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Mr. Barron: The hon. Gentleman will know that in our report on Iraq and WMD we did not set out to judge whether the decision to invade Iraq was correct. The purpose of the report was to examine whether the available intelligence that informed the decision to invade Iraq was adequate and properly assessed and whether it was accurately reflected in Government publications. We were not denied access to any information in drawing up the report, and the hon. Gentleman may be misleading the House if he is suggesting that we were denied information on some of the points that he mentioned.
Mr. Tyrie: When the Committee decides to try to make the kind of assessment that I am suggesting and decides to make public that assessment, the public will feel much more reassured about the extent to which information has been made available to the Committee. Can the right hon. Gentleman tell the House whether the information required to answer the second series of questions to which I alluded was also made available to the Committee?
Mr. Barron: Whether to invade Iraq was an issue for policymakers. It was also an issue for the House, in a debate and in a vote. For the Committee, the important thing was whether policymakers—one of whom has just entered the Chamber—were given the right information prior to those decisions being taken.
Mr. Tyrie:
I do not want to detract from the work of the Committee in any way, as it has done an outstanding job, as I was about to point out—I notice that the right hon. Gentleman is now smiling and seems much happier than he was a moment ago. What Parliament needs to
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do is to get to grips with those fundamental policy issues; we need the evidence in our hands to enable us to form judgments. We do not have that evidence. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman has seen all the evidence. Perhaps he has seen the Foreign Office assessment of the extent to which the war might have destabilised the middle east. Perhaps he has seen an assessment of the likelihood or otherwise of creating a democracy in Iraq. I do not know. Perhaps he can tell me in general terms whether he has seen such assessments.
Mr. Barron: If the hon. Gentleman reads our report on Iraq, he will see that we saw some assessments of the likely effect. Indeed, one of them received a lot of public comment: people asked what would happen if Iraq were invaded and WMD got into people's hands for use by terrorists throughout the world. So we saw some of the evidence, but clearly not all of it. I do not know whether it exists in the form that he suggests.
Mr. Tyrie: The right hon. Gentleman has made my point: he says that he has seen some but not all of the evidence.
Mr. Barron: If it is not there, I cannot see it.
Mr. Tyrie: The right hon. Gentleman cannot even be sure whether the evidence is there. I should like to move on. I have given him ample opportunity to comment on my remarks.
The third reason why we should be so concerned about what has gone on is that our failure to get to the truth, and the public's perception that we have failed to do so, have made us less secure as a country. That may be true of America, too. Both President Bush and the Prime Minister asked us to take the Iraqi expedition on trust. Next time there is a security threat, when we have to rely on their judgment, that trust will be much less willingly bestowed. Just as bad, potential opponents in other parts of the world will be able to see that weakness and exploit it. That is why the shortcomings of parliamentary scrutiny have not just weakened our democracy, but are making this country a less safe place.
The Guantanamo bay and Abu Ghraib scandals, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot) referred, illustrate how much better off we would be if we had more effective parliamentary scrutiny. I am pleased that the Committee will investigate that and take evidence.
For over a year, I have pressed the Government to tell me what steps the UK has been taking to discover whether people were being tortured at Guantanamo bay. What triggered my concern was information that an acquaintance of mine gave to me a long time ago. He found out that people were being deported from Guantanamo to Egypt to be tortured more comprehensively there. He asked me to raise that issue, which I did. I was shocked by that information, and I have been trying ever since to bring pressure to bear on the British Government to raise it with the Americans. I have had a long exchange of correspondence with the Foreign Secretary about that.
Of course, the efforts of one Opposition MP are only a pinprick. None the less, it is possible that if a parliamentary Select Committee or the Intelligence and
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Security Committee had taken up those issues earlier and pursued them remorselessly, some of the abuses might never have taken place and much less damage would have been done.
Those abuses have undermined the very values that the west is seeking to export. They have done incalculable damage. Our apparent double standards will resonate for years.
This is not just a moral issue for the UK; it is, of course, a legal one, as my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire said a moment ago. We have a duty of care under international law to uphold the welfare of all prisoners who we may have handed over to the Americans. I am told that we have handed over 341 prisoners to the Americans in Iraq, some of whom may be in Abu Ghraib. I should be grateful to the Foreign Secretary if he said whether that was the case. I have tabled several questions to the Secretary of State for Defence today to ask him about that very question. What happened to those 300 or so detainees and what steps have the Government taken to monitor their welfare? I will write to the Foreign Secretary about that again.
