Roger Godsiff

Iraq Enquiry Vote

Speaking after the vote on 31st October 2006 Roger Godsiff MP said that it had given him no pleasure to find himself, along with eleven other Labour colleagues, in the same lobby as the Conservatives, Liberals, Welsh and Scottish nationalists and other assorted groups. He did believe however that this was a fundamental issue and that the Government was wrong not to accept that there needed to be proper independent enquiry into the events leading up to the disastrous decision to participate in the attack on Iraq.

Roger Godsiff went on to say: 'I was opposed to the decision to attack Iraq because I was not persuaded by the arguments put forward that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and, sadly, everything that has occurred subsequently has reinforced my original decision'.

He concluded: 'The newly controlled Democratic Congress and Senate in America will almost certainly hold their own enquiries into the decision by President Bush to attack Iraq and I still believe to would strongly be in the interests of the British Government and the legacy of Tony Blair, if he agreed to set up the sort of enquiry that was called for in the vote on 31st October.'