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Mr. Mandelson: I shall continue, if I may. For me, the greater culpability than the original story—by the way, the subject was legitimate—was the failure to correct it. It is true that by that time the BBC had found itself in a power struggle, and no doubt that helped to scramble its collective mind. However, the BBC management defended what they knew to be absolutely indefensible.
Greg Dyke has rightly left the BBC because he was at the centre of its mishandling the matter. Mr. Dyke was clearly an inspiring and popular leader who got some big decisions right during his time at the corporation. He was popular because he adopted an "I believe in you" empowering style of leadership. The downside of "I believe in you" was a reluctance to investigate complaints. He devolved power in a way we would like to see matched in many other public sector organisations; the trouble is that he devolved his judgment as well, with the sorry consequences spelled out by Lord Hutton.
The big question is: where does the BBC go from here? I suggest, first, that the distinction be made between independence from the Government, which is of course sacred, and mindless oppositionism to the Government, which is best left to the press. I do not only mean this Government: I mean all Governments. I would like to see the BBC showing greater self-confidence in separating itself from the herd of the press.
Secondly, the BBC can comfort itself with the knowledge that it remains the world's premier public service broadcasting organisation, and that can and should be strengthened by charter review.
Thirdly, I would like to see the BBC set a different standard in the reporting of politics, rather than getting into the sandpit with the rest. We are witnessing not only a souring but a poisoning of the relationship between the media and politics, which did not start in this Government's time. It behoves us all—BBC, other media and politicians—to do what we can to put that right.
5.50 pm
Richard Ottaway (Croydon, South) (Con): There is a conspiracy in British public life. Politics needs the media as much as the media needs politics. They feed each
other in an alliance that shapes the governance of this country, and has done so for decades. Occasionally, the innocent, such as Dr. Kelly, get caught in the crossfire. Nothing prepared us for the drama that stole the summer of 2003. Stories that Britain had gone to war on a false prospectus had been circulating for months. None had produced any response from the Government, until the Gilligan piece of 29 May.I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) that the main thrust of Gilligan's story has to a large extent been found to be true. It was a scoop in true journalistic style, marred by a single sentence that could not be corroborated. But the suggestion that lit the fuse was the assertion that Campbell had sexed up the September dossier. It produced a nuclear reaction. As the Prime Minister's press officer bulldozed his way through the Committee Corridors and television studios, Dr. David Kelly watched and owned up. Three weeks later, he was dead. Seven months later, the chairman and director general of the BBC have resigned. Messrs. Campbell, Powell, Hoon and Blair are found to be humble servants of the people, just doing their every day job. The scale of the Government's triumph was compounded by the smugness of Mr. Campbell giving a press conference of vindication. His aim to have a
- "win, not a messy draw"
I have read the same evidence as Lord Hutton, and how he reached the conclusions he did, only he knows. To remove phrases from the September dossier that suggested that Saddam would only use WMD if attacked looks like sexing it up to me, whichever of Lord Hutton's definitions is used. The unanswered questions remain, but they are all outside the new inquiry's brief. The premise on which this Parliament voted for war was flawed, exaggerated and deceptive.
We went to war because the Government argued that Saddam posed a "current and serious" threat to the middle east and the stability of the world. The Government said that uranium had been sought from Africa, implying development of nuclear weapons. Not even the CIA thinks that that is true. The Prime Minister said that weapons of mass destruction would be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them. We now find that that referred to
- "battlefield mortar shells or small calibre weaponry".
The four 45 minute assertions were downright inaccurate and rash statements that misled everyone who read the September 2002 dossier. In his diaries, the right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), who was a member of the Cabinet at the time, said that not even the Prime Minister believed the assertion by the time of the debate and vote on 18 March. After my intervention in the Prime Minister's speech today, we know that he did not even know what weapons that
claim referred to. Interestingly, the right hon. Member for Livingston suggested that the Prime Minister should check his records.
Mr. Joyce: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that battlefield weapons with chemical, nuclear or biological capability would represent some scope for instability in the region?
Richard Ottaway: I do not accept that. I do not accept that mortar shells or small calibre weaponry would pose a threat to the region, the middle east or the stability of the world.
So why did the Government push their false prospectus? The reason is manifest. Had they come to this House and said that the United States had every intention of invading Iraq and finishing off the business of the 1991 Gulf war, the real question to consider would have been whether we were with or against them. The issue would have been clear, with the lessons of Suez learned and Britain's interests being seen to lie with the United States. The Government would not, or could not, deploy that argument for the simple reason that they knew that they could not carry their own Back Benchers with them. That is why they had to exaggerate and spin to get their arguments through the House. They would have got away with that, had it not been for a conversation between Dr. Kelly and Mr. Gilligan of the BBC.
