Report of the Iraq Inquiry

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry]

There is continuing debate about the matter. As long as we can be confident that a decision made in this House will not need to be taken off to the courts, for the judges, eventually, to decide whether we go to war—that would be entirely inappropriate—and as long as we can keep control of any such legislation so that it ensures that, where possible, the Government will come to Parliament and allow us to express our view, I think that that is right.

I understand that this is the system that we have at the moment, but I am concerned that although the convention continues to develop and strengthen as time goes on, it is still in the gift of the Executive to decide whether they will bring the matter to Parliament. There is an argument for putting the convention on a more formal footing, but there is the danger of court intervention. It is a moot point, and something that we must continue to look at.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s strategic lesson in the modern combat capability of Her Majesty’s armed forces. I was interested in her description of the use of special forces in almost-combat capability. Having served with various parts of Her Majesty’s forces in the past, I know that most foreign deployments are considered to be near to combat even if they are in a training role, because of the pressures on them. It is a very novel interpretation to suggest that hybrid warfare may not continue to exist.

We are getting into a rather bizarre discussion, if the hon. Lady will forgive me for saying so, on the strategy and use of the armed forces, when surely the focus should be on the legality and the appropriateness of the deployment. It might be best to stick to the areas that the House is qualified to talk about, rather than to dress up as armchair generals and pretend that we know what is going on in different areas.

[Emily Thornberry]

It is important that we look to tomorrow’s problems. Special forces are likely to be used increasingly. On the idea that we will send, for example, special forces into Libya in a training capacity, I agree with the hon. Gentleman about how that might end up a quasi-combat role. Presumably, if the training forces are in Libya, they will be in a camp. They may be in a part of Libya that is allegedly safe, but they will need to be guarded. Who will guard them? We can see how it is possible to slide down a slippery slope. At the moment, although it would be inappropriate in the case of a decision to send special forces or trainers into an area, if we can have parliamentary scrutiny of our secret service—if the behaviour of MI5 and MI6 is at least answerable to a Committee of this House—it is not beyond our wit to allow there to be similar accountability over special forces. I have written about this issue.

[Emily Thornberry]

I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary for making that point. I do not expect special forces, before they are used, to have to go before a Committee of Parliament and get permission, but I do think that there should be some form of accountability and some explanation. It was embarrassing, and it demonstrated the democratic deficit in relation to hybrid warfare, to read in the papers that the King of Jordan was gossiping with Congressmen in America about our special forces, when nobody in this House had officially been told about it. That highlights the democratic deficit in this country. We should learn lessons from Chilcot. We should learn lessons about accountability and about not simply trusting the Executive to get a decision right. We should make sure that there is more accountability, and that we are on our toes. We must be prepared to modernise our structures as necessary to reflect the changing nature of warfare in the 21st century.

Let me go back to my speech. I talked about the development of hybrid warfare and new mechanisms for holding the Executive to account, and I believe that all parties should work together on that. Another point was raised about American-British relations. Chilcot made it clear that American-British relations would not have been harmed had the UK not joined the US-led coalition. Chilcot argues that that was not a basis for joining the invasion. In my view, that is another lesson that we have not learned. In 2013, pressure from the United States played a major role in the Government’s rush to intervene in Syria. It became obvious that the US Administration’s efforts to persuade Congress to back intervention hinged on the Prime Minister’s success in persuading Parliament to do so. Speaking after our House declined to support the action in Syria, the then Defence Secretary—now the Foreign Secretary—said that the vote would “certainly” damage the Anglo-American relationship. In my view, the relationship has endured. We have got over it without any adverse consequences, and it serves as a reminder that our alliance with the United States rests on stronger foundations than an expectation of unquestioning British compliance with American wishes.

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Lady speaks of the special relationship, and I would be the first to acknowledge that the relationship with the United States goes much deeper than one incident or one vote, but is it not also valid to listen to the words of various American generals, including General Jim Mattis, who, as she knows, commanded Centcom? After the vote, he pointed to the damaging impact that it would have on the enduring commitment and understanding between the US and British militaries. Does she recognise that just as that special relationship is made up of many threads, undermining it thread by thread will weaken it?

