I can honestly say that I do not think I have ever quoted The Times in 30 years in this place, off and on, but I will quote it today, because I thought its headline and first paragraph on the Chilcot report last Thursday absolutely hit the mark. Under the headline “Blair’s private war”, it wrote:

“Britain fought an unnecessary, disastrous and potentially illegal war in Iraq because of Tony Blair’s misguided and personal commitment to George W Bush, the Chilcot report concluded yesterday.”

It would be impossible to read the Chilcot report without looking at that personal level of accountability as well as the wider context of the legality.

The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe started his speech by saying that this was not all about Tony Blair, but the rest of his speech illustrated why it is in fact very largely about Tony Blair. I want to quote from the executive summary of the Chilcot report, but these points are backed up enormously in the full report. On pages 58 and 59, Chilcot goes through the sequence of decision making between December 2001 and the immediate onset of the war. It would appear that if those decisions were the product of sofa government, it was a very small sofa indeed. Crucial decisions about the strategies and alliances involved were made by the Prime Minister and only a very few of his advisers. Chilcot finds that not even a Cabinet Committee discussed the crucial decisions listed on pages 58 and 59. The list starts with:

“The decision at the beginning of December 2001 to offer to work with President Bush on a strategy to deal with Iraq as part of Phase 2 of the ‘War on Terror’, despite the fact that there was no evidence of any Iraqi involvement with the attacks on the United States or active links to Al Qaida.”

It goes right through to:

“A review of UK policy at the end of February 2003 when the inspectors had found no evidence of WMD and there was only limited support for the second resolution in the Security Council.”

All those crucial decisions were made without reference even to a Cabinet Sub-Committee and without a range of colleagues in the Cabinet being consulted.

When the former Deputy Prime Minister concluded last weekend—in a way that Chilcot was not allowed to do, either because of his remit or because of the lack of specialisms on the inquiry—that the war was illegal and apologised for it, he should actually have been apologising for the fact that all this was allowed to happen through a sequence of decisions taken over 15 months by one individual, the Prime Minister, and his advisers without any account being taken of any kind of collective responsibility.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Does Chilcot not also say that that form of government should be described as a “professional forum”, and that it should not be regarded as just advisers and cronies? Was not that the specific point of the evidence that Lord Turnbull gave to Chilcot?

[Alex Salmond]

I am dealing with the findings of Chilcot—

[Steve McCabe]

So am I.

[Alex Salmond]

The report states:

“The Inquiry considers that there should have been a collective discussion by a Cabinet Committee or small group of Ministers on the basis of inter-departmental advice agreed at a senior level between officials on a number of decision points”.

That is in paragraph 409 on page 58, if that helps the hon. Gentleman.

[Steve McCabe]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Alex Salmond]

I have answered the hon. Gentleman’s question. If he will let me continue, perhaps I will give way again later—

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

I remember the events that we are discussing very well. They took place during my second Parliament as an MP, and they were not really the sort of stuff that I thought I had come here for. I remember how seriously people in and around the House discussed the issues in the run-up to the vote. I recall intense debates with colleagues and friends both inside and outside Parliament and, of course, I recall friends coming to different conclusions. According to my recollection, no one treated the issue lightly, and I do not think there is anyone who does not regret the loss of life. However, as one of those who were here at the time, and as someone who voted for the war, I take the view that we must all take some of the responsibility. We must bear some collective responsibility.

The only Cabinet resignation that I recall was that of the late Robin Cook. All the others stood firm and stayed on board, so they had a collective responsibility as well. While I understand that some folk are desperate to pin all this on one man, it is hard to see how that stands up in those circumstances. Of course there are legitimate criticisms and lessons to be learned, and I certainly accept the point about “sofa” versus Cabinet government, but Lord Turnbull actually said that he was talking about a style of government, and he also said in evidence that it was a “professional forum” and he was not talking about a bunch of advisers and cronies getting together. He was very clear about that, but it was not the impression that was given earlier.

Obviously one of the big lessons is about intelligence. I acknowledge that the Government have taken a significant step forward in that regard, but it is appalling to think that M16 knew that one of its principal sources of intelligence was a fraud, and chose not to share that with the Government before the vote. We should never let that sort of thing happen again. As for war planning and post-invasion planning, and what we have just heard about equipment, there are clear lessons to be learned, but they are not just lessons for politicians. They are lessons for intelligence officers, for the Ministry of Defence, and for senior military figures.

Part of the purpose of the Chilcot report is to enable us all to learn lessons. The tragedy is that if it is reduced simply to an attempt to pin it all on one man, we will not learn many lessons. If, after 13 years, the best outcome is a contempt motion, where will we end up? Will we end up back here saying, “What about the late Baroness Thatcher? We have found out some more details about the Belgrano”—or the Gibraltar assassinations—“so let us table a motion on that”? Will we end up saying that the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr Cameron) should be hauled back because of some new revelation, or apparent revelation, about Libya? I do not think that that is what we should be trying to do.

I recognise that Tony Blair is a Marmite figure, but we did have a parliamentary vote to go to war. It was not all down to him. Nowhere in the report does Chilcot accuse him of misleading Parliament, and I really do not think that we should use this House to try to settle old scores or enmities. We should be better than that. We need to recognise the risk that will be posed in the future, when there are difficult choices to be made, if we get this wrong. Real political leadership is not about settling scores, scoring points or addressing rallies; it is about taking really tough and difficult decisions. We should be very careful in our response to Chilcot, because if we get this wrong, we could put ourselves in a situation where the new Prime Minister, and any future Prime Minister, will be frightened to make a brave decision.

It is possible to make a brave choice and make the wrong choice, and we all know with the benefit of hindsight that there are elements of the Iraq situation that we would deal with differently, but if we turn this into a simple exercise of trying to pin the blame on one man in order to settle longstanding scores, we will do nothing to advance our ability to deal with difficult conflict situations in the future. This House needs to be bigger than that.