Hansard Debates text for
Tuesday 20 Jul 2004
Volume No. 424 Part No. 123
Oral Answers to Questions [20 Jul 2004]
Iraq
[Relevant documents: Third Report from the Defence Committee, Session 2003–04, HC 57, Lessons of Iraq, and the Government's response thereto, First Special Report of that Session, HC 635. Minutes of Evidence taken before the International Development Committee on 14th July, HC 918-i, on Iraq: the role of humanitarian agencies in post-conflict situations.]
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Margaret Moran.]
2.29 pm
The Prime Minister (Mr. Tony Blair): I shall start with the Butler report and then move on to a more general discussion of Iraq.
I said at the outset last week that I fully accepted Lord Butler's conclusions, and there are now four things that I would like to announce as a result. First, there is an urgent need to fill the post of Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and I have therefore asked Mr. William Ehrman, currently acting as a deputy chair, to take over the chairmanship of the JIC on an interim basis. He is currently director-general for defence and intelligence in the Foreign Office, but he is expected to take up a further ambassadorial appointment next year. Meanwhile the Cabinet Office will set about the task of making a permanent appointment, to take effect during 2005. That will be done fully in accordance with Lord Butler's criteria.
Secondly, prior to the war, meetings were held with an informal group, including the Foreign and Defence Secretaries, the Chief of Defence Staff, the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, the chairman of the JIC and my foreign policy adviser. In any future situation, such a group, which brought together the key players required to work on operational military planning and developing the diplomatic strategy, will operate formally as an ad hoc Cabinet Committee.
Thirdly, the SIS has appointed a senior officer to work through the findings and recommendations of the Butler review, who will focus on the resourcing and organisation of the SIS's validation process, the relationship between the SIS and the JIC and its relationship with the Defence Intelligence Staff. We welcome the fact that the Intelligence and Security Committee will monitor progress in those areas.
Fourthly, any future presentation of intelligence will separate the JIC assessment and the Government case and import any JIC caveats into it. We accept those conclusions and will act upon them.
I want to move on now to the quite different point that by omitting the caveats, we set out to deceive people—[Interruption.]
Harry Cohen (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab): Before my right hon. Friend moves on, will he pick up the points made by Brian Jones, the senior defence analyst, who said that he was not given the opportunity to see what was described as "compelling new evidence", which turned out to be extremely important. Presumably, as a result of that, my right hon. Friend was not given the chance to see Mr. Jones's objections. The responsibility for not showing the new evidence falls to the head of Defence Intelligence Staff and his deputy,
who presumably did see it. That information has since been withdrawn from the dossier, so should not the head of those services and his deputy now resign?
The Prime Minister: For the reasons that Lord Butler gives in his report, my hon. Friend is right in saying that the Defence Intelligence Staff should show such documents in future—and this may well be one of the changes that takes place. I would say to my hon. Friend that none of the disagreements that Dr. Jones had with specific items in the dossier actually came to the JIC or the Government. That is not to say that they were not important, but the fact is that they did not come before the Government. As a result of the changes that we intend to make, such a thing will not happen again in future.
Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD) rose—
Mr. Alex Salmond (Banff and Buchan) (SNP) rose—
The Prime Minister: I shall come to the right hon. Gentleman in a moment. Let me make one other point to my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen), which I will elaborate in greater detail later. The intelligence—I will take the House to the JIC assessments in a moment—really left little doubt about Saddam and weapons of mass destruction. That was the issue—[Interruption.] I am going to read the JIC assessments to the House. The intelligence left little doubt about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction and made it absolutely clear that we were entirely entitled to go back to the UN and say that there was a continuing threat from Saddam Hussein.
Mr. Beith: Dr. Jones minuted his concern on the matter that has just been referred to. The Intelligence and Security Committee recommended that there should be a clear and formal procedure to ensure that such a minute reached the Joint Intelligence Committee, which it did not do in this case. Will the Prime Minister go a little further than he did when he responded to the ISC by making it clear that there is such a procedure, that staff know what it is and that important notes of dissent must be seen by the JIC?
The Prime Minister: Without presuming exactly what the SIS and DIS will come to as an understanding of what should go to the JIC, I would have thought that what the right hon. Gentleman said follows naturally from the Butler report. In those circumstances, it would be sensible for such notes of questioning—it is important to remember that the whole of the dossier was not questioned by any means; only a particular part of it—to go to the JIC.
The Prime Minister: I am going to make some progress first.
Much has been made of the fact that one JIC assessment said that intelligence was "sporadic and patchy". Let me just take the House to the JIC assessment on page 163 onwards of the Butler report. Let me say first of all that this was the JIC assessment
of March 2002—in other words, six months before the dossier was actually produced, and there was, of course, more intelligence produced in the meantime. Let me quote the paragraph more fully. It states:
- "Intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction . . . and ballistic missile programmes is sporadic and patchy."
- "Iraq is also well practised in the art of deception such as concealment and exaggeration. A complete picture of the various programmes is therefore difficult."
- "But it is clear that Iraq continues to pursue a policy of acquiring WMD and their delivery means."
If we move on to the 9 September JIC assessment, we see precisely the same. Again, criticism was made of the fact that I said that it was "beyond doubt" that Saddam Hussein had WMD and that the intelligence picture in the dossier was "extensive, detailed and authoritative". I simply refer people again to those key judgments. The first judgment was:
- "Iraq has a . . . chemical and biological weapons capability",
The point that I want to make is this. That was the assessment that we were getting from the JIC. To hear much of the talk now, we might think that it was a startling assessment which people found odd at the time. One might have thought that people would say that it was curious, that they did not know about Saddam and that type of thing. Actually, that was the view of the entire international community, then expressed in resolution 1441. It followed 12 years of Saddam Hussein's WMD programmes, defiance of the UN, concealment, discovery and military action—in 1998, for example. No one doubted that he had intent, programmes and actual weapons and was therefore in breach of UN resolutions.
Mr. David Cameron (Witney) (Con) rose—
Lynne Jones (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab) rose—
The Prime Minister: I wanted to make some progress, but I will give way to my hon. Friend and come back to the hon. Gentleman later, if he will forgive me.
Lynne Jones: On the eve of war—not six months, nine months or 12 months before—the Attorney-General required the Prime Minister to be satisfied that there were strong factual grounds and hard evidence that Iraq was not in compliance with resolution 1441. Was the
Prime Minister in no doubt that such strong factual grounds and hard evidence existed at the time? If so, why?
The Prime Minister: Yes, I was, for the very reason that I have just given in citing the JIC assessments. I also have to say to my hon. Friend and other hon. Members that Lord Butler's report has been discussed as if he, Lord Butler, actually found that there was no WMD threat from Saddam Hussein at all, but he did not find that. I refer people to paragraph 41 of Lord Butler's conclusions, where it makes it clear that Saddam had the strategic intent and the illicit procurement of materials and was developing ballistic missiles in defiance of UN resolutions. In other words, it would have been entirely open to us, even on this evidence, to say that he was in breach of UN resolutions.
Clare Short (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab) rose—
The Prime Minister: I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman, then to my right hon. Friend, and then I am going to make some progress.
Mr. Cameron: In view of what the Prime Minister has said, why does he think that Lord Butler concludes in paragraph 465 that it was
- "a serious weakness that the JIC's warnings on the limitations underlying its judgements were not made sufficiently clear in the dossier"?
The Prime Minister: Yes, of course I take responsibility for that, but I remind the hon. Gentleman that Lord Butler also finds that, in general, the dossier reflects the JIC assessments. I ask hon. Members to read those assessments, and to imagine for a moment that they are the Prime Minister receiving them—[Interruption.] I know that only a limited number of people will think in that way. On the basis of the assessments, it would be concluded, clearly, that Saddam Hussein was a WMD threat, and that he had intent, programmes and actual weapons. That much is clear from what is said in the assessments.
I give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short).
Clare Short: I am grateful to the Prime Minister, but the aim of the resolution was to secure disarmament, backed by the threat of force authorised by the UN. It was supported by the whole international community because there was a general sense that the regime was trying to acquire WMD and the means of their delivery, and that there was a threat that was so urgent that we could not allow Blix to complete his job. That divided the international community, with all the consequences that flowed from it. Where did my right hon. Friend get that information? Why was Blix not allowed enough time? Butler does not suggest that there was any reason for that judgment.