The damage has been immense. Never before has this country gone to war on the strength of intelligence reports alone, and I suspect that it never will again. It was critical that the intelligence services got it right. The subconscious pressures on them were immense, but the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee accepted responsibility for the September dossier, and he must explain what went wrong and justify it to the Butler committee. What on earth was Mr. Scarlett doing drafting the famous press release at No. 10 on the day that Dr. Kelly was named? The intelligence services were subverted for political purposes.
Then there is the dodgy dossier, the cut-and-paste job. It was presented to Parliament as further intelligence underpinned by the integrity of our intelligence services. What breathtaking hypocrisy. It turned out to be nothing more than Government propaganda. Why is it that the Prime Minister gets away with that story with a casual "sorry" from his press office, when the carnage caused to the BBC by one sentence from a reporter—which, ironically, may yet prove to have more than a grain of truth—brings Britain's most popular public institution to its knees? But what else would one expect from a Government who act as if they were in an episode of "The West Wing", making instant decisions in corridors without any minutes being taken?
Whatever side of the political spectrum we are on, we know that the public must have trust in the Government as an institution. The alternative is cynicism and anarchy. This affair boils down to integrity and honesty. In the dark days of the second world war, when Britain faced a genuine "current and serious threat", the country turned to Churchill. He knew that if the people of Britain were to trust him, he had to be nothing but honest with them. He stood at that Dispatch Box and said:
- "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."—[Official Report, 13 May 1940; Vol. 360, c. 1502.]
5.58 pm
Mr. Peter Kilfoyle (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab): In the past week, the Government, quite understandably, must have felt as though all their Christmases had come at once. They had a report from Lord Hutton that seemed to exceed their wildest dreams, but the cautionary note is that that does not seem to resonate with the British people, at least not yet. All the polls suggest that more people still, rightly or wrongly, believe the BBC than believe the Government.
We should remember that the whole business surrounding the Hutton inquiry was a diversion born of a diversion. When Alastair Campbell went into the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, it was considering the events that led up to the declaration of war on Iraq. In my view, he quite deliberately and successfully set out to divert that Committee, which ended up with the sad loss of Dr. Kelly and all the events that have stemmed from that. Campbell succeeded in avoiding, at least up to a point, the central issue of why we went to war in the first place.
Something came to my mind earlier when I was listening to the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Inverness, West (Mr. Kennedy). I once came across a little town in the south-west of the United States called Truth or Consequences. That sounds like a board game, and I have often wondered what the town did to deserve that name, but the phrase "truth or consequences" is very pregnant. Out of the truth, consequences are born for the Government.
I would like to contextualise, in accord with what the Prime Minister said this afternoon, a debate that is ostensibly on Lord Hutton's report. When we have truth, we build up a trust. The corollary of that is that, when we have less than the full truth, it can lead to disbelief and cynicism, and often to total distrust. A great problem faces the Government on this issue. This reminds me of the lament of the psalmist who wrote:
- "O put not your trust in princes, nor in any child of man: for there is no help in them."
I mentioned contextualising. I would just like to flag up a few of the confusions that arose before Lord Hutton's deliberations, and which I assume will go on into the next round, the Butler committee. People do not have to mislead consciously or deliberately to create a totally false impression of reality. We were told in recent days, for example, that everyone believed that Saddam
Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. There is a point to be made here about the definition of "weapons of mass destruction". My recollection of the definition—I think that this is true—is that the term related mainly to nuclear weaponry and not, initially, to biological or chemical weaponry. That is certainly the case. There was a transposition over time to suit political objectives, both in the United States and here, in terms of the usage of that phrase.The idea that all the intelligence services have hitherto miraculously believed in the existence of weapons of mass destruction is simply not the case. An example involves the much maligned French. The director of the DST, one of the French security services, Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, wrote openly in Le Monde on 26 July. He was asked certain questions and they were quite open. The Americans are also very open; George Tenet is open, for example. I do not think that we get such chances to ask such open questions. As we heard today, the committee could not ask John Scarlett such questions. In France, those questions get into the newspapers.
Pierre de Bousquet de Florian was asked whether the DST shared the analysis of the American and British services on the links between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al-Qaeda. He said no, and gave his reasons. He was then asked whether the same disagreement applied to the question of weapons of mass destruction, and was given the example of the affair involving uranium in Niger. His answer was no, and again he gave his reasons. When asked whether such weapons could be deployed within 45 minutes, as the British assessment claimed, he gave what we might think was a typically French response:
- "Well! Saddam Hussein being engaged in carrying out chemical, biological and nuclear programmes, that's a different matter. Here and there you will no doubt find initial attempts at carrying them out. But we have never had any indications of completed programmes that are ready to be used."
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