The experience of the past 18 months shows that our democracy needs much better scrutiny after wars than has taken place on this occasion. We need to try to restore the electorate's trust in politicians and Parliament. That is a big challenge, and I shall mention only a few things that could be done, some of which are alluded to in the report. First, it would help if the Prime Minister would trust Parliament a little more. He should realise by now that his obstructionism over scrutiny on Iraq has cost more in lost credibility than any embarrassment that he has been spared. The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary may have thought they had done well in refusing many of the Foreign Affairs Committee's requests for papers and people and by relying instead on Lord Hutton after David Kelly's death. In fact, far from letting the Government off the hook, it has only reinforced public cynicism.
The same is true of the Government's response to David Kay's evidence to a Washington committee—the creation of the Butler investigation. It may well turn out that the Government would have done much better to use the Intelligence and Security Committee to do that job of investigation rather than hoping that Lord Butler's narrow terms of reference would keep him away from the most sensitive spots. The Prime Minister should have shown much more candour from the start.
It is our job in Parliament to do more. We need to show that we can be trusted with confidential material. That is where the Committee has done so well in demonstrating that parliamentarians could be trusted over the past decade. We can also learn something from American experience. Much nonsense is talked about how much more effective congressional committees are than our own. The truth is that they are often stymied by even more partisanship than many of ours, and more obstructionism by the Executive. None the less, they have one advantage: they really can see whom they want to see and, if they are persistent enough, they can get hold of a lot more documentation. Things are often
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negotiated on the basis of protocols, with the Executive setting out the rules of engagement for the use of information and access to it. Perhaps we should consider doing the same under the Standing Orders of Parliament.
On an issue as fundamental as going to war, there is also a case for much closer collaboration between the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Intelligence and Security Committee, possibly also involving the Liaison Committee. Today is pretty much the 10th anniversary of the ISC. I strongly welcome its creation and I think it has done a great job. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Mr. Mates) said that there must be trust in the intelligence world. That trust has taken a severe knock over the past 18 months. We have a very big repair job to do.
4.7 pm
Mr. Elfyn Llwyd (Meirionnydd Nant Conwy) (PC): I add my congratulations to the Committee and its members for their endeavours and the hard work that they have evidently done over the past few months. Undoubtedly, this is an important debate, despite its being held on a Thursday. At paragraph 145, the report refers to its own report of September 2003, "Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction—Intelligence and Assessments". The Committee then believed that it had seen all the Joint Intelligence Committee assessments relating to Iraq from August 1990 to September 2002. The Committee now has to say, unfortunately, that that statement proved erroneous: in May this year a further eight JIC papers were handed over relating to WMD in Iraq and United Nations inspections. A subsequent check revealed that those papers were not given to the Committee at the time, which, understandably, caused it "considerable concern".
"We have read the recently provided papers. We are satisfied that knowledge of them would not have led us to change the conclusions, including those that were critical, in our Report. However, we might well have included further material from these papers . . . We have received an apology and we accept that there was no deliberate attempt to withhold information from us. However, we are concerned that some internal systems and record-keeping within the Cabinet Office Intelligence and Security Secretariat are defective and we will return to this issue."
The Government response to the Iraqi weapons report was delayed until February 2004. The Committee noted that it was not satisfied with the response, emphasising that there were only four key conclusions, while either rejecting or failing to address fully many of the Committee's conclusions and recommendations. It said:
"We regard this as extremely unsatisfactory and we recommend that the government explicitly address each of our recommendations and conclusions in future responses. Our dissatisfaction was increased by the government's decision to allow such little parliamentary debate on two such significant reports."
The report highlighted the limitations of intelligence, saying:
"Failing to highlight the uncertainties, and gaps associated with the limited amounts of intelligence collected, could mean too firm an assessment was made, which in turn would influence policy-makers disproportionately."
I am quoting the report extensively because I believe that the Committee has taken a robust approach and is doing a good job. I hope that everything necessary to
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enable the Committee to draw the proper conclusions is made available to it the first time of asking, and that its members do not have to burrow for information, as Back Benchers often have to. That is a matter of concern to the House generally. Weapons of mass destruction are not a side issue, but a core issue at the very heart of the Government's decision to invade Iraq. That there were shortcomings in the provision of information on that, of all subjects, is a cause of great concern.