[Emily Thornberry]

I am sure that some American generals were disappointed that Harold Wilson would not agree to British involvement in Vietnam, but we got over it and our relationship is strong enough to endure differences of opinion. If we are to be good friends, it is important to recognise that good friends trust each other enough to disagree at times. The 2013 Syria vote made it clear that Parliament understood that; it also suggested that the Government did not. That is why it is such a tragedy that cuts to the Foreign Office budget have weakened Whitehall’s institutional knowledge of the world. It is important for our leadership role in the world to have proper understanding of it, and for hundreds of years we have had an insight into the world that other countries have not had. We have a leadership role, and we can have a voice that is different from that of the Americans because we will have a different understanding. To have 16% cuts in the Foreign Office year on year, and a hollowing out of our institutional knowledge, has in my view been a tragedy.

[Tom Tugendhat]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

Two months, says my right hon. Friend. They delayed the invasion to give the British more time to get through this convoluted legal stuff—I use sarcastic words of the kind the occasional impatient American used at the time—before they could join in. The problem was that the Americans, although they went to the UN and got resolution 1441 and all the rest of it, began to lose patience, seeing that this could go on forever, and it reached the stage where they were going to invade in March 2003. They could not wait any longer. The Blair Government—those who knew what was going on—had to speed the thing up a bit, realising that if they were not careful, they would fail to get there in time.

One thing that surprises me in the Chilcot report concerns the advice the Government got from the Joint Intelligence Committee, which eventually produced enough intelligence that was plausible and no doubt believed by those putting it in the reports for the Attorney General to be persuaded—obviously quite reluctantly—that there probably was a basis for going ahead. The urgent debates then took place in this House, the last one being about two days before the date when everyone knew the troops, already in battle positions in the middle east, were about to go ahead with the operation.

We should learn the political lessons from all that. One of the first lessons relates to the ever-increasing rush to get into the position of being able to invade lawfully, so that everybody wanted to be persuaded that various things were correct and that various steps had been taken. If they had submitted themselves to slower, more challenged and more careful consideration, however, it would have led to a different conclusion.

What, then, is the outline of the main political lessons to be learned from all this? First, the American alliance should not be entered into blindly. Let me say briefly that I am as passionate a believer as Tony Blair that our alliance with the United States is crucial to this country’s future security and role in the world. There is not a trace of anti-Americanism in what I am saying; our alliance is one of the most valuable features of our foreign policy. That does not mean, however, that we should allow ourselves to go along blindly and always—right or wrong—with what the American President of the day wishes to do. I take that no further, but we might have a President Trump, so it is a question worth bearing in mind. I agree with the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) that the American alliance will not be destroyed—it might be damaged for a month or two—if we do not absolutely go along with what the American President wants us to do.

Let me move on to something that is clear in Chilcot—though I have not made the point much myself—and was plain to see in how the Ministry of Defence behaved at the time. The advice of our defence chiefs is hugely important, and I share the support for and pride in them that keeps being expressed in these debates. Yet—subconsciously, I am sure—they always want to take part in any military activity that the Americans want them to join. It might be considered advice, but it always comes down to “We must ask the Americans to let us make as big a contribution as we can”. A trained military man is trained for the purpose of using military force in the national interest and further worthwhile objectives, and cannot help thinking, “This is our moment; this is the great action in which we must take part.”

It is the same with the intelligence services. They prize their relationship with the Americans above all other relationships they have with the outside world. They are dependent on co-operation in some ways, but they are anxious to please and to do what they think their American colleagues wish them to do. In this particular case, we had a Prime Minister and a Government who wanted to enter the war, so everybody was extremely anxious to find the facts, to be convinced of the situation and to enable the Prime Minister to go ahead and do what he wanted. That is an essential point, but it requires a simple politician like me to make it; it does not appear in the pages of the Chilcot report. When one is raising one’s eyebrows at what happened, I think that that answers a lot.

Particularly at the time we are talking about—and sometimes still today—there were not enough diplomats involved. There was not enough looking at the expertise of the Foreign Office. We had a lot of Arabists. The Americans had some, but they got rid of most of theirs and brought people in who had been involved in the Nicaraguan episode because they were seen as being ideologically more sound. Americans did not like the Arabists we had in the Foreign Office because they kept complicating things by talking about tribes and different sorts of Muslim, which the policy makers in Washington thought were irrelevant to the new era of western democracy in which they thought they were going to take the country.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

[Mr Clarke]

I am sorry, but I do not have the time.

