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5.31 pm
Mr. Doug Henderson (Newcastle upon Tyne, North): I did not originally intend to try to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I was intrigued by the way in which the debate developed. I now have an opportunity to explain why many Labour Members are both "Labour against the war" and "Labour against the Conservative motion".
I agreed with the views that the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) articulated. I know that a significant number of other members of the Conservative party share his view and have expressed it consistently in the past 12 months. I hold them in high regard, but it is opportunistic of Conservative Front Benchers to table a motion such as this.
The preparation of such motions is always weird and wonderful and I appreciate that advisers usually have some say in the matter. I do not know whether the Conservative party continues to have advisers but if so, they probably told the Leader of the Opposition that it would be wise to steer clear of health, in which the Labour Government had brought about substantial improvements that were felt by the people, and of education, because the public know that Conservative proposals would lead to a reduction in standards throughout the country. I believe that the wise men in the Corridors behind the Chamber decided, "You should have a crack at Iraq, because the Government are having difficulties with that."
Mr. Boswell: We are enjoying the hon. Gentleman's robust style and delicious line in fantasy. I had no part in formulating the motion and speak from the Back Benches on this occasion. Will he answer a question to which the Foreign Secretary declined to reply? Does he believe that any questions remain outstanding from the process that has taken place? If so, in what forum should they properly be resolved?
Mr. Henderson: I am pleased that I gave way because the hon. Gentleman has identified several key matters, with which I shall try to deal. If he will forgive me, I shall not do so immediately.
I am not, thankfully, a lawyer, although members of the legal profession have made some interesting, high-quality contributions today. However, as I understand it, the case for a judicial inquiry is that the public deserve and need to know something that they are not being told. I believe that, in a democracy, that is absolutely the case. Three or four months ago, I supported the case for an inquiry—judicial or otherwise, but at a high level—into the position of my Government in relation to Iraq. I opposed the war, and I still oppose it. I think that it was the wrong thing to do and history will demonstrate that that is the case. Increasingly, the first few months of history are demonstrating that. At the heart of the issue
of whether to hold an inquiry is the question of whether the public have a right to know. As I said, I supported the case for an inquiry three or four months ago, but I do not think that it is the best way forward now.There is undoubtedly ambiguity involved in this issue. As someone who opposed the war, I always believed that we had to give the Government many months to demonstrate that there were weapons of mass destruction, because that was the Government's principal reason for going to war and for advising the House to support them. I believed that it would be reasonable to give the Government 12 months or so. That argument was completely cut away when Donald Rumsfeld, the American Defence Secretary, said in April or May, "I'm sorry, but we did not expect to find any weapons of mass destruction." If he could say that then, surely he had not changed his mind from two months earlier, when the American Secretary of State was leading discussions at the United Nations. That raised the question of why the Americans went to war, and why we did so. The Hutton inquiry was then set up. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) said, we have learned a lot from the Hutton inquiry, some of it not very favourable, about the way in which government is conducted in this country. However, that is a secondary issue.
Two significant points arise from what we know of the Hutton evidence so far that create further ambiguity about why we went to war. First, Jonathan Powell, the chief of staff in the Prime Minister's office, said in an e-mail that he sent seven days before the Prime Minister spoke to the House on the issue that he was not convinced that there was evidence in the dossier that led to the conclusion that the country should go to war or that the Government should seek Parliament's support for that. So far as I am aware, we do not know what the consequences of that memo were. We do not know where it went, or who commented on it, but we do know that the Government had that information before their decision was reached.
A second piece of information came from John Scarlett. In his evidence, he said that the information on weapons of mass destruction related to battlefield weapons rather than to weapons driven by longer-range missiles. If hon. Members recall, we all believed at the time that, if there was a threat from weapons of mass destruction, we should be worried about Cyprus and other British interests in the middle east. The question of battlefield weapons was quite different.
We have heard from our legal friends that, if we were to establish a judicial inquiry today, it would be impossible for it to be a short, sharp inquiry, which might have been possible if we had set one up in June or July. However, now that Hutton has taken nearly six months, I do not think that this bigger question could be dealt with, or a final report produced, in anything less than a year or two—perhaps three. That does not satisfy my criteria regarding the British people needing to know, because they would not know until the other side of the general election. They have a right to know before the general election that the Labour Government acted straight and had the right evidence, which they believed to be accurate—whether it was accurate or not is another matter—and which led to the decision to go to war.
A second reason why I do not think that a judicial inquiry is the right way forward is that any evidence given to such an inquiry is going to be superseded by events in the United States. If hon. Members recall, the original debate in the United States was very low key. The public there were typical of a mid-western public, saying, "We've got to get these guys, they're terrorists, they're people we don't know, and they cause trouble in their own country. We've got to take them out." That was the view that prevailed in the United States about 12 months ago, and that was the political background against which the United States Administration made their decision. Then they were faced with the difficulties at the United Nations, when we persuaded them to go along the United Nations route. Of course, they then recognised some of the points that had been made before, perhaps by the Secretary of State and others in the Administration.
They recognised that, if they were to convince the international community, they needed much more specific evidence. They also recognised that their best ally, the United Kingdom, would have great difficulty at home and with Parliament if the only reason for going to war was getting rid of Saddam Hussein rather than coping with an immediate threat to British interests or those of Britain's friends. The Americans then began to say—they had found their reason—that it was all about weapons of mass destruction. However, that was killed by Rumsfeld—and by Wolfowitz in the same week—when he more or less admitted that that was not the reason why the Americans went to war.
From about June to September there was some hiatus in the US, but congressional committees have quietly begun investigations into all these matters. With the body bags coming home almost daily, American public opinion is beginning to focus much more closely on why their country went to war and why American soldiers are being killed in Iraq. The Democratic nomination process has further developed that trend. All the candidates are rightly being asked their views about the war and what they believe should be done in Iraq now. They are being interrogated in that way, and the results are very interesting.
General Wesley Clark was, until recently, Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO. I know that he has access to every piece of relevant intelligence that the British and American defence departments have. He has that knowledge. He has retired and is now a candidate for the Democratic nomination. About 12 days ago, he said on American television during a public debate in Phoenix, Arizona that he did not believe that there was a case for war, and that he would not have gone to war. That raises a huge question. If one of the principal generals in the US army, who had access to so much intelligence, believed that there was no case for war, how did the politicians in the Pentagon or the State Department come to believe that there was such a case, and how did politicians in the House here come to believe it? The momentum of that development will supersede events over the next few months.
What should the British Government do? Initially, it would have been wise—I supported an inquiry, judicial or otherwise, back in June—for them to build trust with the public and give all the evidence to an inquiry, which could then exonerate them. However, that is no longer a feasible option: it would take too long and be
superseded by events. I believe that the British Government should now "come clean", in the words of the tabloids.The Government should tell us more about their information on what the weapons were, where they were based, where they were targeted and what threat they constituted. If they can tell us that, it will clear the way for rebuilding trust. The public need to know what happened; we can then concentrate our energies on reconstructing Iraq.
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