The Prime Minister: I shall deal with that point, which is important. Some of the discussion has proceeded on
the basis that we published the dossier on 24 September and went to war on 25 September. We did not: the dossier was not the basis on which we went to war, but the basis on which we went to the UN. That is what we did. As a result of going to the UN, we got resolution 1441—which, incidentally, accepted on behalf of the whole international community that Saddam Hussein was a WMD threat who had to be dealt with. People may ignore that now, but that is precisely what the resolution said.In resolution 1441, we said that there had to be full compliance—I think that the word "unconditional" was used—with the UN inspectors. The plain fact is, there was no such compliance. To answer my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood directly, I agree that it would have been better to let the inspectors have more time, provided that we had a UN resolution for them to operate under which laid down a clear ultimatum to Saddam that action would follow if he did not comply with the benchmarks that I agreed with Hans Blix at the time. However, as I think I explained to my right hon. Friend at the time, the problem was that some other countries made it clear that they would not accept any resolution containing an ultimatum.
There is no way that Saddam would ever have allowed the inspectors back in without the troops down there. The House should recall that he refused to have inspectors in Iraq for four years, and only let them in because the troops were down there. We knew that he was not complying properly with the UN resolutions. How did we know that? Because that is what the UN inspectors told us in their reports to the UN.
I therefore pose this question: without an ultimatum that says, "Here is what you have to do. If you do not do it, action will follow", does anyone seriously think that Saddam would have complied? I strove hard to secure a second resolution, and thought that we could have got it. I tried to set the right benchmarks. I said to the Americans at the time, "We need more time to let Blix do his work, provided that there is an ultimatum." If we had had no ultimatum, the result would have been simply a continuation of what we had been doing for 12 years. That is, we would have allowed Saddam a certain amount of leeway, he would have made a few concessions and then carried on with his original intentions.
Mr. Mike Hancock (Portsmouth, South) (LD) rose—
Clare Short: Will my right hon. Friend give way again on that point?
The Prime Minister: I will give way again to my right hon. Friend, as it is important to deal with the point that she is making.
Clare Short: In his book, Dr. Blix makes it absolutely clear that the majority of the Security Council, including the non-permanent members and France, Germany and Russia, were willing to have benchmarks and a deadline, and to say that inspections should not continue. However, they were not willing to accept a resolution that meant that Britain and the US would decide whether that resolution had been adhered to. My right
hon. Friend threw away the possibility of united international action on the request for automaticity. That is the reality of the situation.
The Prime Minister: I am always a little worried by what people say in books after the event, as opposed to what actually happened at the time. I have no doubt that I will repeat that on many occasions in the future. However, one thing that my right hon. Friend is saying is simply wrong. France would not accept any ultimatum. That was said to me on the telephone, and it was made clear publicly.
I think that I am right in saying that France did not agree the benchmarks at the time, but let us suppose that we had got over that problem. I agree that, with negotiation, we might have succeeded in securing the benchmarks. Yes, they might have contained a timeline for Blix to carry on his work, but without an ultimatum, there was no real chance for people to believe that Saddam would have acceded to our demands.
I think that it would be instructive for people to go back and read the debate of 18 March 2003. That debate was not about the dossier, which was barely mentioned, but about the consequences of resolution 1441. At the time of the debate, we knew that Saddam was not complying with that resolution properly, and that we could not secure another resolution with an ultimatum in it. So what were we to do? We could have backed away—or we could have decided to make sure, this time, that Saddam was incapable in the future of developing WMD, as he had every intention of doing. I still think that we made the right decision.
Mr. Hancock: Will the Prime Minister give way?
Mr. Malcolm Savidge (Aberdeen, North) (Lab): Will my right hon. Friend give way?
The Prime Minister: I will give way to the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock), and then to my hon. Friend. Then I must make some progress, or no one else will have a chance to speak.
Mr. Hancock: I am grateful to the Prime Minister, who has been extraordinarily generous in giving way. Will he confirm that, between the dossier's publication and this country's entry into conflict, he was receiving ongoing intelligence assessments, on much of which there could be no collaboration? Did any senior member of the British intelligence service advise the Prime Minister that he should be cautious about the interpretation that he placed on the evidence of the intelligence community, in this country and the US?
The Prime Minister: The JIC assessments are set out in Butler. However, the UN resolution accepted as a fact that Saddam was a WMD threat. Once that was secured, the question was whether we would enforce the UN resolutions, or not. Our intelligence community—like the UN and, as far as I am aware, most intelligence services in the world—certainly believed that Saddam had WMD weapons, capability and intent.
The Prime Minister: I said that I would give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Savidge), but then I must make progress. I am sorry about that.
Mr. Savidge: I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way. Am I not correct in thinking that Dr. Blix communicated to the Prime Minister the fact that the inspectors believed that they were getting a far greater degree of co-operation than ever before? Admittedly that was under the pressure of a military threat, but does that not mean that it could have been worth giving the inspectors time to complete their job and to prove what we have now found?
The Prime Minister: At some point I may go into all the detailed conversations that I had with Dr. Blix. However, the basic position was that the inspectors told me that there was some co-operation, but that there was not full co-operation. The problem is that that is precisely what the Iraqi regime had offered before. If one goes back over the 12 years of Saddam Hussein and of the whole saga with the UN, one finds that it was not the case that he never co-operated with the inspectors. From time to time, he would co-operate, usually when there was a threat of military action.
I remember that it was in February 1998 that we first gave Saddam a strong and clear indication that military action would follow if he did not co-operate. As a result, he started to co-operate a bit more, and there was an elaborate dance throughout the rest of the year. Finally, in December 1998, the inspectors were not able to get access to some of the places that they wanted to see. They left, and effectively we took military action to try and do what we could to deal with the threat that was posed.
Saddam Hussein, however, was never prepared to co-operate fully—and I think that the reasons for that are to be found in the Butler report. Whatever the truth in respect of readily deployable weapons was, part of the trouble is that people have gone to the opposite extreme. They say that there was nothing there at all, and that there was no threat. That that was not the case is absolutely clear, and some of the intelligence remains entirely valid. It was absolutely clear that he had every intention of carrying on developing those weapons, that he was procuring materials to do so and—for example, in respect of ballistic missiles—he was going way beyond what was permitted by the United Nations.
I return to the central point. There was little doubt about the breach of UN resolutions, and in the debate on 18 March 2003 the House rightly took the view that there was no way that he would co-operate fully, and therefore that we had to take military action.
Mr. Michael Howard (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con): The Prime Minister appears to be leaving the question of what he told the country about the intelligence. He has referred, briefly, to the Joint Intelligence Committee assessments. They all make it clear, in terms, that the intelligence on which they were based was sporadic,
patchy, little and limited. Why did the Prime Minister say that the intelligence was extensive, detailed and authoritative?
The Prime Minister: The right hon. and learned Gentleman must have been asleep earlier in the debate, for which I apologise. The phrase "sporadic and patchy" appeared in the assessment dated 15 March 2002. He keeps trying to suggest that it appeared in the later assessment: it was not. It was in the earlier assessment. In the assessment of 9 September 2002, it does say that the intelligence remains limited, but the JIC then goes on to make its judgments. If necessary, I shall read them all out to the House—[Hon. Members: "Yes."] All right.
- "Iraq has a chemical and biological weapons capability and Saddam is prepared to use it."
- "Faced with the likelihood of military defeat and being removed from power, Saddam is unlikely to be deterred from using chemical and biological weapons by any diplomatic or military means."
- "we judge that . . . Iraq currently has available, either from pre Gulf War stocks or more recent production, a number of biological warfare . . . and chemical warfare . . . agents and weapons",
- "even if stocks of chemical and biological weapons are limited, they would allow for focused strikes against key military targets or for strategic purposes (such as a strike against Israel or Kuwait)".
I must say to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that it is absurd to suggest that anyone, given that JIC assessment, would have said, "Saddam Hussein? Weapons of mass destruction? I don't think that's much of a problem."
