Introduction
1. The decision to commit armed forces to war is
the most momentous any leader can take. The Prime Minister took
such a decision in relation to Iraq, and United Kingdom forces
joined those of the other coalition partners in military action
there. However, unlike previous conflicts, the war in Iraq took
place only after a substantive vote in Parliament, a development
which we welcome.
2. We had before us in March 2003 a number of sources
of information on the situation in Iraq. Foremost among these
were papers provided by the Government, in which they set out
their assessment of the Iraqi regime, its human rights abuses
and its weapons programmes. Much of this evidence was based on
intelligence information—another welcome innovation by the
present Government—and it was frequently cited by those
who contributed to the debate, both inside and outside Parliament.
3. The main military phase of the conflict was over
remarkably quickly, although the situation remains dangerous and
the death toll continues to rise. Few would dispute that Saddam
Hussein was an evil dictator and that the Iraqi people are well
rid of him. But the war was fought not to effect regime change,
but to enforce unanimous Resolutions of the UN Security Council.
However, in addition to requiring the removal of what the British
Government claimed was a "current and serious threat"
from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD),[1]
it should be reiterated that the reasons that Parliament granted
the Government authority to embark on the conflict included a
number of other important considerations. Most important among
these was Iraq's persistent failure to comply with the ceasefire
conditions it entered into at the end of the Gulf War and the
fact that Iraq continued to refuse active co-operation "unconditionally
and immediately" with the UN weapons inspectors. Questions
have since been asked about the basis of the Government's claim.
If those who cast doubt upon it are correct, and the claim was
not well-founded, the war was fought on a false premise. And if
the claim was exaggerated or embellished, as some have suggested,
Parliament was misled.
4. This Report seeks to establish whether the Foreign
and Commonwealth Office, within the Government as a whole, presented
accurate and complete information to Parliament in the period
leading up to military action in Iraq, particularly in respect
of weapons of mass destruction. The focus on Iraq's weapons of
mass destruction is because their removal was the Government's
prime objective. As the Government stated in the opening paragraph
of its paper "Iraq: Military Campaign Objectives", published
in March 2003, "The prime objective remains to rid Iraq of
its weapons of mass destruction and their associated programmes
and means of delivery, including prohibited ballistic missiles,
as set out in the relevant United Nations Security Resolutions
(UNSCRs)."[2]
5. We heard oral evidence from the Foreign Secretary,
Jack Straw (twice); the Permanent Under Secretary FCO, Sir Michael
Jay; former Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House, Robin Cook
MP; former International Development Secretary Clare Short MP;
the Prime Minister's special adviser and Director of Communications,
Alastair Campbell; former Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee,
Dame Pauline Neville Jones; Director of Studies at the International
Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), Dr Gary Samore; former
Porton Down scientist and former Chief Executive of the Royal
Society of Chemistry, Dr Thomas Inch; former UNSCOM inspector,
now Director of the IISS-US, Terence Taylor; former senior intelligence
analyst at the Australian Office of National Assessments, Andrew
Wilkie; student and writer on Iraqi affairs, Ibrahim al-Marashi;
and BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan. We received written evidence
from most of these and from others. Our advisers were Wyn Bowen
of Kings College, London, Richard Cobbold, Director of the Royal
United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI)
and Tim Youngs of the House of Commons Library. To each of them
we are most grateful.
6. We are strongly of the view that we were entitled
to a greater degree of co-operation from the Government on access
to witnesses and to intelligence material. Our Chairman wrote
to the Prime Minister (requesting his attendance and that of Alastair
Campbell); the Cabinet Office Intelligence Co-ordinator; the Chairman
of the Joint Intelligence Committee; the Chief of Defence Intelligence;
the Head of the Secret Intelligence Service; and the Director
of GCHQ. None of them replied. It was the Foreign Secretary who
informed us that they would not appear. The Chairman wrote a further
letter to Alastair Campbell and after an initial refusal he agreed
to appear. We asked for direct access to Joint Intelligence Committee
(JIC) assessments and to relevant FCO papers. That was refused,
although some extracts were read to us in private session. We
are confident that our inquiry would have been enhanced if our
requests had been met. We agree with Alastair Campbell that "it
would have been very odd to have done this inquiry" without
questioning him,[3]
and we regret that other witnesses, some of whom we suspect felt
the same way as Mr Campbell, were prevented from appearing. Yet
it is fair to state that within the Government's self-imposed
constraints the Foreign Secretary sought to be forthcoming, spending
more than five hours before the Committee, and reading to us in
private session limited extracts from a JIC assessment dated 9
September 2002.
7. In contrast, the Prime Minister has repeatedly
said in the House that he will co-operate fully with a parallel
inquiry by the statutory Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC).[4]
This is hardly surprising, since the Committee was appointed by
and reports to him, and it meets entirely in private. The Foreign
Affairs Committee, on the other hand, was appointed by and reports
to the House of Commons, and we meet almost entirely in public.
We believe that our inquiry is the more credible of the two, and
that it would have been in the Government's best interests to
have given full co-operation. We have more to say in a later section
in this Report on the status of the ISC and on the need for this
Committee to have access to intelligence material.[5]
1 Forword by the Prime Minister to Iraq's Weapons
of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government;
also Q 735 Back
2
Iraq: the Military Campaign Objectives, available at: http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page3318.asp Back
3
Q 1057 Back
4
See, for example, HC Deb, 4 June 2003, col 147 Back
5
See paras 160 to 171 below Back
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