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Dr. Julian Lewis: Will the Foreign Secretary give way?
Mr. Straw: No, I am about to close.
The Liberal Democrats' argument for a judicial inquiry is even more bizarre. They disagreed with the decision to take military action even on the basis of the intelligence that was made available. For them, intelligence was not an issue.
The decision to take military action is as justified today as it was on 18 March. Nothing in the report that the Foreign Affairs Committee published on 7 July challenges the facts on which the House's judgment was based. The Leader of the Opposition spoke for the majority of the House when he said:
- "If we vote to give Saddam yet another chance, the moment will pass, our concentration will falter, our energy and our focus will disperse and our nerve will fail, with disastrous consequences for us all."—[Official Report, 18 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 779.]
1.44 pm
Mr. Menzies Campbell (North-East Fife): As the right hon. Gentleman came to the end of his speech, I thought that I had strayed into Blackburn on a Saturday morning and he was on his well-known soap box.
As the Foreign Secretary rightly said, the whole House is grateful to the Foreign Affairs Committee for its report. I do not doubt for a moment that the Committee has done its best in the time available and with the information that was made available to it, but I hope that its Chairman will not think it churlish of me to say that in this context, its best is not enough. Indeed, the Committee itself implies in paragraph 29 of its
recommendations, on page 5, that because it had to operate within the envelope of restriction imposed by the Government, it did not see everything or everyone.The Foreign Secretary set great store by the Intelligence and Security Committee. No hon. Member would argue that the independence of that Committee was in doubt, nor could we argue about the fact that its access to documents and to individuals may be rather wider than that afforded to the Foreign Affairs Committee. But we cannot ignore the fact that the final contents of any report produced by that Committee may well depend upon the judgment of No. 10 Downing street as to what information about what occurred in No. 10, which has inevitably been a source of controversy, should be allowed to reach the public domain. That is why I do not shrink from saying that we need an inquiry—
Mr. Campbell: I shall give way in a moment.
We need an inquiry that is independent of the House and of any role for the Prime Minister or any other Minister. We need an inquiry that will satisfy public opinion, which was reflected very unusually to the extent that here in London more than 1 million people took to the streets to express their anxiety, which was mirrored up and down the country on the same day.
Mr. Straw: I hope that on reflection, the right hon. and learned Gentleman will not pursue the point that there can be, or has been, any censorship of the reports and conclusions of the ISC. The Intelligence Services Act 1994 is very specific. Section 10(5), (6) and (7) make it clear that where any issues are redacted—as they sometimes have to be from FAC reports too—that has to be made patent in the report. There is no question of any of its conclusions ever being interfered with. I pray in aid the remarks of Lord King, formerly Tom King, whom we all knew, and who was Chairman of the ISC before my right hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Ann Taylor). He said:
- "The reports cannot be censored."
What took place in No. 10 Downing street is undoubtedly a matter of controversy. The ISC is a different kind of Committee from a Select Committee of the House of Commons. It is not, in the sense in which the public would understand it, a Committee that is independent of the House of Commons. To those who argue that the House of Commons should never give up its jurisdiction over such matters, and that Committees
of the House are the only competent means of investigation, I would say that they do not understand the extent to which we are disregarded by the public. This is an issue of enormous public importance that requires an inquiry of a different kind. Such an inquiry would go much further towards restoring confidence in this institution and the way in which it operates than an investigation confined to instruments of the House of Commons.
Sir Patrick Cormack: Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman seriously believe that a judicial inquiry would publish sensitive national security information for everybody to read? Surely he is not suggesting that it would behave any differently from the Intelligence and Security Committee in that regard?
Mr. Campbell: Of course I do not suggest that—but introducing independent scrutiny from outside the system is much more likely to command public support than proceeding with our current method. As the Foreign Secretary said, the Intelligence and Security Committee is well able to conduct the annual scrutiny and monitoring of the activities of the three security services. However, going to war is not normal; having a million people on the streets is not normal. It is not normal to go to war when, shortly after the momentous decision—as the Foreign Secretary rightly describes it—substantial and controversial issues arise about the basis for doing so. We therefore need a solution in the form of an inquiry that does not follow the normal course.
Why should there be an inquiry? We have to be careful and not allow ourselves to be blown off course by the tempest that rages between Mr. Campbell and the BBC. When the vote was taken on 18 March, the Government's case was that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction constituted a clear and present danger and that military force was the only way in which to protect our interests. The clear implication of that position, notwithstanding the comments of Dr. Blix on the extent of the limited co-operation that he continued to receive from the Iraqi regime, was that all other political and diplomatic options had been exhausted.
The Government, and, indeed, the Leader of the Opposition, now place great reliance on the passage that the Foreign Secretary read out earlier about the fact that some 17 United Nations Security Council resolutions had been breached, and especially that resolution 1441 authorised force. Many PhDs will be written about whether resolution 1441 authorised force, and whether the precise language in which it was couched was designed more to achieve unanimity than clarity when it passed through the Security Council.
However, there is no doubt that although clear and obvious breaches of resolutions may authorise military action, they would not make it legitimate under the normal rules of international law unless it could be demonstrated that all other diplomatic and political options had failed. Let us consider the Government's case at its best. Resolution 1441 did not absolve them of their obligation to explore alternatives or to use only force proportionate to the resolution's objectives. If, as the Prime Minister said on 25 or 26 March, after the debate on 18 March, the object was disarmament not regime change, any force that had the converse as its
purpose was disproportionate. If it was disproportionate, it was illegitimate and contrary to international law.I make that analysis to point out that the centrality of the Government's case was that weapons of mass destruction that posed a clear and present danger existed, and that, although the words "immediate" and "imminent" were not used, it was essential for the protection of our interests—political and otherwise—and those of the region, to use military force at the time.
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