I shall not go on by adding more to the strictures about the Attorney General—[Hon. Members: “Go on!”]. The Attorney General was obviously giving the right advice. I am sitting alongside someone who was a very tough Attorney General—my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve)—who would not give the advice that eager Prime Ministers sometimes want, and neither would Michael Havers or quite a few others I recall being in government with. As has been said, that is what the Attorney General is for. I know Lord Goldsmith and he is perfectly all right. He must have felt so exposed in the end that he gave into the temptation to say, “Well, it’s just about lawful; it is just about satisfactorily proved.”

I am sorry to have taken a little longer than I intended, but let me conclude with my main point. The big thing that matters—and it matters very much as we are having a change of Government today—is how the Cabinet and Government processes come into the equation. What about accountability to Parliament? It was obvious at the time, obvious if anyone listened to what the Foreign Secretary said publicly, obvious in what half the Labour party said and obvious from listening to officials that Cabinet Government was not working properly in Tony Blair’s Government. He went in for sofa government. Margaret Thatcher got keener and keener on sofa government towards the end of her time, but Tony Blair had taken it to an art form by the time he got into issues such as Iraq. It was the same with Parliament. There was a reluctance to come to Parliament. Both were essentially seen as hurdles to be surmounted. Once you had your policy, how were you going to get it through the Cabinet and how were you going to get it past Parliament?

My suggestion for the future is that we should all agree that that is not the mindset that people should have. They should set the proposition, and, of course, advocate it to the Cabinet, and then, with the benefit of proper information, they should listen to it being debated and examined by those who have time to do so. Similarly, Parliament should be consulted when it can be, and given proper information. One should not rely on clever timing of the debate and the work of the Whips to get it through and afterwards say that there is a democratic endorsement. I have no time to apply all my strong strictures to the circumstances of the time, but I think that, if read with my arguments in mind, the Chilcot report feeds the impression that I had then, as someone who participated in debates.

Military action is difficult. There is no point in politicians being lightheartedly irresponsible and saying, “We have got to be involved in every decision.” There will be occasions when that is not possible. There will be occasions when someone has just attacked a British interest, and we have to fight back. You can tell the Cabinet and you can tell Parliament afterwards, and any sensible Cabinet and any sensible Parliament will of course endorse it. But this was not an emergency. For two years our allies had told us that they were going to invade Iraq. It had been planned. It had been worked on. It had been discussed. The reason there was not full Cabinet discussion, and the reason there was not timely parliamentary debate, was that someone who did that might not get it by them. We did not start debating the issue until Parliament until February 2003, and the final, key vote took place when the troops were in the field. That put a lot of Conservatives off the idea of voting against it, when they might otherwise have done so. Our boys were about to go into action, the next day—which is what occurred.

Some of those matters have been addressed. The National Security Council is a hugely beneficial innovation introduced by my right hon. Friend the outgoing Prime Minister, who is probably already the ex-Prime Minister. Now is not the time to debate it, but it still needs to be improved. It has not covered everything, although it is a lot better than it was. As for Cabinet government, I think that my right hon. Friends should ask themselves— if they are still in office under the next Prime Minister—whether they can ensure that adequate time is given to discuss things, and adequate information is given in advance. Cabinet government does not mean moving quickly from item to item; people must have some papers beforehand so that they can consider the issues properly.

The National Security Council is very valuable, because it contains defence and intelligence people alongside the politicians. I genuinely congratulate the outgoing Prime Minister: some of the best discussions in which I participated took place in the National Security Council, with my total approval. However, although I may be too sensitive, I think that it could be improved sometimes. There are occasions when a fait accompli is brought there and explained to you, and the defence and intelligence people explain why you should agree, and off you go.

I think it right to look into why we might have avoided what happened in Libya. The whole history of the middle east and north Africa involves our removing fascist dictatorships of the most poisonous kind from country after country, and then being surprised when they have been replaced by a situation that is, in some instances, even worse than the one that we have removed. A continuing answer to that problem needs to be sought, although at present we may have to confront even bigger problems.

