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Mrs. Alice Mahon (Halifax): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Maples: If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I shall not because Front-Bench spokesmen want to start the winding-up speeches.
We find that Alastair Campbell chaired the meeting at which the draft document was considered in September, even though John Scarlett, who chairs the JIC, was at the meeting. We were told that the document was produced by the JIC, yet its chairman only sits as a member of the committee. Pauline Neville-Jones told us, as did an Australian intelligence agent, that it did not read like a JIC document. It is much more certain than a JIC document. The 1998 document that the Foreign
Office put out before Desert Fox is full of qualifications—"may be", "could be", "perhaps". Furthermore, if we compare the body of the text on the 45-minute claim and the chemical and biological weapons claims, it contains many more qualifications than the executive summary, which is more certain. We draw attention to that in our report.The Government's behaviour has been bizarre in several respects, including Alastair Campbell deciding that he would, would not and then would appear before the Committee, and the huge smokescreen that was thrown up. The Government have two ways of dealing with the problem. One is to pretend it does not exist. The other is to throw up huge smokescreens by letting off explosions in adjacent areas to distract attention. Alastair Campbell's performance was impressive, but bizarre. This week, there has been the extraordinary episode with Dr. Kelly. Apparently, the Ministry of Defence knew that he had talked to Mr. Gilligan the week before the Foreign Affairs Committee published its report, so why did it delay identifying him and explaining that it knew who had talked to Gilligan until after we published the report? The cynics say that that was because on the Tuesday there was a vote on foundation hospitals, but I suspect that the real reason is that the MOD did not want us to talk to him. It knew that he was not Mr. Gilligan's source for the 45-minute claim—something that we found out in the first 10 minutes of his time with us. There may be paranoia, but such actions certainly feed it. If people suspect that someone is not telling them the truth, and then that person does all sorts of bizarre things, that tends to reinforce their position.
There are a lot of unanswered questions. The war with the BBC is an extraordinary and exaggerated distraction. The BBC has not accused the Prime Minister of lying—one of its correspondents has said that someone in the Government told him that they were unhappy about the document, which is a fundamentally different thing. The Committee was completely united in its view of the dodgy dossier, which is the most amateurish, irresponsible document that any Government have put out for 100 years or even longer. I am afraid that it has the fingerprints of the Prime Minister's director of communications all over it. It was produced at his request by a unit for which he is responsible. He has tried to lay the blame on a junior Foreign Office official for not including some footnotes, but it is inconceivable that the document would ever have been published if the person responsible for producing it were a senior Foreign Office official. It could only have been produced by an amateur or someone so irresponsible that they could not see that in pursuing the advantage of their political master they were damaging the Government's credibility.
People who do not have any doubts about the dossier on weapons of mass destruction—and I started off without very many—will wonder, once they realise what had happened with the dodgy dossier and the way in which it was produced, how the first one was produced. We know that Mr. Campbell was chairing the meetings on both. In one, apparently, he is a complete amateur and blithering idiot, but in the other he is an objective professional, which begs what the lawyers would call
further and better particulars. The Government have undermined their own credibility with the dodgy dossier, which the Foreign Secretary himself described as a load of Horlicks; the way in which Dr. Kelly was used and abused; and the completely artificial row that Alastair Campbell has got up with the BBC, and that is now the issue.I believed the WMD dossier when it was published because it was common sense, considering what UNSCOM and UNMOVIC found. As a witness told us, it would have been irresponsible to come to any conclusion other than that Iraq had a WMD capability. One has increasing doubts while such weapons are not found but, of course, if they are, that will be the end of the argument, and the Government's case will have been comprehensively proved. However, if they are not found, there are only two conclusions that one can come to—either our intelligence was comprehensively wrong or, alternatively, it was misrepresented by the Government.
The Government's credibility is now at stake. It is in their interests, if they want us to believe them on an issue like this in future, to let Parliament and the public get to the bottom of this. I agree with the Foreign Secretary that a judicial inquiry is an incredibly laborious and unsatisfactory way of doing that, but there is only one alternative. I put it to him that even now, at this late stage, he should let the Foreign Affairs Committee, of which I am a member—[Interruption.] No, he should let it see the draft of the document and the JIC reports going back to March, so we can see who said what before the final document was produced. We should also be allowed to interview the witnesses whom we wanted to see. If we could do that, we could get to the bottom of this. It would not take two years but a couple of months, and would be much more satisfactory than the alternative. If the Foreign Secretary will not let us do that, the only alternative is an independent inquiry of some sort.
Mr. Alan Duncan (Rutland and Melton) rose—
Mrs. Alice Mahon (Halifax): On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Undoubtedly, the vote on 18 March on going to war was the most controversial thing to have happened in my time in the House, and it led to the biggest rebellion among Labour Members. This afternoon, four Labour Back Benchers have been called, all of whom supported our going to war, while a number of us who voted against the war were not called. The public are entitled to hear both sides of the argument, and this certainly smacks of the management of business by a Government who are in deep trouble.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. The hon. Lady is criticising the Chair directly, but to do so she must table a substantive motion. I can certainly speak for the way in which these arrangements are made, and I can assure her that every possible consideration is taken into account. The Chair may not be perfect in the eyes of all Members in the arrangements that it makes, but it does try to do so fairly and impartially. If the hon. Lady does not think so, she should table an appropriate motion.
Mr. Tam Dalyell : Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but on a different aspect of it. I am not
making a personal complaint. I spoke for four minutes in the previous debate. Surely some consideration should be given not to rebellion, but to dissent. My particular point is that some of those who were lucky enough to be called have evaporated from the debate. Hon. Members who are lucky enough to be called in a short debate have some obligation to the rest of the House to remain.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Gentleman and I might share a view on the standard of courtesies currently observed in the House. Mr. Speaker has on occasion tried to remind hon. Members of the ways and practices of the House, and that it is customary to stay for debates. However, it is not a matter of order for the Chair. If the hon. Gentleman looked back on the record of contributions made to all the debates that have taken place on or about this subject, he would see that there has been an attempt by the Chair to ensure the widest possible participation.
3.40 pm
Mr. Alan Duncan (Rutland and Melton): This is a pretty sad and mucky day for the Government, following a pretty sad and mucky month. Historians will look back with astonishment at the way in which a decision that, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Derbyshire (Mr. McLoughlin) said, seemed to be brave and courageous, and which was applauded and respected by many, has since deteriorated into a morass of suspicion and recrimination that has seen trust in the Government plummet to unforeseen depths. Perhaps I can say to my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) that the climate of concern that that has engendered cannot be denied or ignored.
In the context of that collapse of trust, the report, as far as it goes, matters. We welcome it, and the Committee's work. My right hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) catalogued in great detail the confusion and inconsistency that have become the hallmark of the Government. He spoke of the September dossier, the February dossier, the weapons of mass destruction, the 45-minutes claim, the supposed uranium from Niger, and Dr. David Kelly's witness, but the Foreign Secretary failed to address any of those matters. We did not hear a single word about any detailed aspect of the report. We had 35 minutes of fog and distraction, and he dwelt only on the idea of setting up a judicial inquiry. That is only a part of the motion.
If I accused the right hon. Gentleman of taking 45 minutes to launch an argument, he would no doubt find a way of denying it. His tactic at the end was shameful. Saying that a vote for the motion would be a vote to criticise the intelligence services is the last refuge of the scoundrel. It is a disgrace.
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