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Debate on the Iraq inquiry

House of Commons

June 24 2009

Clare Short (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Ind Lab): In the short time that is available—let me put on record that I still resent the guillotining of everything, and believe that it is one of the reasons for the diminution of the authority of the House of Commons—I want to focus on why we need an inquiry. I shall argue that the reasons are so profound that the inquiry must take place in public, the inquiry team must be strengthened—as has been argued, it should contain military and legal representatives, as well as a senior politician—and witnesses must give evidence under oath.

Some have commented that we do not need an inquiry because the books have been written, the documents have been leaked, America has changed its policy, and there is therefore nothing new to be said. I agree that those who have read the books and scrutinised the leaked documents already know the truth. Nevertheless, it would be deeply shameful if the House of Commons never required an official inquiry, with the aim of putting on record the truth of why we went to war and reflecting on what that says about, first, the unreliability of the British system of government and, secondly, the obsessive focus on staying close to the United States of America, which dominates the foreign policy thinking of both new Labour and the official Opposition. Even the Liberal Democrats, despite their honourable record on the war, are not entirely free of it. That is the explanation of the error, and if we do not attend to those matters, similar errors will be made in future.

I believe that because of the "nodding donkey" approach to American foreign policy right or wrong, the United Kingdom's contribution to resolving some of the complex and fearsome problems of the coming decades will be extremely limited, and I think that that humiliates us. This is an enormously profound and serious question. As I believe the inquiry will show, if we went to Iraq because we wanted to please President Bush—or because Tony Blair wanted to please him—there is a danger that that error will be repeated. Happily, America, after a big semi-revolution, has changed its President and completely changed its policy, and Britain follows along with the new President. I prefer the new President, of course, but we did not even have a debate or discussion about whether we should change our policy. How humiliating is that?

Mr. Ellwood: I made an intervention earlier in which I stressed the importance of the relationship between the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development and mentioned that the British forces were concerned that there might be no plan involving DFID. Can the right hon. Lady confirm that in March 2003, when she was responsible for that Department, she sent a diktat out to all the directors in the Department advising them not to get involved and not to participate in the planning, because she thought the war might be illegal?

Clare Short: I cannot confirm that date, but I can confirm that when I heard the rumour—but did not see the legal document—that the Attorney-General doubted the legality of the war, I warned my staff of the consequences of that, which I think was entirely proper. That is part of the shame of it all, but I shall come on to the preparations. There were preparations that were then all junked, because of the hubris and deceit that went into preparing for war. 24 Jun 2009 : Column 856

I believe that a proper examination of the untruths, the constitutional manipulation and the outcome must lead to a re-examination of the UK's role in the world. That is a very important consequence of the inquiry that needs to flow to the House of Commons. I do not advocate hostility to the United States, of course. Indeed, I think that if we had spoken truthfully to the United States at the time, we would have been a better friend. I yearn, however, for an honest appraisal of the dangers the world and the UK face and an intelligent discussion of the contribution we could make, working with others, to the establishment of a more equitable and just world order, capable of dealing with the disorder that will come to us because of climate change. It is also my view that if we do not do better in bringing justice to the middle east, the capacity of the international system to co-operate to deal with these challenges will be broken and weakened, with desperately serious consequences for all of us.

We need an inquiry that forces all parties and the public to face up to the fact that we got involved in Iraq because George Bush and the neo-conservatives wanted to overthrow the unpopular regime of Saddam Hussein—regime change—and establish a friendly power in Iraq, so that they could relocate American bases in the middle east, dominate the Gulf and have close relations with a country that contained a large proportion of the world's remaining oil. As has been said, all of that is laid out for all to read in the documents published by the Project for the New American Century, which many of those who became senior figures in the Bush Administration had signed up to.

Of course, the US expected the invasion of Iraq to be popular with Iraqis and therefore thought that it would help to stabilise the middle east. The only problem was that international law, laid down after the second world war under the leadership of President Roosevelt and with the support of Prime Minister Churchill, did not permit that, and thus the lying became necessary in order to do what the neo-conservatives thought to be right.

I did not know that Tony Blair had the published documents of the Project for the New American Century drawn to his attention—they were certainly not drawn to the attention of the Cabinet—but I think that he was desperate to be close to George Bush and worried that he would not be because of the closeness of his relationship with President Clinton, and that he therefore gave his word early on that Britain would be with him in the planned invasion of Iraq. From that, it all flows: the exaggeration of the threat from weapons of mass destruction to give an excuse for war, because regime change is not legal.

The Butler report and the various leaks from our intelligence agencies have shown that the intelligence was being fixed around the policy. Hans Blix started out believing that there were WMD in Iraq, but when he found and reported that there were not—he reported to the Security Council what he had found, and also achieved the dismantling of large numbers of ballistic missiles—he was briefed against and smeared because his truthful findings were obstructing the excuse for war.

