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Donald Anderson: We are hearing a skilful analysis by a persuasive advocate. However, the right hon. and learned Gentleman has not mentioned the unanimous acceptance by all members of the Security Council, in resolution 1441 of 8 November, of the threat that Saddam Hussein's regime posed. In the preamble to the resolution, all members recognised
- "the threat Iraq's non-compliance with Council resolutions and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles poses to international peace and security".
The right hon. Member for Devizes cited a passage from resolution 1441, but we must be careful about making an assumption that the United Nations Security Council is the only fount of international law, which somehow did not exist until the charter of the United Nations appeared in San Francisco in 1947. The rules of conflict have existed for a long time; they preceded the United Nations. Proportionality, and using military force as a last resort, have been part of the code of international law for a long time. They were not undermined, and could not be swept aside, by the Security Council's passing resolution 1441. In the view of at least 13 members, it was ambiguous, certainly on whether it specifically authorised military force.
The hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Dr. Moonie), who recently retired from the Ministry of Defence, let the cat out of the bag yesterday or the previous day when he said:
- "What we are talking about here is trying to put the best gloss on your case to ensure people accept it."
The question that remains is not whether Mr. Campbell had too much to do with intelligence matters in No. 10, but whether the United Kingdom went to war on a flawed prospectus. Was that flaw in the intelligence or the way in which it was handled once it reached the Government? The Prime Minister and other Ministers have been skilful at denying guilt of a charge that was not made against them. It is said that those who raise such issues are somehow accusing the Prime Minister of
lying. I am not doing that. However, there may be issues not of truth but of judgment and competence. I therefore believe that an inquiry is necessary. What if similar circumstances arise in the course of this Parliament? What if a further perceived threat arises? Where will the Government find the credibility to persuade the House and the country that military action is required?
Mr. Dalyell: The right hon. and learned Gentleman is a Queen's Counsel and has a good record in such matters. I ask him a genuine question: what form should the inquiry take?
Mr. Campbell: I agreed with the Foreign Secretary in some of his criticisms about the form of inquiry that would be appropriate, and I shall deal with that subject shortly.
I caution the Government, and the House, about campaigns against the BBC. I suspect that a shoot-out between the BBC and politicians about which is the more reliable is unlikely to be resolved in our favour.
Dr. Kelly has fallen on his sword but his emergence, blinking into the sunlight, like the chorus of prisoners in "Fidelio", underlines the fact that he did not believe in the 45-minutes claim—members of the Foreign Affairs Committee who heard him yesterday will doubtless correct me if I am wrong about that. He made it clear, and the Committee accepted it, that whatever sort of contact he constituted for Mr. Gilligan, he was not his source for the broadcast on 29 May. I had the impression—perhaps a rather naive and superficial impression—that the reason why Dr. Kelly was put up by the Ministry of Defence was to undermine Mr. Gilligan. The Committee is seeing Mr. Gilligan later this week. If we are to make a judgment about Dr. Kelly's intervention in these matters so far, he seems, if anything, to have buttressed and supported the Gilligan view, rather than undermined it.
These questions certainly will not go away. That is why I believe that the case for an independent inquiry is irresistible—a point that I made to the Foreign Secretary yesterday. I do not think that he challenged me when I suggested that if he were sitting on this side of the House rather than on the Treasury Bench in a debate of this kind, he would be putting many of the same arguments that we are putting today.
Let me deal with some of the points that the Foreign Secretary has raised this afternoon. First, the Scott inquiry was not the first investigation of the issue of arms to Iraq. The Select Committee on Trade and Industry carried out an investigation right at the end of the 1987 to 1992 Parliament. It did so under the sanction of the fact that that Parliament was coming to an end and that an election was inevitable. It also did so in the face of great obstacles and considerable hindrance. At least one Minister who appeared before the Committee declined to answer questions on his role in the matter, although when he eventually had to face Mr. Geoffrey Robertson, QC, in the witness box, he was rather more forthcoming. There was also a Member of Parliament who declined to give evidence to the Committee when it was engaged on what came to be known as the Iraqi
supergun inquiry, and there were certainly officials whose evidence to the inquiry was later proved to be, shall we say, neither whole nor complete.
Mr. Straw: Economical with the actualité.
Scott therefore followed an imperfect inquiry, carried out by the House of Commons under the same rules as the inquiry now being carried out by the Foreign Affairs Committee.
As for getting a busy judge to conduct the inquiry, let me remind the Foreign Secretary that Lord Cullen was a full-time judge when he was asked to conduct the inquiry into Piper Alpha, which many people regarded as a model of its kind. He was also a full-time judge when he was asked to conduct the inquiry into the Dunblane shooting tragedy. So the objection that it might be difficult to find someone who is currently exercising judicial responsibility is not necessarily one that would stand up in all circumstances.
I also believe that it is perfectly feasible to say that the inquiry would have to be completed within a prescribed time. The Foreign Secretary is right to say that from the point of view of a judge heading up an independent inquiry, there might need to be some qualification of that, and that in special or difficult circumstances, an extension might be granted. It is not beyond our wit to create an independent inquiry, headed by a senior figure from the judiciary, with a time limit within which he and his inquiry are expected to report.
The Foreign Secretary is right to say that an inquiry set up under the terms of the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921, with all the statutory implications that that would involve, might not fit the bill because of the length of time that it might take. If the Government were willing to allow the independent and impartial scrutiny that I believe to be necessary in this case, however, we should not have much difficulty in arriving at a form of inquiry that would be adequate to meet public anxiety and appropriate to get to the bottom of these questions.
In spite of the Foreign Secretary's vigour today, nothing that he has said has persuaded me other than that independent and impartial scrutiny is required here, as much for sake of the reputation of the House as for that of the Government. That is why my colleagues and I will be supporting the Opposition in the Lobby tonight.
2.4 pm
Donald Anderson (Swansea, East): I begin on a happy note of consensus. I note that both the mover of the motion and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary welcomed the conclusions of the Foreign Affairs Committee. From that point on, however, the divergence began.
The key points of the report are set out in the summary of the conclusions and recommendations, and I need hardly go through them, save to point out that, on a great swathe of the recommendations, the all-party Committee was united. There were, of course, certain differences, but we concluded that Ministers did not mislead Parliament. The two dossiers were the focus of
the report. On the allegation that the first dossier of September 2002 had been embellished or exaggerated, the Committee concluded on the basis of the evidence before it that that had not happened. There was a divergence of opinion on the role of Mr. Campbell, but the majority—with a casting vote—agreed effectively to exonerate him. The minority was agnostic and concluded that, on the basis of the evidence available, it was unable to make a decision. That was a wholly principled view. There was no part of the Committee saying that Mr. Campbell was guilty of any particular crime. Although the Committee was therefore not unanimous, there was a substantial degree of agreement.I am confident—I think that members of the Committee would join me in this—that the Government believed that there was a real threat of the Iraqi regime using weapons of mass destruction. What other reason could one give for the issuing of protective anti-chemical warfare uniforms to our troops? It would require a conspiratorial mind of great magnitude to imagine that our Government would have gone through the charade of equipping our forces in that way if they did not believe that the threat was real.
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