Mr. Howard: The Prime Minister knows perfectly well that that is not what I was suggesting. He has read out the conclusions of the assessments: I am asking about the nature of the intelligence on which those conclusions were based. The assessments were themselves stated to be on the basis of intelligence that was "sporadic and patchy", "little" and "limited". The Prime Minister told the country that the basis of the intelligence
- "is extensive, detailed and authoritative."—[Official Report, 24 September 2002; Vol. 390, c. 3.]
The Prime Minister: I do not accept that that was wrong. I do not want to read it all over again, so—even better—I shall read what the right hon. and learned Gentleman said—[Interruption.] Well, I have to say to Opposition Members that the judgments of the committee are the key things. If it judged that Iraq had a WMD capability and actual weapons, what Prime Minister would have said, "That may be what the committee judges and concludes, but I am going to come to a different conclusion"? Imagine what would have happened afterwards had the threat materialised.
I raise what the right hon. and learned Gentleman said because in the past few days he has tried to suggest that somehow the Conservatives—no, that is unfair, because many Opposition Members voted for the war on the basis that they did, and still support the war. I understand that, so I shall deal specifically with the right hon. and learned Gentleman. I do not often read the Kentish Express, but on this occasion I have done so. On the day of the debate on the war, he said:
- "Why is Saddam Hussein a threat to us here in the United Kingdom? Four years ago Iraq had tons of anthrax and the nerve agent VX. These deadly materials are easily transported and easily hidden. There has been no convincing explanation as to what has happened to them."
I come to what the right hon. and learned Gentleman said after the war. I read the other day some of the things that he said to the News Corporation in March this year—after the Hutton report and after all the issues had been raised. I have managed to find out a little bit more about that speech. He said:
- "We must remember that it was not the overthrow of Saddam that spawned terrorism and instability. Quite the reverse. It was the failure of the West to act decisively again and again in the late 1990s, in the face of threats and provocation, that emboldened the terrorists and the rogue states. That failure must never be repeated . . . The war against Iraq was necessary. It was just. It was, indeed, arguably overdue. And, let us not forget, it was overwhelmingly successful—a judgement which subsequent difficulties do not change."
- "Of course . . . Iraq has become the frontline in the War against Terror . . . I have no doubt that if the West maintains its resolution, Iraq will be a much better place than it was under Saddam."
It is time the right hon. and learned Gentleman realised that shabby opportunism is not the solution to his problem: it is his problem. The public will respect people who were honestly for the war and they will respect people who were honestly against the war: they will not respect a politician who says that he is for and against the war in the same newspaper article.
Mr. Jonathan Sayeed (Mid-Bedfordshire) (Con) rose—
Dr. Julian Lewis (New Forest, East) (Con) rose—
The Prime Minister: I give way to the hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis).
Dr. Lewis: I am one of those people who supported the war before, during and after it, and I continue to do
so. What I do not support is the discrediting of our intelligence services by the exaggeration of the intelligence that was available. Will the Prime Minister tell the House why GCHQ, our largest intelligence agency, is barely mentioned in the Butler report? Was there any signals intelligence and, if so, what was it and why was it not mentioned in the report?
The Prime Minister: I cannot answer that last question, but I shall find the answer and tell the hon. Gentleman. It is unfair to say that of our intelligence services. They do a fantastic job for this country and the judgments that they made were thoroughly justified on the basis of the intelligence at the time. The hon. Gentleman rightly and fairly said that he would still support the war. So would I, because not all the intelligence has turned out to be wrong. If what Lord Butler says in paragraph 41 is correct, there is ample justification in the breaches of UN resolutions. In the light of what we know, is it really credibly claimed that it would have been better to leave Saddam Hussein in power in Iraq in circumstances in which—as we know perfectly well—he had every intention of carrying on with his WMD ambitions?
Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham) (Con) rose—
The Prime Minister: I shall give way to the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow).
Mr. Bercow: Given the real statesmanship that the Prime Minister showed in March last year in recognising the need to combat Saddam and in prosecuting a necessary war—which is to his enormous and lasting credit—is he prepared to concede that he made any errors?
The Prime Minister: Of course, which is why I said, at the very beginning, these are the things the Butler report identified that we should change. I fully accept those things. What I do not accept is that it was a mistake to go to war. It was the right thing to do and I still believe it was the right thing to do.
As for Iraq itself, let us agree on this: our armed forces have been superb. They fought the war brilliantly and they are conducting the peace brilliantly. Today, we should thank not only them but also their families, who have supported them through these long months.
Never let us forget what Iraq was: a brutalised state, run by a mixture of terror and execution. Never let us forget either that, for all the difficulties, Iraq now has the prospect of progress. It is true that the terrorism continues. Incidentally, occasionally reports of civilian casualties read as though they were somehow caused by the coalition, but as far as I am aware the civilians who have died in Iraq in the past year have been overwhelmingly the victims of terrorist attacks. The terrorism is to an increasing degree, according to the Iraqi Government, the work of outside terrorists.
I draw the House's attention to paragraph 483 of Lord Butler's report, which I do not think got much publicity on the day, where he describes not active co-operation between al-Qaeda and Saddam's regime, but
links between al-Qaeda and Iraqi officials, as well as the fact that prior to Saddam falling, al-Zarqawi moved into Baghdad and set up sleeper cells with the possibility, as we now know, of conducting terrorist attacks. That much of the intelligence has been all too accurate.
Mr. Beith: To be activated during US occupation?
The Prime Minister: Before the United States went to Iraq.
We know that Iraq's curse is terrorism and the battle for security, but given some of the coverage about what is happening in Iraq at present, we should also recognise that the blessings from the fall of Saddam are indeed great. The money from Iraq's oil, expected to be about $18 billion a year, now goes to help Iraq and not Saddam and his family and his WMD ambitions. There is a proper currency. According to the International Monetary Fund, the economy will grow this year by 33 per cent. Public sector salaries have trebled in many cases. The schools and hospitals are open, and are now not just for Ba'ath party members. There are free media.
It is also worth pointing out what our troops are managing to achieve in Basra. In Basra province alone, there will be about 35 local elections over the coming weeks. The first, in az-Zubayr last week, resulted in the election of three women to the council; that was a proper, democratic election.
A proper courts system is being introduced. Six Iraqi Ministers are women and one in four of the delegates to the Assembly next year will be female. There is freedom of worship. Shi'as formerly prevented from visiting holy shrines are now able to do so.
None of that means that Iraq will be built easily; of course it will take time, as it has done for any country in similar circumstances over the years. Today, however, Iraq at least has a future within its grasp, and although it is correct that the liberation of Iraq from Saddam was not the legal case for war, it was, as I said frequently at the time—indeed, most notably in the debate on 18 March—why we should go to war with a clear conscience and a strong heart. Removing Saddam was not a war crime; it was an act of liberation for the Iraqi people.
Mr. Robert Marshall-Andrews (Medway) (Lab): Will the Prime Minister give way?
Mr. Speaker: Order. The Prime Minister is not giving way.
The Prime Minister: Of course, in the short term, the problem of security and of cleaning up the utterly degraded country that was Saddam's Iraq is a huge challenge, but one thing that people have missed is that the very scale of the challenge says an immense amount
about the scale of Saddam's misrule and the threat he posed. Such a country ruled by such a tyrant should never be allowed anywhere near weapons of mass destruction. Any risk of his developing or using them was a risk never worth taking, and in the conflict today I ask the House how there can be any scintilla of hesitation about which side—
Mr. Marshall-Andrews: Will the Prime Minister give way?
Mr. Speaker: Order. The Prime Minister should be seated. I have already told the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) that the Prime Minister is not giving way.
Mr. Marshall-Andrews: I am grateful, Mr. Speaker.
The Prime Minister: That makes two of us.
I repeat that there should be no scintilla of hesitation about which side we should be on.
Mrs. Alice Mahon (Halifax) (Lab): Will the Prime Minister give way?
The Prime Minister: No, I am sorry. I am sure that other people want to speak in the debate.