I began by saying that this was the biggest foreign policy disaster of my time. We all have to ask why the institutions of the United Kingdom failed even to develop a hint of that. It was not particularly courageous for the House to vote in favour. Opinion polls showed that 70% of the British public supported the invasion. For the first week or two it was extremely popular. Had we held a referendum, which is now the fashionable way of governing the country—compared with this old-fashioned parliamentary democracy—it would have sailed through with an enormous majority. The danger of following opinion polls is shown by the fact that a year later I could not find a member of the public who had ever met anybody who agreed with the invasion of Iraq, because in the light of better information people suddenly realised it had been a terrible error.

There are Members sitting here now who were here at that time. I remember the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) organising some of the opposition on the day I spoke in February. We voted against it, and we spoke against it. Needless to say, I have looked at my speech, and I am very sad to say that I think I predicted quite a lot of the consequences and what would happen. We all agree that, “Never again if we can avoid it,” but this is a big subject and it is no good reading the report and just saying we should have a look at the intelligence arrangements; we should have a look at other arrangements as well, such as the way our Government are run, the way this Parliament organises itself, and how we get sensible accountability to the House of Commons the next time the Government have to engage in such difficult decisions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I declare an interest in this report because I served in the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and along with many colleagues from all parties in the House—some of whom are not here today—I was proud to serve my country and to stand with many enormously honourable men and women who did their best in very difficult circumstances.

I will not fight over and again the battles being fought this afternoon about Tony Blair and his guilt or otherwise, because I would rather move forward and speak about the United Kingdom’s strategy and how on earth we got ourselves into a position that meant we were so clearly acting against our own national interests. We seem to have got into a position where the only answer was to be as close as possible to the United States, and to use force at a time when other options were available. The only answer seemed to be to follow the wishes of a Prime Minister who, although he sounded powerful at the time, was clearly too weak to invite challenge, even in his own private Cabinet. For me, those are the real worries—how could we have got to that stage? There are, of course, many reasons for that, and Chilcot lists them. Today, the question is how we get out of that.

The National Security Council, introduced by the previous Prime Minister, was an excellent invention, and I look forward to our current Prime Minister taking it forward, and introducing to the various Departments that contribute to the NSC the elements that feed into it. In my former Department—I mean that as an employee rather than as a Minister, although the Prime Minister may yet call; the evening is young—the Chiefs of Staff Committee established an impressive group by going back to an old idea.

In the period between the two wars, the Chiefs of Staff Committee invented a group constantly to challenge the Treasury, the Foreign Office, and other Departments, so that they could be prepared should the worst happen. That meant that, although those Departments were not as ready as we would have liked, at least in 1939 the 10-year rule that the Treasury had imposed was no longer in force, and we were re-arming and able to defend ourselves against Nazi aggression. That Committee was reformed in the Ministry of Defence under the former Chief of the Defence Staff, General Richards. That is great, but other Departments have done less well. I will not run through them, but it seems incumbent on those who have the authority to command embassies, aid work and armies, also to be responsible for ensuring that the strategies they prepare and advise Ministers to follow are right for the United Kingdom, and not just expedient for a quick relationship with the US.

I very much welcome what my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) said about the Truman doctrine. He is right, but the Truman doctrine should not be simply a reassertion of Westphalian principles. It must today be updated with the concept of the Responsibility to Protect that the UN has made so clear over the past few years. It is right that we avoid Iraq, but it is also right that we avoid Rwanda or Srebrenica. The great error of Iraq is that it did exactly the reverse of the right to protect: it put people in greater danger. This did not happen everywhere. The Kurdish communities were often better defended because they were armed. The reality, however, was the spread of insurgency and trouble. It is hard to argue that we improved the situation, although it is very difficult to know whether we made it worse.

As we move on from that period, it is incumbent on us to consider the legal aspect. We have been talking today about the legality of the war and holding the leader in contempt, but I would like to look closely at how we hold soldiers to account. The spread of lawfare into combat zones has changed the nature of command dramatically in the past 50 to 60 years. The concept of combat immunity has been increasingly eroded. Young lieutenants and young corporals, junior leaders in the armed forces who took decisions at the age of 19, 20 or 21 in the heat of battle, are being tried today, five or 10 years later, in the cool of the courtroom. They are being tried by people who do not and cannot understand the pressures on them at that time and at that moment. They are being held to account in a way that is not only unfair but immoral. It is we here in this place who hold the responsibility for war, not the young men we send.