Report of the Iraq Inquiry

Stuart Blair Donaldson Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We are going to study the report very carefully to see what other lessons can be learned, but some of the early lessons are about processes, procedures, legal advice, national security councils and the use of intelligence information. A lot of those have been learned, but as I have said there are still more things to be discovered, and I commit to making sure that we learn those lessons.

[Stuart Blair Donaldson (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (SNP)]

At 24 years old, I am the second youngest Member of this House. Many of the 179 service personnel who were killed in Iraq were under the age of 24, including 14 servicemen and women who were 19 or under. I commend their bravery and their sacrifice. What specific assurances can the Prime Minister give to the families of those brave young men and women that the disastrous decisions that led to their deaths will not be repeated and that those who made those decisions will be held to account?

[The Prime Minister]

First, I thank those families for the service and the sacrifice of their children. We should genuinely praise the work that everyone in our armed forces did. We have to separate some of the decision making, the lessons learned and the problems from the military action. These people were serving their country in a cause that had been sanctioned by this House of Commons, so we should not in any way denigrate their memory, because they were doing what they believed in, which was serving their country. The most important thing we can do for all their memories is to digest the report, learn the lessons and put in place better decision-making procedures for the future.