On one side are assorted former Saddam gangsters, religious extremists and terrorists; on the other are the Iraqi people, the outside coalition and the United Nations. To me, the interesting thing is that the terrorists know what is at stake. Why do people think al-Qaeda is in Iraq? Why are al-Zarqawi and Ansar al-Islam there? I believe they are there because they know it is the front line in the war against terrorism today, and they know that for the same reason as we should know it: if they succeed, Iraq cannot prove to the world that democracy is for the middle east, too, and that religious tolerance is what most Muslims, as well as Christians, want. It cannot show that Arab and westerner can live in harmony. But the terrorists know also that, if they fail and Iraq succeeds, Iraq will hold out hope not just to millions of Iraqis but throughout the region and the wider middle east.
So whether we are for the war or against it—or even somewhere in between—today's struggle is one in which no one should be neutral. That is why the new Iraqi Government and our British troops and British civil and public servants, doing their job in Iraq alongside our allies from the United States and elsewhere, deserve our total support.
Mr. Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con): Will the Prime Minister give way?
The Prime Minister: No, I am sorry.
If people read the letter from Dr. Allawi, published only the other day, they will see that he set out the authentic voice of Iraq and its future—what Iraq can now become.
Whatever mistakes have been made, my view is: let us rejoice that Iraq can indeed have such—[Interruption.] Yes, let us be pleased that Iraq is liberated and can have such a future and let us now work together, whatever the disagreements of the past, to help it secure that future.
3.7 pm
Mr. Michael Howard (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con): There is no more awesome responsibility for a Prime Minister than the decision to take the country to war, and that is what we are debating today. As we discuss these issues, I join the Prime Minister in paying tribute to the thousands of British servicemen and women who still face the daily challenge of bringing peace to Iraq. We are indeed all enormously proud of them and of their families. We remember those from our country, and from others, who were killed or injured, including the very many Iraqis who have suffered. It is part of our responsibility to ensure that those sacrifices were not made in vain.
There are three issues before the House this afternoon: first, the justification for the war; secondly, what happened after the war; and, thirdly, what the country was told before the war.
On the justification for the war, there are many areas of agreement between the Prime Minister and me. We both believe it was the right thing to do. Saddam Hussein was a real threat to peace in the region. He had indeed acquired and used weapons of mass destruction in the past and he had the potential to do so in the future. He had flouted a whole series of United Nations Security Council resolutions.
Many people in the House and in our country did not support the war. I respect their sincerely held view but ultimately I do not agree with them.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff, West) (Lab): Many of us who voted against the war certainly respect the views and good faith of those who voted in favour of it, but what are we supposed to make of someone who says he was, and still is, in favour of the war, yet wishes he had voted against it?
Mr. Howard: Let me remind the hon. Gentleman that he voted against the motion. Let me remind him and the House of what the motion before the House on 18 March said—[Interruption.] I voted for the motion, but as it may be some time since hon. Members read it, let me remind them of what it says. That motion began by recognising that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles posed a threat to international peace. It went on to support the Government's decision to use all means necessary to ensure the disarmament of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Now, we know that those weapons were not there. The Prime Minister said so last week. So of course it is the case that, had I known then what I know now, I would not have been able to vote for that motion.
Mr. Speaker: Order. The Prime Minister got a proper hearing. Allow the Leader of the Opposition to get a hearing.
Mr. Howard: I am replying to the point raised by the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan). I do not see how any hon. Member, had they known then what we know now, could have voted for that motion. I do not see how the Prime Minister could have voted for that motion. That does not mean that I do not think that the war was justified—I do, as I have repeatedly made it clear.
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab): I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way. I commend the Leader of the Opposition for what he said on 19 March this year:
- "Whatever my disagreements with Tony Blair, any government that I lead will not flinch in its determination to win the War against Terror, wherever it has to be fought."
Mr. Howard: I stand by entirely what I said on 19 March. Indeed, I would not flinch, but I happen to think that the reasons why we vote in the House are of some importance. I happen to think that the wording of the motions on which we vote are of importance. That is why I have said what I have said about the motion that was before the House on 18 March.
Mr. Speaker: Order. Please allow the Leader of the Opposition to speak. Is he giving way to an hon. Member?
Mr. Howard: I give way to the hon. Member for Watford (Claire Ward).
Claire Ward (Watford) (Lab): If the right hon. and learned Gentleman believed at the time that he voted for the war that Saddam Hussein was a threat, had used weapons of mass destruction against his own people and, given any opportunity, would do so again, why has he changed his view? Is it simply because the bandwagon of opportunism came along and he jumped on board?
Mr. Howard: The hon. Lady ought to look at what the motion that I voted for said. That is the point that I am raising.
Mr. Sayeed: I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for giving way. He knows that many supported the war in the belief that there was an imminent threat from missiles carrying weapons of mass destruction and that articles appeared in the Standard and The Sun supporting that interpretation. Indeed, The Sun headline of 25 September read, "Brits 45 minutes from doom." So, first, does my right hon. and learned Friend know whether anyone associated with the Government
briefed the Standard or The Sun on that interpretation of the dossier and, secondly, as senior Ministers knew that such an assertion was wrong before the debate on 18 March that authorised war, should not a Minister have come to the Commons and explained that that assertion was wrong?
Mr. Howard: I am coming to the 45-minute claim later on in my speech.
Mr. Speaker: Order. Far too many hon. Members are standing. Allow the Leader of the Opposition to continue with his speech.
Mr. Howard: I shall give way once more, and then I must make progress.
Kali Mountford (Colne Valley) (Lab): I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way, but on the subject of the motion voted on in the House, does he accept that many hon. Members had a wide range of views on why we voted for war? On his view on WMD, does he not accept that Butler himself said that it would be foolish to assume now that WMD do not exist?
Mr. Howard: Butler says that, but very few people—[Interruption.] Well, does the hon. Lady seriously think that weapons of mass destruction will still be found in Iraq? That is the question. Does the Prime Minister still think that weapons of mass destruction are still likely to be found in Iraq? Of course not. That is why I say that, if we had known then what we know now, we would not have been able to vote for the motion that was before the House on 18 March. I am now going to make progress. [Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker: Order. I call for order once again. I may ask the hon. Member for Doncaster, North (Mr. Hughes) to leave the Chamber. In fact, I might demand that he do so.
Mr. Howard: I have acknowledged that there are many people who do not share my view that the war was justified, but despite our differences, I think that most hon. Members agree that the people of Iraq—I agree with the Prime Minister—are far better off now that Saddam Hussein has gone. We know that we must now see this through, and the prize of a stable and sustainable Iraq is well worth striving for. Like the Prime Minister, I believe, too, that while enormous challenges remain, real progress has been made in Iraq, but we must all acknowledge that, since the overthrow of Saddam, mistakes have been made and some of them have been serious.
One of the most serious mistakes was the failure to prepare for the aftermath of the war. Six months before the war even began, we were pressing the Government to draw up a plan for post-war Iraq. Everyone knows that there was no such plan. The Iraqi army and police were disbanded with nothing to take their place; borders were not made secure; and there was a collapse of law
and order in Baghdad. No one is suggesting that there were easy answers to those very difficult problems, but it would have been less difficult if there had been a plan.
Clare Short: I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way. I think that it is now a matter of record that there was a detailed plan in the State Department—very detailed, lengthy and considered—but it was swept to one side when responsibility was given to the Pentagon, which had made insufficient preparation. That is what really happened.
Mr. Howard: I quite understand the basis on which the right hon. Lady says what she says. It is certainly true that the responsibility for the failure to draw up a plan does not rest with the British Government alone, but in the run-up to the war, the British Government were in a position of great strength. We were by a long way the second largest contingent in the coalition forces. We had stood shoulder to shoulder with the United States. We were in a position to make our voice heard. We were in a position to insist in the circumstances described by the right hon. Lady that a proper post-war plan was prepared and put into action. We should have done so, but we did not. Had we done so, I believe that at least some of the difficulties that have arisen in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad could have been avoided.
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): Has my right hon. and learned Friend seen the evidence of Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who says:
- "with hindsight the proper preparations were not made for what evolved on the ground in Iraq . . . relative deficiency in analysis and prediction of what was going to happen created effects in the immediate post-conflict period which allowed a much worse security situation to evolve than should have been the case"?
