| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Lilley: In a sense, I agree with my hon. Friend. I must draw my remarks to a close, but the one conclusion to be drawn from the documents made available was that Saddam Hussein had the past form, the current intent and the future capability to use the weapons and destabilise his neighbours. I therefore voted—in the full supposition that there were no actual or current weapons of mass destruction—for pre-emptive military action to change the regime. That was the real reason for the war, but the Government could not admit as much because they could not risk alienating Labour Members.
Another reason for the Government's action was, I suspect, that they were bound by the advice of Law Officers. Such advice is always taken as binding, and it stated that a pre-emptive war to secure regime change was not legitimate. We need better ways to hold the Law Officers to account over their advice, because the law is highly subjective when it comes to matters of national defence. It is very unwise, therefore, to ask for advice which, once given, is taken as definitive and cannot be counteracted by the Government.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I call Mr. Ross Cranston.
4.34 pm
Ross Cranston (Dudley, North): In my view, the establishment of a judicial inquiry would be an abrogation of our responsibilities. It is not the role of a judge to second-guess political judgments of this nature, and in that sense I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Tony Wright).
The right hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), the shadow Foreign Secretary, mentioned Franks, although he resiled from citing that inquiry as a model. Franks was not a judicial inquiry. It was not a public inquiry. It was set up to provide a narrative of what led up to the Falklands conflict.
Mr. John Taylor (Solihull): On that subject, in the context of this House abrogating its powers, if those powers were used as the hon. Member for Telford (David Wright) suggested, would not an essential concomitant of that be to have the Law Officers here and answerable on matters known to them, to give us their advice? The hon. and learned Gentleman is a former Law Officer.
Ross Cranston: I do not agree. I will deal with that matter in a moment because I think the Law Officers' advice on the matter was clear. Also, the convention is that candour is encouraged by the confidentiality of the advice. There is also the problem we are getting into here the Law Officers are being blamed for judgments made by other Ministers. For that reason, I do not think that it will advance the argument in any way to have access to the Attorney-General's advice.
Franks was a specific inquiry, designed to answer two questions: could the conflict have been foreseen, to which the answer was no, and could the invasion have been prevented, to which the answer was also no. The
Privy Councillors who made up that inquiry took issue with certain decisions that had been made, but on the whole approved of what the Government had done.We were reminded this morning of what a judicial inquiry would involve. The Saville inquiry is just about to leave Central Methodist hall and go back to Londonderry—five years, 842 witnesses and £120 million later. Ultimately, it will cost £150 million and the lawyers have made £62 million out of it. The BSE inquiry received 12,000 items of correspondence, looked at 1,200 witness statements, heard 333 witnesses, cost £27 million and took three years. The Scott inquiry took three years to investigate Matrix Churchill.
I am not criticising the length of time taken by those inquiries as they were looking into complex matters, but let us consider what an inquiry of the nature proposed in this motion would involve. The House will appreciate that it is not a practical suggestion. On constitutional grounds, the idea would not attract support. It is dangerous for judges to get involved in high matters of state. Our system relies heavily on the mutual trust and respect between members of the Executive and judges. There has to be a comity between the two branches of government—a self-denying ordinance and self-restraint on both sides. If judges become involved in these high matters of state, that mutual trust and respect could well break down.
Mr. Cash: Does the hon. and learned Gentleman accept that one feature of this whole saga was illustrated well when the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short) made her resignation statement, in which it was crystal clear that she felt that she had been misled by the Prime Minister, and said so? To resolve those very questions it seems to me that relying on the vagaries of the parliamentary system is simply not sufficient. The fact is that we need a judicial inquiry on oath to get to the bottom of this matter—for example the differences between what Sir Kevin Tebbit and the Prime Minister said in respect of the Kelly inquiry.
Ross Cranston: Whether my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short) thought that she was misled is not a matter for a judicial inquiry; it is a political issue and it should be dealt with at a political level.
I do not want to say a great deal about the legal justification, but I utterly reject the attacks on the integrity of the Attorney-General or his office in this matter. As I said before, the advice given in answer to the question on 17 March is clear. The Attorney-General refers to resolution 1441, which stated that Iraq was in material breach of its obligations, that it had a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations and that serious consequences would follow if it did not do so. The preamble to 1441 refers to the ceasefire resolution—687—and to resolution 678, which authorised action against Iraq. The Attorney-General makes it plain in the advice that 678 was suspended but not terminated by 687, the ceasefire resolution. He goes on to say that if Iraq continues to be in material breach of 1441, the authority to take action under 678 is revived.
