Iraq Inquiry Report

Debate between Tom Brake and Roger Mullin

Thursday 14th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

I think we will all be going off to see what is in The Sun as soon as this debate is over. May I thank the hon. Members for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) and for Gravesham (Mr Holloway) for providing us with some personal experiences that relate to the debate, and the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) for securing it?

Today is perhaps not the day to go back over what happened as long ago as 2003 in relation to the Iraq war, but I will take the opportunity to remind people that when Charles Kennedy was leader of the Liberal Democrats we unanimously voted against the Iraq war in the Lobby—there were no exceptions—doing so on the basis that we thought the weapons inspectors should be given more time and that there was no UN backing for the action. The Iraq war still took place and many Members have cited statistics about it: the 179 British service personnel killed in Operation Telic; and the 4,000 to 5,000 UK casualties. There is a huge range of Iraqi casualties, with figures varying from 150,000 up to as high as 1 million. Clearly, we will never know the true figure.

The Chilcot inquiry was eventually set up to look into the detail and discuss this issue. In an intervention, the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who is no longer in his place, said that he thought Tony Blair should have “Iraq” tattooed on his forehead. Tony Blair does not need to have that done, because his visage is sufficient to remind people of his involvement and the action he took that led us into that war.

The remit of the Chilcot inquiry talks about examining

“the United Kingdom’s involvement in Iraq, including the way decisions were made and actions taken, to establish as accurately and reliably as possible what happened, and to identify lessons that can be learned.”

Clearly, there will, to some extent, be a focus on the individuals involved, but what worries me is that we are not yet in a position to identify the lessons that can be learned from the Iraq war because we have not yet had the inquiry report published. Since the Iraq war we have had the first involvement in Libya, and I am sure that had the Chilcot inquiry been published it would have helped with the decisions taken on that. It was not available when we were dealing with the Syria situation either.

Perhaps the report will be available for us on any proposal for the UK Government to be involved in further military action in Libya. I was worried that Parliament might be—I was going to say bounced but perhaps that is not the right word—advised at short notice about a debate where the Government would seek Parliament’s permission to get involved in further military operations in Libya. It seems that that possibility has receded, given that the Libyan Government have recently stated that they are not currently seeking that, but it may be something they seek in the future.

The Chilcot inquiry might also be able to flag up the risks of mission creep, particularly in relation to Libya, because although it is clear that many UK drone strikes are taking place in Syria and Iraq, it is not clear whether that is also happening in Libya, and there is a risk of further mission creep associated with that. Clearly, it would have been helpful to Members of Parliament who do not necessarily have access to the detailed briefings to have had the Chilcot inquiry published and available for us to refer to.

Another thing that worries me about the Chilcot inquiry is that it has gone on for a very long time but it is not entirely clear why that has been the case. Some have suggested that it was perhaps a lack of staff, although I know that Sir John Chilcot has said that he thought that when he wanted the extra staff he would get them, so perhaps it was not that. I know that some people have said that it was down to the Maxwellisation process, although I know other people who have been very closely involved who say that that is not the case. It is completely unclear what has led to this report taking seven years, so far, to not be published. I am not calling for an inquiry into the inquiry, but I hope that at some point someone will make it clear precisely where the weaknesses with the model were so that in future—if there is another inquiry into our involvement in Libya, for instance—we will follow the right path and not simply repeat the mistakes of the Chilcot inquiry.

For instance, the Maxwellisation process is probably something that, in any future inquiry, we would want to allow in respect of people at least having access to documents and being able to comment on them. Perhaps that has been taken advantage of to extend the process, but we simply do not know.

[Roger Mullin]

On the point about Maxwellisation, people such as myself who, in other lives, have written reports in academia and the like are at times puzzled by this process. It is one thing to get people to comment on the accuracy of facts, but it is entirely another thing to give people the opportunity to comment on the interpretation of those facts. The big concern that many people, including me, have is how this report from Chilcot can be truly independent if he allows people to challenge his interpretations.

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that sound intervention, and perhaps in future inquiries what he has suggested, which is an ability to respond to the facts, will be what is required, rather than a response to the interpretation put on them. If that process was followed, we might get a much snappier report. I think we would all welcome that. As a number of Members have highlighted, the difficulty is that the longer this goes on, the weaker people’s memories are. The information that is available tends to disappear and as each month goes by we get less and less of a clear picture of what happened, as opposed to a clearer and clearer picture.

Some have suggested that the Leveson model of inquiry might have been more appropriate. If we consider how long Leveson took to report—it started in July 2011, and the first report was published on 29 November 2012, so it took 18 months to produce a 2,000-page document—we can see that it was certainly a snappier inquiry. I know that today’s debate is not on the subject of the Leveson inquiry, but I would like to take the opportunity to suggest that the Minister conveys to the Prime Minister in the strongest possible terms that we still expect the recommendations of the Leveson inquiry to be implemented, as we do Leveson part 2, and that that has not been forgotten and will not be allowed to go away.

Perhaps the Leveson model provides an answer in relation to Chilcot, but my final point is that, as others have indicated, we are now seven years on and are still waiting to know the full facts about Iraq. The families of service personnel, and particularly the 179 families affected by the deaths of our personnel there, need closure and will not get it until everything is in the public domain. As others have said, I hope that given the length of time and the Maxwellisation process, any redactions, if there are any, will be extremely limited, as it has already been through a significant sifting process that does not require any further deletions. Any further slippage in the deadline for publishing Chilcot will add insult to injury, which is why we need to know that the two-week period that has been mentioned is one that the Government will hold to, and nothing should be used as an excuse to hold it up further. I cannot fathom the suggestion that the EU referendum has some sort of bearing on this. I cannot see in what way it would affect this.

It is time that the Chilcot inquiry was published and it is time that people got the truth.