In the matter of international law, the neo-conservatives had no concern. They repeatedly made clear their profound disrespect for the United Nations and the constraints of
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international law. They wanted to keep the UK with them because the majority of US citizens said yes to war in coalition, but not alone. The UK had to pretend to respect international law, and that led to the game that was played at the United Nations. We should all remember that the UK ambassador to the UN, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, whom I like and admire enormously, gave a shameful undertaking on behalf of the UK when the first resolution was passed that there was no automaticity—no authority for war—without another resolution. However, the UK went on to argue later that the first resolution gave authority for war. That was deeply shameful.

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I remain deeply shaken by the way in which the interpretation of international law was manipulated to fit the policy. The first legal opinion, which was leaked and is now a matter of public record, was kept from the Cabinet. That was a complete breach of the ministerial code, but who enforces the code? It is the Prime Minister. The second legal opinion was concocted at the last minute by an Attorney-General who was a crony of the Prime Minister, put into the Lords by the Prime Minister and made Attorney-General by the Prime Minister.

Mr. Mates: I am not following the right hon. Lady in her criticisms, but if memory serves me correctly, there were 44 meetings of the Cabinet between September and when we went to war. The Attorney-General attended only two of them. Did the right hon. Lady, who was there, find it strange that in that legal morass, the Government's legal adviser was never there?

Clare Short: All the Cabinet meetings were little chats: they were never a proper consideration of all the options. That is terrifying, but true, and it means that our political institutions are unreliable and incapable of making proper, considered decisions.

When the Attorney-General came to Cabinet—I remember him coming only once, right at the end—I was stunned by the opinion that he brought to the Cabinet, but I accepted that in such a matter, the Attorney-General would not bring a concocted opinion. I now know that he did, and I conclude that the arrangements that we have for ensuring UK compliance with international law are unsafe. The way in which the Attorney-General is appointed is unsafe, and our constitutional arrangements need restructuring. That is one of the important issues to which the inquiry must attend.

It is often argued that the invasion of Iraq went well and was welcomed by all, but then went wrong, and that what went wrong, as the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood), who was previously in the armed forces, suggested, was that no proper arrangements were made for post-conflict Iraq. Indeed, it is sometimes suggested that because of my doubts about the war, I prevented such preparations from being made in the Department for International Development, although how I could be responsible for US policy I am not sure. That claim is completely untrue, as a proper scrutiny of the historical record will demonstrate.

Careful and detailed preparations—volumes of them—were made in the US State Department. Louise Fréchette, the deputy secretary-general of the UN, also made detailed preparations to bring together the international effort that would be required to rebuild Iraq. My old

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Department made preparations, liaising carefully with the State Department, the UN and other international actors. Then, just a couple of months before the planned invasion, President Bush passed responsibility for post-war reconstruction to the Pentagon and set up the new agency, the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance—ORHA. All the State Department preparations were junked. There was no liaison with the UN or with the international community.

At the time, Andrew Natsios, then head of the US Agency for International Development, said that the danger in post-war Iraq would be chaos, and if we sacked everyone in the Ba'ath party, no institutions would function. He said that it was crucial that only the top people went and everyone else was left in place. That advice was wiped away and we got exactly what he predicted. That was incredible. In the run-up to the war, I thought, "This cannot happen in a nation like the US—they have Harvard, Yale and Princeton-educated people. We cannot make such an error." But the hubris was such that it was believed that the invasion would be welcomed and that there was no need for international co-operation. Because of the deceit that went into the purpose of the war, we got the chaos of the aftermath.

These are serious matters, but they are the true record of what happened, and the inquiry must bring them out. Britain must decide what sort of country it wants to be. Do we want to adhere to international law, or do we want to junk it? Israel is junking international law in the occupied territories. Do we want a future in which international law no longer has any authority? It would lead to chaos and instability.

Mr. Duncan Smith: I am grateful to the right hon. Lady—I do not think that she will lose any time by taking this intervention. On one of the big questions about the row between the State Department and the Pentagon and what was going on at the White House, was she aware at any stage that the Government made strong overtures about what was going on explicitly to require that a different system be put in place after the war in Iraq? I could never quite understand what our influence—or lack of it—was in the whole process. We had a vested interest in getting it right, but somehow seemed not to have any view on it. I am not saying that the right hon. Lady did not, but that officially the Government seemed to have no view on that point at that time.

Clare Short: The answer is that because this was being driven—I am running out of time—by the Prime Minister on the phone to the White House, British systems were breaking down. One part of the Government was giving that advice, and another was not.

My final point is that because of the deceit, proper consideration was not given to all the policy options. There were other ways of bringing down Saddam Hussein. We could have got rid of the sanctions, or indicted him like we did Milosevic and let the Iraqi people help to do it. None of the other options were considered. This is a disgrace to our history and it shows that our institutions do not work. We need an inquiry that will lay out everything from which we can learn the lessons about decision making and our role in the world, so that we never ever again engage in such actions, which have left terrible destabilising effects on the wider middle east.