Mr. Howard: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding me of that. He is, of course, quite right and so was Sir Jeremy Greenstock.
Few of us would doubt that the most appalling and deeply damaging thing that has happened since the fall of Baghdad was the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison. It was deeply humiliating for the victims. It has done long-lasting damage to the reputation of the west, and it has gravely undermined our moral authority. The circumstances surrounding the timing and extent of the British Government's knowledge of what had gone on are covered in confusion. Just over two months ago, when the story broke, the Prime Minister assured the House that neither he nor his Ministers were aware of those allegations. [Interruption.] Labour Members may not be interested in what went on in Abu Ghraib prison, but their constituents will be and those Members should be. The assurance that the Prime Minister gave was wrong. We now know that the Minister responsible at the Foreign Office was told about the allegations nearly two months earlier at a meeting with the president of the Red Cross, so the Foreign Office Minister knew but the Prime Minister did not know and was not told. Why not?
That was not the only issue that the Prime Minister did not know about. He did not know that vital evidence was kept from Lord Hutton's inquiry. In February, he assured the House:
- "Everything that was relevant to the inquiry was made available to Lord Hutton . . . I do not believe that there is anything that we concealed from that inquiry".—[Official Report, 4 February 2004; Vol. 417, c. 768.]
Mr. Howard: I want to finish this point.
We now know as a result of the Butler report that two crucial intelligence reports on chemical and biological weapons, to which the 45-minute claim related, had been withdrawn in July 2003. MI6 knew that, the Joint Intelligence Committee knew it but Lord Hutton was not told. The Intelligence and Security Committee was not told and apparently the Prime Minister did not know. Why not?
Mr. Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op): In retrospect, when the right hon. and learned Gentleman thinks about the intelligence, does he think about what Lord Butler said—that the intelligence services were totally under-resourced, that that affected their performance and that under-resourcing went back to when he was a member of the Cabinet in 1995, when the Conservative Administration cut the intelligence services' budget by 25 per cent?
Mr. Howard: I am afraid that the Government whom the hon. Gentleman supports have been in power for seven years. If there were anything that needed to be put right, they have had ample time to put it right. I do not see how that excuses the failure to tell Lord Hutton's inquiry and the Intelligence and Security Committee about the fact that the intelligence had been withdrawn, which we now know from the Butler report.
Mr. Gordon Prentice (Pendle) (Lab): Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Mr. Howard: No. I want to make some progress.
MI6 knew that the intelligence had been withdrawn. The Joint Intelligence Committee knew that the intelligence had been withdrawn, but Lord Hutton was not told. The Intelligence and Security Committee was not told and again, apparently, the Prime Minister did not know. Why not?
Nor did the Prime Minister know that the 45-minute claim only referred to battlefield weapons and not to long-range missiles, a fact that we only discovered thanks to careful questioning by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Richard Ottaway). The Prime Minister was forced to admit then that, unlike the Secretary of State for Defence, he did not know and had not been told. Why not? Why was it that the Prime Minister did not know and was not told any of those vital things?
Part of the reason for that serial ignorance stems from the way in which the Prime Minister runs things. On that issue, the criticisms made by the Butler committee are damning. As Lord Butler says, important decisions should be taken after "informed, collective political judgment". Lord Butler also points out that
- "without papers circulated in advance it remains possible, but it is obviously much more difficult, for members of the Cabinet to bring their political judgment and experience to bear on the major decisions for which the Cabinet as a whole must carry responsibility".
- "I'm astonished to learn from the Butler Report that there were papers prepared for us but never circulated to us and I would like to know why".
- "the informality and circumscribed character of the Government's procedures . . . reduce the scope for informed, collective political judgment",
We should be clear about the implications of all this. This way of decision taking is not accidental. It is not a coincidence. It is the result of a deliberate set of decisions by a Prime Minister who thinks that he does not need, and certainly does not want, informed collective political judgment.
Mike Gapes (Ilford, South) (Lab/Co-op): I refer the right hon. and learned Gentleman to paragraph 611 of the conclusions of Lord Butler's report, which states:
- "We do not suggest that there is or should be an ideal or unchangeable system of collective Government, still less that procedures are in aggregate any less effective now than in earlier times."
Mr. Howard: I think that, if the hon. Gentleman reads on and comes to the last paragraph of the recommendations, he will find that the picture presented is somewhat different.
The consequences of all this are there for us all to see. That leads to the third issue at stake today: what the country was told in the run-up to the war. Last week, I set out in the House the contrast between the intelligence available to the Prime Minister and what he told the country. I did so in the context of what he said on 25 January:
- "the issue vis-à-vis my integrity is: did we receive the intelligence and was it properly relayed to people?"
The other issue vis à vis the Prime Minister's integrity, in his own words, is: was the intelligence "properly relayed to people"? In March 2002, as has been pointed
out, the Joint Intelligence Committee said that the intelligence was "sporadic and patchy". In August that year, the Joint Intelligence Committee said that it had "little intelligence". In September, it said that the intelligence was "limited", yet on 24 September 2002 the Prime Minister told the House that the picture painted by the intelligence services was "extensive, detailed and authoritative".The Prime Minister read out from the conclusions of the reports. The question is: what was the intelligence basis for those conclusions? Was the intelligence on which those conclusions were based patchy, sporadic, limited and little, or was it, as he told the country, "extensive, detailed and authoritative"? There is an enormous difference between the two and he has yet to explain, and he certainly did not explain this afternoon, the basis for his statement. Nowhere in the reports of the Joint Intelligence Committee was there any basis for the Prime Minister's assertion that the intelligence was "extensive, detailed and authoritative".
Mr. Howard: I have given way very generously and I want—
Mr. Speaker: Order. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is not giving way.
Mr. Howard: That is why the Prime Minister's credibility is at stake today. As I said last week, I hope that Britain will not face another war in the foreseeable future but, if we do, and the Prime Minister identified the threat, the question remains: would anyone believe him?
Mr. Speaker: Order. The Leader of the Opposition has said that he is not giving way.
Mr. Howard: We all know now that, when it came to the Iraq war, the qualified judgments of the intelligence services became the unqualified certainties of the Prime Minister. Last week, I asked the Prime Minister to explain exactly why. He studiously failed to answer that question, and he has refused to answer it again today. I think that this House and the country deserve an answer. We are entitled to know why the Prime Minister said what he did.
The Prime Minister says that he accepts full personal responsibility for the way in which the issue was presented and for any errors that were made, but what does that actually mean? He still has not told us what errors he thinks he has made. He has not told us why he made them, and he has not told us what steps he has taken to ensure that they will not happen again. Without answers to those vital questions, how can this House be sure that those lessons will be learned and that the things that went wrong will be put right?
Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire) (Con): I am most grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for giving way. Is he saying to the House that he believes that he and I, and those who voted as we did on 18 March 2003, were deliberately deceived?
Mr. Howard: I will answer my hon. Friend. I think that the Prime Minister thought throughout that he was acting in the best interests of the country. I have absolutely no doubt about that, but what he told us about the basis for the intelligence was different from what the intelligence told him. Before I can answer my hon. Friend's question, I want to know how that difference came about and why it came about. When the Prime Minister has answered that question—I have put it to him several times, and he has yet to answer it—I will be able to answer the question put by my hon. Friend.
It is now clear that, in many ways, the intelligence services got it wrong, but their assessments included serious caveats, qualifications and cautions. When presenting his case to the country, the Prime Minister chose to leave out those caveats, qualifications and cautions, and as a result, the country was given a misleading impression of what the intelligence services had said. So why will he not just come clean? Why will he not tell us why he did it? Why will he not just give the country the facts?
The Prime Minister once said that he was a pretty straight kind of guy, but he has not been straight with the British people today. Why is it that, for this Prime Minister, sorry seems to be the hardest word?
3.32 pm
Mr. Charles Kennedy (Ross, Skye and Inverness, West) (LD): The immediate background to both the Butler report and today's debate remains a war that we did not believe was necessary, that we could not support and that we believe has gone on to do lasting international damage to our country's interests. That is our fundamental starting point, however deep but none the less principled the disagreements may be with the Government.