I concede that international lawyers dispute these issues, but in important legal matters there are always disputes between lawyers as to the right approach.
However, the Attorney-General's approach is the better one. Critics such as Lord Alexander of Weedon ask how a resolution that is more than 10 years old can be revived. Unfortunately, Lord Alexander, in a long lecture, failed to address what happened between the passing of resolution 687 in 1981 and resolution 1441 in November 2002. He treats that period as a legal desert, but it was not. Depending on when one starts to count, there were 17 or 18 resolutions condemning Iraq. As early as August 1991, when Iraq was dragging its feet, resolution 707 stated that it was in breach of its disarmament obligations. Resolutions 1060, 1134 and 1205 all said that Iraq was in flagrant breach or violation of its obligations to disarm.The second argument advanced by Lord Alexander—it was referred to by the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd)—was that action must be grounded in the UN charter, which allows armed force only in self-defence or if there is specific authorisation from the Security Council, and that this was not a case of self-defence. That absolutist view was taken by the international lawyers who signed the letter to The Guardian, but it cannot account for a range of actions taken in the 50 or more years since the charter was agreed. It cannot justify the US blockade of Soviet missiles to Cuba in 1961. It cannot justify the Tanzanian ousting of Idi Amin from Uganda in 1979. It cannot justify the actions taken by the West African states in the Liberian civil war in 1990. It cannot justify the humanitarian intervention in Kosovo in 1998. It cannot justify what the Conservative Government did in 1991—which I supported—when they set up no-fly zones to protect the Kurds and the Shi'as in Iraq. That absolutist view of international law cannot accommodate those and many other actions. That view of the charter is frozen in time and I do not accept it.
Mr. Cash: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Ross Cranston: I am sorry but I must decline; I have already taken two interventions and a third will eat into my time.
Much has been made of the presence or absence of weapons of mass destruction. Dr. Kay's inquiry is still under way. However, to focus on the presence or absence of WMD is to misunderstand Iraq's obligations under international law. From the time of Security Council resolution 687 until resolution 1441, the obligation was that Iraq must demonstrate that it had disarmed. Whether Iraq had had weapons of mass destruction was not the major issue; it had to demonstrate that it did not have them.
The onus was on Iraq, as 1441 made clear. Of course, UNSCOM was obstructed and it left Iraq in 1998. Resolution 1441 gave the unanimous judgment of the international community that Iraq was in material breach; it had not disarmed. In fact, even after the conflict, in May 2003, in Security Council resolution 1483, the international community again reaffirms the importance of Iraq's disarming itself of weapons of mass destruction and confirming that to the international community.
Much has also been made of the September dossier. The right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) used the phrase he has used on a number of occasions about going to war on a false prospectus. The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) got very heated about the issue. The right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) also majored on it.
However, in my view, this is a very Anglo-centric view of the world. It is also seeing the world through the eyes of hindsight. It is misconceived because it assumes that we became involved on that basis and that basis alone. As the Foreign Secretary asked, are we suggesting that when France signed up to 1441 it was using our dossier? Are we suggesting that Russia, China or Syria were using our dossier? Of course not. One only has to state the proposition to realise how ridiculous that notion is.
Apart from 1441—there has been some discussion about the factual basis of the Attorney-General's opinion—we had the Blix reports, which are available in Command Papers and on the UN website. I do not have time to go through them, but in the January report there was the famous phrase from Dr. Blix:
- "Inspection is not a game of 'catch as catch can'".
- "UNMOVIC however, has information that conflicts with this [the Iraqi account]."
- "There are strong indications that Iraq has produced more anthrax than it declared."
- "immediate, unconditional and active cooperation".
- "cannot be said to constitute 'immediate' cooperation. Nor do they necessarily cover all areas of relevance."
I want to speak briefly about what the Security Council has said about the post-war situation. I have mentioned resolution 1483 in May. There was then resolution 1500 and resolution 1511 last week. Resolution 1483 begins by recalling all the previous relevant resolutions: 1441 and the 17 resolutions including 678 and 687. These resolutions say two important things about the Saddam Hussein regime. First, they say clearly that the members of that regime must be made accountable for the crimes and atrocities committed while governing Iraq, that countries cannot provide them with a safe haven, and that countries must bring them to justice. Secondly, resolution 1511 condemns in the strongest possible terms—as terrorism and attacks on the Iraqi people, the international community and the UN—the various terrorist bombings which we know about so well. The international community is saying, in that unanimous
resolution, that in carrying out those attacks the remnants of the previous regime are unequivocally in breach of international law and must be brought to justice.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |