Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee

Steven Paterson Excerpts

Thursday 16th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jenkin]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his work on the Committee, and I respect that we differ on the report. I appreciate the emphasis he wants to make by declining to support the report, but it is open to the House at any time to refer any matter to the Committee of Privileges. There is a procedure for doing that, and he should try to implement it if he thinks there is a case for doing so.

The difficulty, as the Chilcot inquiry said, is that there are two interpretations of all this and that there is no definitive evidence to suggest culpability or that the former Prime Minister deliberately sought to mislead the House. There are lots of lessons to be learned. As an aside, for the House to be able to make an informed decision, it relies entirely on what the Government tell it. We are in a new era in which the House is consulted about such things, which never used to be the case. We used to have rather more retrospective accountability on such matters, rather than forward accountability, and I question whether such forward accountability works. I do not think the House of Commons is competent to make strategic judgments on the spur of the moment and in the heat of a crisis in the way that a Government should be.

[Steven Paterson (Stirling) (SNP)]

As a new Member in 2015, what struck me about the whole Chilcot experience was the unacceptable delay. As the hon. Gentleman just said, we in this place want to take educated decisions, based on evidence, so for us—and more so for the families of the soldiers who died—the length of time it took to produce the report was unacceptable. He made welcome recommendations about having a stricter remit and stricter timing for such inquiries. How can we take that forward in this House to make it happen? Do we need to have a vote on it, or is it in the Government’s gift to do or not do this?

[Mr Jenkin]

Ultimately, it is in the hands of this House, subject to whipping and all the pressures that are put on it, to decide how inquiries are conducted. If the Government are setting up an inquiry that this House does not like, this House can stop it; we are a sovereign House and that is what we should do. I agree so much with the hon. Gentleman’s comment that the length of time this took was unacceptable. Indeed, we make the point that it undermined not only the credibility of the inquiry, but the very confidence in public institutions that it was intended to try to restore. It did not serve the purpose that this House might have wanted it to serve because it took so long, and of course it was grievous torture for the families of those who had lost life and limb in this conflict.