Whatever our respective viewpoints were about this war, none of us can ever erase the fact that the lives of brave and loyal British personnel and civilians have been lost, and as we have seen again in the past day or two, they continue to be lost, along with the lives of countless—and, perhaps most disgracefully of all, uncounted—Iraqi civilians. That legacy will never be forgotten.
Our principal point of disagreement and departure from the Government's position over the war was clear from the outset, and remains clear. Our issue is: were the political judgments involved the correct ones, and were we led into the war on what constituted a false prospectus? We believe that those all-important political judgments were the wrong judgments and that the case for war was fatally flawed. The justifications that were presented at the time, and the way in which they were presented, are the fundamental point of dispute. The central core is that issue of political judgment, and in the aftermath of the war we have all witnessed a profound loss of public trust in both the Prime Minister and his Government, very largely as a result.
In so many respects, Lord Butler's report has raised as many questions as it has answered. I do not find that highly surprising, given the very specific, tightly drawn remit that was set for Lord Butler by the Prime Minister himself. The fact that the Prime Minister specifically excluded a proper public assessment of those political judgments led me and colleagues to conclude that we should not participate in the work of the report. Indeed, the Prime Minister put it to me across the Floor of the House when he announced the setting up of the Butler inquiry that
- "to subcontract to some committee the issue of whether it was right or wrong to go to war is not merely wrong: ultimately it is profoundly undemocratic."—[Official Report, 4 February 2004; Vol. 417, c. 755.]
In the run-up to the war, I repeatedly asked the Prime Minister at Question Time what, if any, circumstances would lead him into support for, or indeed opposition to, a US-led invasion of Iraq that did not have the explicit sanction and mandate of the United Nations. As hon. Members of all parties will recall, he refused ever to address that question directly. Looking back over the events of the past 18 months and the various reports, including the Butler report, that the events have spawned, given the immense and unprecedented lengths to which the Government went to try to win over an understandably worried public, I find it hard to believe that the die for the war had not been cast a considerable time before.
Mr. George Foulkes (Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley) (Lab/Co-op): Does the leader of the Liberal party agree that failure to take action against dictators should come under equal scrutiny? Does he agree that if we had failed to take action, Saddam Hussein would still be there, murdering and killing?
Mr. Kennedy: I draw the right hon. Gentleman's attention to the words of his leader on 25 February 2003 in the House of Commons. The Prime Minister spoke of the very regime to which the right hon. Gentleman referred and said of Saddam:
- "I detest his regime—I hope most people do—but even now, he could save it by complying with the UN's demand."—[Official Report, 25 February 2003; Vol. 400, c. 124.]
Mr. Kennedy: I shall leave Labour Members to square their own consciences with that of the Prime Minister.
We know from the revealing account given by the distinguished American journalist, Bob Woodward, that for the Bush Administration, the desirability of regime change in Iraq had been in place and much
favoured since President Bush took office, so my first question to the Prime Minister is quite simply this: did he advise President Bush privately—long before the United Nations route was formally abandoned—that if the President decided to prosecute an invasion of Iraq, the British would be in active military support, come what may? If he did advise the President to that effect, when did such an exchange take place? That was fundamentally important at the time, and remains so to this day.At the time, the Prime Minister said that he reached the final conclusion that war had become inevitable only the weekend before the hostilities commenced.
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Jack Straw): That is true.
Mr. Kennedy: The Foreign Secretary says that that is true, and I do not doubt him. However, surely the extraordinary and prolonged build-up on all fronts over many months—militarily and diplomatically—must suggest that other considerations were also in mind. Indeed, the Ministry of Defence, with its duty to the Government of the day, in addition to its duty to serving personnel, must calculate for all possible contingencies. It would be illogical, apart from anything else, to suppose that it did not have at the back of its mind the fact that the political die might well have been cast.
The second issue that arises in that context, as the Government moved towards preparing and publishing the dossier on weapons of mass destruction, is the blurring of roles, acknowledged by Butler, that took place between principal advisers to the Prime Minister and the then chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, the person who had assumed ownership of the report's contents. As Lord Butler observed, assessment and advocacy became conflated as a result. That should never have happened and, given what the Prime Minister said at the beginning of his speech, one assumes that it will never happen again, either under the new interim chair of the JIC or, indeed, under any of his longer-term successors. I welcome that acknowledgment from the Prime Minister.
Butler goes on to say that all of that was shot through and compounded by the informality of style that is an apparent hallmark of the Prime Minister. That style may have served him well on many occasions, but it cannot have served him or the rest of us well on an issue of such profound importance as the decision to take this country into war. So again I welcome the return, which has been acknowledged, to a more formal, minuted and civil-service driven approach on issues of this nature in future.
We know that critical caveats were removed or altered for the dossier as a result of the interplay between No. 10 and the intelligence chiefs. The effect was to maximise the persuasive force of the dossier itself. At the beginning of his speech, the Prime Minister said that he wanted again to respond to the allegation that the Government had deliberately sought to mislead us. I hope that whatever our differences, as far as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), myself and other colleagues are concerned, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and others will acknowledge that we
have never made that allegation, and we do not make it today. Our differences were distinct but open. We did not allege motives that we did not think were there.On the patchiness and sporadic nature of the intelligence that Butler refers to—frankly, I shall leave the earlier exchanges on that to speak for themselves—it is clear that the ultimate responsibility for the final words in the dossier rest with the Prime Minister, even if, as the Government argue, it was not the case for war, but the case for drawing people's attention to the directness of the threat, although that does not look so direct now.
Mr. Foulkes: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Kennedy: If the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I want to make progress.
Lord Butler was asked to conduct an inquiry into systems. As such, he concludes that the critical failings were of a collective nature, so he does not seek to apportion individual blame. Yet surely the court of public opinion is looking for something more definitive. When the Prime Minister made a statement on the Butler report last week, anyone who watched the evening news bulletins cannot have failed to be moved when they listened to the relatives of the forces personnel who have been killed in Iraq describe how people seem to carry the can in Washington, yet all these mistakes are made in all parts of our system—there is a big question mark over whether we needed to go into this war in the first place—and no one carries the can except those who have paid the ultimate price.
Kevin Brennan: The House is listening carefully to the right hon. Gentleman. He has been careful all along to say that he does not underestimate the good faith shown by the Prime Minister throughout the proceedings. Can I take it from what he says that that is still his position?
Mr. Kennedy: I have just said so, so the answer is yes.
Mr. Kenneth Clarke : The right hon. Gentleman generously accords with the judgment of good faith, and I think that I am persuaded by it. However, does he acknowledge that good faith can involve a certain amount of self-persuasion that what is being done is in the legitimate public interest? Can he suggest what legitimate role Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell played when they discussed the presentation of the intelligence to the public, which was nothing other than presenting the world as policy makers would wish it to be, rather than the world as it actually was?
Mr. Kennedy: The right hon. and learned Gentleman, in his various senior incarnations under various Conservative leaders, will have had more experience of the trials and tribulations of such conversations in and around No. 10 Downing street than myself. Where he and I share a direct experience with the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and, going back a number of years, Lord Heseltine, of the omnipresence of Mr. Campbell is in a meeting on the eve of the launch of Britain in Europe. On that occasion, we saw that Mr. Campbell was more
than capable of a conflation of assessment and advocacy, which leads me to believe that that could well have fed through to another occasion such as the one we are talking about.Last Friday, Dr. Blix said of the Butler report:
- "My main reflection on reading the Butler report was to share its regret (termed surprise in the report) that the UK and other countries did not reassess their intelligence in the light of the inspection reports of UNMOVIC."
- "I think the Prime Minister, as I would say the US President, should have been able to tell before the war that the evidence did not exist for drawing the conclusion that Iraq presented a clear, present and imminent threat on the basis of existing weapons of mass destruction. That was not something that required a war."
Mr. Marshall-Andrews : Will the right hon. Gentleman attempt to answer a question that I was going to put to the Prime Minister, who can at least listen to it, even if he cannot answer. The right hon. Gentleman referred to a passage in Lord Butler's report that deals with the assurance given to the Attorney-General that the Prime Minister was certain that Saddam was in breach. The report records its surprise, which is mandarin for shock, that policy makers—or politicians, including the Prime Minister—and the intelligence community did not,
- "as the generally negative results of UNMOVIC inspections became increasingly apparent",
Mr. Kennedy: Following the surrogate question asked by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), I feel that I should send an invoice to the Prime Minister for having to answer on his behalf. The hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) is correct that the jigsaw remains frustratingly incomplete because we do not know what legal opinions were offered to the Government on the basis of the available intelligence. We know from the Butler report that the Attorney-General provided advice on a number of occasions, and it cites three in particular. However, Butler supports the view that publication of all the legal opinions
- "might inhibit the provision of full and frank . . . advice."
Given the extent to which a considerable amount of legal opinion is already in the public domain, the case for full disclosure is surely overwhelming. As long as critical pieces of legal advice remain shrouded in secrecy, doubts and suspicions will linger and fester. If I were the Prime Minister, I would bite the bullet and publish in full.
Clare Short: I agree that it would be desirable for the legal opinions to be published, but we get new information in Butler that it was not the Attorney-General who decided that there was legal authority for war. He required the Prime Minister to give an unequivocal finding of fact that there was no way other than war to pursue 1441. Given what Blix was achieving in the Security Council, and the destruction of, for example, 70 ballistic missiles, is that not extraordinary? Does it not come back to the Prime Minister, rather than to the Attorney-General?
Mr. Kennedy: It is extraordinary. The right hon. Lady underlines the point that I have just made. It might appear less extraordinary if we had the evidence and those legal opinions in front of us, but we cannot know. It would be in the best interests of the Prime Minister, let alone the rest of us, to put the lot into the public domain, and the sooner the better.
Hugh Bayley (City of York) (Lab) rose—
Mr. Clive Soley (Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush) (Lab) rose—
The dossier—the crucial case of a direct threat to the United Kingdom from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, which came to underpin the subsequent case for the war—was subject to undue political input. A description was placed before the public to maximise the persuasiveness of the later argument mounted by the Government to pursue that war. At the time of the debate and the vote here in the House of Commons, we were not aware of that entire background. Today, given what we know now, surely it becomes increasingly likely that the Government would have been hard pushed, or would have found it mission impossible, to persuade a majority in the House for war at that time and on the basis of the argument that was advanced.
Mr. Kennedy: I have made it clear that I am not giving way. I am sorry.
The overwhelming mood would surely have been to allow the authorised weapons inspectors the further period of time that they had sought via the United Nations. There was one other casualty at that point, and my goodness, it would have been a welcome one at the time, given the benefit of hindsight today. I do not believe the House would have acquiesced in endorsing the Bush-led new doctrine, the policy of pre-emptive strike, in quite the way it happened.
Despite what he said last week and this afternoon, and despite the fact that I welcome the practical implications that he acknowledged flow from all this, the Prime Minister should listen and understand—I still honestly believe that he does not quite get it—what people in the country think about the matter. He must demonstrate a genuine contrition for the misjudgments that have undoubtedly taken place. Public confidence must be restored in the process of government generally and in the lessons to be learned from the sequence of events. The people of Iraq need ongoing reassurance, given the volatile and violent situation there.
Not least, the Government should announce the carefully planned and phased withdrawal of our troops from Iraq as a democratically elected Government become established. Other countries, including those in the region, should contribute resources and troops as necessary. Given what the Prime Minister said in his remarks, the existing coalition should account fully for the expenditures of the development fund for Iraq, particularly the unaudited Iraqi oil revenues. The clinching paragraph of the March motion in the House of Commons and the great prize that the Government held up for backing the Bush Administration have not been mentioned today. We must have some meaningful re-engagement with the road map and the wider middle east peace process, which has been an appalling victim of events.
Hugh Bayley: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Kennedy: No. I have reached the end of my remarks.
In his statement last week, the Prime Minister spoke of his pride in what had been achieved in Iraq. We can all feel pride in the courage and professionalism of our armed forces, particularly when they are asked by Parliament to carry out such a difficult and dangerous task. But we certainly do not feel pride in what they were instructed to do at the behest of the Government and increasingly not in the name of our country. In fact, we feel ashamed. I hope that in the years to come, in his most private moments as he reflects on these events and the well-documented litany of failures and political misjudgments that went with them, the Prime Minister might acknowledge a sense of personal shame.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Michael Lord): Order. I remind the House that Mr. Speaker has placed a limit of eight minutes on all Back-Bench speeches and that that applies from now on.
3.55 pm
Mr. Bruce George (Walsall, South) (Lab): Perhaps I could help the leader of the Liberal party. When the Defence Committee visited the United Nations on the day before Dr. Blix's speech, we asked a very senior person how long Dr. Blix's group would need properly to evaluate whether there were weapons of mass destruction. He replied, "Twelve months if there is full compliance by Saddam Hussein's regime." When he was asked how long it would take if there was obstruction, he said, "For ever." I therefore have some reservations about the idea that Dr. Blix's view was necessarily sacrosanct. Having listened to the two Opposition party leaders, I remain as convinced and supportive as I was when I heard the speeches that the Prime Minister made at the time and subsequently.
However, I am not here to discuss Butler. Others will do that again and again until they eventually get the result that they require—if they ever do, and I suspect that it will take a long time. I want to talk about the report of the Defence Committee that is relevant to the motion.
In 1991, the Defence Committee produced an excellent report on the war. We visited Iraq before and after that war, which was termed Operation Granby. Following Operation Desert Fox, we spent a great deal of time examining the no-fly zones, into which we conducted an inquiry in 2000. We were very much involved in observing the events leading up to the war that we are discussing. We visited Kuwait beforehand. We held an inquiry that resulted in three volumes and 130 conclusions and recommendations. We held 19 public sessions. When British troops returned, we visited them all over the country and in Germany. We went twice to the United States. I believe that our report is well worth reading, and I hope that the Ministry of Defence reads it carefully.
We say in our report that we recognise how much we ask of our soldiers, sailors and airmen. For them, Operation Telic followed deployments to Afghanistan, the Balkans and Sierra Leone. Some of those who fought in the combat phase had already returned as part of the continuing stabilisation operation. We should remember that in Operation Fresco, 19,000 service personnel were committed to firefighting operations. One unit from the Army—16 Air Assault Brigade—was engaged in those responsibilities throughout December 2002, handed them over on 6 January, and began pre-deployment training on 8 January.
That cycle of excess stretch cannot be maintained indefinitely. When the Chief of the Defence Staff appeared before us in March, he said that it would be impossible to mount an operation of a similar scale to Operation Telic until 2008–09. I therefore look forward with great interest to tomorrow's Treasury-inspired Ministry of Defence response on the future size, shape and equipment of our armed forces. We must realise that when British forces go off to fight wars, be they popular or unpopular, they must be provided with the equipment that they need, when they need it. Too often in Operation Telic, equipment arrived late or was lost in theatre.
Those problems are well publicised in our report. However, having considered the deficiencies and strengths of our military effort, we felt on balance that the operation was well conducted by very well motivated personnel.
Iraq demonstrated that winning a war is relatively easy in comparison to what happens afterwards. Clearly, the planning in Iraq was inadequate. That was partly due to differences in the US Administration, but we would be deluding ourselves if we argued that things went wrong solely because the Department of Defence and the State Department fell out. There were many other reasons. First, enough troops to win the war might not be enough to win the peace. Secondly, failures of intelligence meant that we did not identify who our friends or our enemies were. We recall that the person chosen to lead the civilian Administration in Basra turned out to be a former brigadier in the Iraqi army and a Ba'athist, and that his successor was accused of being a confidant of Uday Hussein. Thirdly, language and cultural differences proved harder to overcome than was foreseen. If we contemplate more expeditionary operations further afield, those issues will be essential to the effectiveness of our forces.