I wholeheartedly endorse the comments of the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Mr. Mates) about the detainees at Guantanamo bay. The Prime Minister responded on the important matter of the treatment of prisoners, and the Committee, to its credit, has referred to what he said.
"The Prime Minister has informed us that, with one exception, all interviews conducted or observed by UK intelligence personnel have been conducted in a manner consistent with the principles laid down in the Geneva Convention".
"some detainees questioned by them have complained about their treatment while in detention",
"the UK intelligence personnel never witnessed any evidence of detainee abuse of the type that the US authorities have acknowledged has occurred".
Unfortunately, what the Prime Minister said does not square with what the Minister of State at the Ministry of Defence has been saying in response to detailed questioning from my hon. Friend the Member for East Carmarthen and Dinefwr (Adam Price) and others. My hon. Friend has consistently raised the issue in debate, questions, interventions and correspondence. In a written question to the Minister of State, my hon. Friend asked
"when in September 2003 the practice of hooding detainees in Iraq was stopped."
"An amended Standard Operating Instruction was issued on 30 September 2003 detailing that the use of hoods on apprehended persons was to cease. This had been preceded by a verbal instruction several days earlier."—[Official Report, 30 June 2004; Vol. 423, c. 358W.]
Paragraph 23 of the report details the whole issue, and I am mindful of the fact that the Committee states at paragraph 79 that it will take evidence on it. I welcome the fact that there will be further inquiry.
On 28 June, in his response to a question from the hon. Member for Hull, North (Mr. McNamara), the Minister of State stated:
"We are not aware of any incidents in which United Kingdom interrogators are alleged to have used hooding as an interrogation technique." —[Official Report, 28 June 2004; Vol. 423, c. 142W.]
That is far from satisfactory, bearing in mind the fact that at the same time the Minister was telling my hon. Friend the Member for East Carmarthen and Dinefwr that the technique was being banned. The problem is compounded by the fact that on 10 September 2003, Combined Joint Task Force 7 produced a document entitled "Interrogation and Counter-Resistance Policy"; the UK input to that document was from the deputy commander of the UK military forces. The document is the authority for the use of hooding, sleep deprivation, stress techniques and white noise; it came to light during recent US congressional hearings.
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I do not expect answers today, but I want to put on the record several questions. Was the Intelligence and Security Committee given a copy of the document, and if not, why not? Was the United Kingdom's role in the preparation of the document limited to the military commander, or was further authority given higher up the chain or in Cabinet? Who authorised the commander to sign up to the document? It is difficult to believe that the Government did not know of the document—one condoning a practice banned ever since a Northern Ireland case against the United Kingdom more than 15 years ago. It was inconsistent to condone the use of the technique until September 2003 while, at the same time, the Minister of State denied that it was used and, to contradict himself, said that it was banned from 30 September, the very month in which the UK military signed up to the document.
I am raising those serious issues because the Committee will take further evidence, and will undoubtedly scrutinise the position carefully. Was the reference to information from the Secret Intelligence Service at paragraph c on page 23 a reference to the coalition document? If not, why not? I suspect that reference was not made to the document and, with hindsight, I can understand why, but I hope that the Committee will continue its detailed and earnest investigation into the issue to unravel the truth of what happened.
More generally, with reference to page 23, what redress, if any, is there for detainees who suffered assaults and battery as a result of the illegal interrogation techniques? Is a criminal investigation under way? On the issue of Abu Ghraib, the Prime Minister has clearly stated on several occasions that he did not know of the inhuman practices at the camp until this year. I do not take issue with that, but apparently the United States Government knew about a year before. We have been told that the Prime Minister and the Government did not know anything of the Red Cross report until this year, but if that is the case—I will accept that it is to avoid further argument—what steps are being taken to question the officials who either failed or declined to pass that information on to the Government? The stock answer is that information is received and passed on day in, day out. However, on a matter as important as the conduct at Abu Ghraib, someone should have passed the information on, so the stock answer will not wash.
In conclusion, I hope that the Committee will continue its important deliberations, and can do so without being hindered by the withholding, whether wilful or not, of important information germane to its inquiries.
4.17 pm
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