The full Defence Committee went to Iraq last July, after the war, and six of its members went out last May. They visited the temporary divisional detention facilities, where those who had been interned by British forces under powers provided to occupying powers by the fourth Geneva convention were held. I am informed that those being held there were generally well treated. Many have now been released but some remain. The Committee is aware of the allegations of misconduct against a number of British personnel, and where there is evidence to support them, they are being investigated. I am confident that, if wrongdoing is found, the guilty will be punished. Some recent answers to parliamentary questions were very helpful in that regard.
A number of cases have already been referred to the prosecuting authorities. These incidents are serious and, if proven, would be a blot on the reputation of our forces, but they must not be allowed to overshadow the vast amount of good work that has been done and is being done. The Committee has requested a memorandum from the Ministry of Defence, and we will inquire into the allegations of misconduct of British forces. I can assure hon. Members and those outside the House that this will be a thorough inquiry.
The war has gone and, yes, there have been recriminations. However, I spoke yesterday to a fellow Defence Committee Chairman—of a NATO country that did not participate in the military action in Iraq. I said, "Now the war is over. There is a UN-endorsed programme to establish a democratic constitution, and a properly elected and representative Government of Iraq. We may have had our differences before and during the war, but the situation has now changed." I just hope that those countries will follow UN Security Council resolution 1546, which requests member states to send military forces to assist in Iraq.
I encourage all colleagues to urge those countries that are being intimidated to remove their troops, as well as those that might be thinking of going and those that might not, to understand that our fight is now against the remnants of the Saddam regime, against al-Qaeda, and against all sorts of people who want to do harm to the new Government of Iraq. I very much hope that people will be prepared to—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The right hon. Gentleman has had his eight minutes.
4.3 pm
Mr. William Hague (Richmond, Yorks) (Con): I am most grateful for the opportunity to take part in this debate. This is the first time that I have sought to speak on these matters since the debate of 18 March 2003, when the House made its principal decision on military action. I supported the Government's case for military action then, and I support it now for exactly the same reasons: that Saddam Hussein was a proven danger who had twice invaded other countries; that the alternative to taking action against him would have been to release him from a great deal of pressure, because sanctions and other measures would have been difficult to maintain; that there was a limit to the number of ultimatums that could pass without action being taken against him; and that international affairs had come to a point of decision at which the issue had to be resolved one way or the
other, and it was in the national interest of this country to act in concert with our principal ally, the United States of America. Those were the reasons that I voted in favour of military action, and I believe that they are the genuine reasons that the Prime Minister was in favour of military action. Placing too much weight on the intelligence, which was not his real reason, has led him into so much of this difficulty.There is now a chance, but only a chance, of a great improvement in Iraqi affairs. One of the most murderous and dangerous dictators in the world has been removed. There is a possibility of democracy, a possibility of an improved quality of life for the people of Iraq, and even the chance of greater prosperity in the years ahead. Therefore, while many observers are sceptical about whether western concepts of freedom can be brought into an Arab state, if they are wrong—and they might be—the politics of the middle east will be transformed, and transformed for the better.
I therefore still believe that it was the right thing to do. The trouble is that that is now a minority view in the country as a whole, as is clear from every survey, and possibly from recent election results. Experimentation with spin and public relations, even from a Government who are so skilled in spin and public relations, has led to a public relations disaster on the case for war.
We are all familiar with public relations disasters—I am familiar with more than most. But here we have a monumental failing of public relations, which now casts doubt on the credibility of the actions of the Government, on the international standing of this country, on the moral justification for the war, and on the basis for any future similar action by this country and the United States. Millions of our fellow citizens will now never believe that there was a good case for the war in Iraq, and millions of them will never believe that there is a good case for action in a comparable situation. To have created that situation is a serious responsibility for the Government.
Many errors in a run-up to war can be forgiven, and much that was in the dossier was moderate in tone, as the Butler report pointed out. But the Government have discredited much of their case for war, and damaged this country through mistakes in presentation that were unnecessary and for which they bear a serious responsibility.
The great mystery to me has always been the business of the infamous 45-minute piece of intelligence. My worry has always been not that it went into the dossier, because there was intelligence that mentioned 45 minutes, but that Ministers, including the Prime Minister, seem to have been consistently ignorant of what it meant, and of whether it was still true many months after it was reported.
Mr. Gordon Prentice: When John Scarlett discovered in July 2003 that the intelligence relating to the 45 minutes was unreliable, should he have told the Hutton inquiry that the intelligence had changed, and should he have told the Prime Minister? Is it right that John Scarlett should now be appointed as director of MI6 in such circumstances?
Mr. Hague: He should have told the Hutton inquiry, and he should have told the Prime Minister. I will come to that point in a moment.
Let me take a prior point: it has been reported clearly that the Prime Minister did not know that the 45-minute claim related to battlefield weapons. I find that extraordinary. Ministers ask questions all the time of their civil servants, about all kinds of things. One cannot picture most Ministers being told by their officials that lunch would be ready in 45 minutes without asking searching questions about the menu and by whom it was going to be delivered. The idea that someone can walk into the office or give the Prime Minister a document saying, "Our deadliest enemy has weapons of mass destruction that could be mobilised against us in 45 minutes," and that the Minister or Prime Minister does not say, "What sort of weapons?" is absolutely unimaginable. Can we imagine Baroness Thatcher being told at the time of the Falklands that the Argentines had weapons of mass destruction that could be used in 45 minutes? The official who told her would have been pinned to the wall until he had worked out and told her every last little bit of intelligence and any point of detail about that claim.
So how could this happen? The hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice), who just intervened, raised a parallel point, which is the incredible sequel, that key evidence identified in the Butler inquiry, possibly including the 45-minute claim, was withdrawn in July 2003—a year ago. And yet it turned out a few days ago, so we were told, that the Prime Minister was only aware of that withdrawal of intelligence as a result of the Butler inquiry—more recently. So on this major item of public controversy, on which the Government's whole credibility is at stake—with controversy raging about the 45 minutes and many other claims, in the press and among the public—MI6, and perhaps Government officials, knew that the evidence had been withdrawn, and no one told the Prime Minister. If it were in a novel, we would all say that it was ludicrous—that it could not happen. Of course they would tell the Prime Minister.
Mr. Salmond: So the first item is unimaginable, and the second is ludicrous. What conclusions did the right hon. Gentleman draw?
Mr. Hague: How neat of the hon. Gentleman to lead me to the conclusions—and I am most grateful to him for giving me an extra minute in which to explain them.
One conclusion I would have drawn had I been in the Prime Minister's shoes is that the officials or intelligence officers who had not told me were not doing their job, and should be part of the Chancellor's great redeployment to the regions—probably to the hon. Gentleman's constituency, which is a very long way from Downing street.
There are four possible explanations of how these things could be true. One, which I discount, is that the Prime Minister does not ask questions—that he is indolent or inattentive. Given my knowledge of the Prime Minister, I do not believe that that is the case. Another is that officials do not do their job properly in informing the Prime Minister. Perhaps there is a hint of that in the point that we have just been discussing, but I doubt that it is the case in general, because the British civil service is a fine machine and puts forward its very best cogs to serve the Prime Minister.
A third theory is that this has something to do with the criticisms of the culture of Government that Lord Butler and his colleagues identified: that informality can mean lack of rigour, that the blurring of the line between officials and political advisers can lead to mistakes—to the elevation of material to the public domain without adequate examination of it—and that people who only know politics dabble in intelligence, and people who only know intelligence dabble in politics, at their peril.
Let me respond to the point made by the hon. Member for Pendle about Mr. Scarlett. I think that he crossed that line at his peril. My personal view is that given the importance of restoring the public credibility of an intelligence service whose officials should never really become public figures, it is important for the senior official not to be someone who has been the subject of public controversy over the publication of intelligence that has subsequently been disproved. I have no doubt that he could serve the public in many continuing ways, but none of us is indispensable, and it should be possible for MI6 to be led by a different person. That is my honest answer to the hon. Gentleman's question.
Part of that culture of Government is that there are never any minutes of key meetings. At the time of the famous Formula 1 tobacco advertising outrage—as I would call it—of a few years ago, there were never any minutes showing who made the decisions. It is a culture of informality, but also a culture of deniability, in which it is hard to pi