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Mr. Michael Howard (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con):
In his statement, the Prime Minister relied on a finding in the report relating to the good faith of the Government in paragraph 310. The Prime Minister read it out, and it refers specifically to allegations that the
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intelligence in the September dossier had knowingly been embellished, and it agrees with Lord Hutton on those allegations. It does not refer to other findings in the report; it does not refer to what the Prime Minister said; it does not give the Prime Minister a defence. In January this year, the Prime Minister said:
"The issue vis-à-vis my integrity is: did we receive the intelligence and was it properly relayed to people?"
The question that arises from that statement is: was the intelligence given to the Prime Minister accurate, and did he give an accurate account of it to the country? Let us examine, on the basis of the Butler report, what the intelligence services told the Prime Minister, and then what he told the country.
On 15 March 2002, the Joint Intelligence Committee said:
"Intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction . . . and ballistic missile programmes is sporadic and patchy."
I repeat, "sporadic and patchy". On 21 August 2002, the JIC said that
"we have little intelligence on Iraq's CBW doctrine, and know little about Iraq's CBW work since late 1998".
"we have little intelligence . . . and know little".
On 9 September 2002, the JIC said: "Intelligence remains limited." I repeat: "Intelligence remains limited." That is what the JIC told the Prime Minister, so let us look at what he told the country.
The Prime Minister, in his signed foreword to the September 2002 dossier, said:
"I am in no doubt that the threat is serious and current."
"the assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons."
I repeat that the Prime Minister said that he was in "no doubt", and that the intelligence was "beyond doubt".
On 24 September 2002, the Prime Minister told the House that the picture painted by the intelligence services was "extensive, detailed and authoritative"—not "sporadic and patchy". Is that not why Lord Butler concludes that it was
"a serious weakness that the JIC's warnings on the limitations of the intelligence underlying some of its judgements were not made sufficiently clear"?
Is that not why Lord Butler concludes that the failure to include the limited intelligence base on which some of those assessments were made was "significant"? Is that not why Lord Butler concludes, specifically in relation to the language used by the Prime Minister, that it may have reinforced the impression that
"there was fuller and firmer intelligence behind the judgements"
in the September dossier than was, in fact, the case.
I return to the central question: was the intelligence given to the Prime Minister accurate, and did he give an accurate account of it to the country? It is now clear that in many ways the intelligence services got it wrong, but their assessments included serious caveats, qualifications and cautions. When presenting his case to the country, the Prime Minister chose to leave out those caveats, qualifications and cautions. Their qualified
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judgments became his unqualified certainties, and the question that he must answer today is: why? He has said that mistakes were made and he accepts responsibility, but it is not a question of responsibility—it is a question of credibility. I hope that we will not face in this country another war in the foreseeable future, but if we did and this Prime Minister identified the threat, would the country believe him? [Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker: Order. I want the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) to be quiet. If there is any breach of the rules of the House there is a danger that the House will be suspended, which means that the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition will have to wait until I recall it, so bear that in mind. I do not expect the right hon. Member for Dewsbury (Ann Taylor) to interfere either.
Mr. Howard: If we faced such a prospect, and the Prime Minister asked the country to rely on intelligence, would it have confidence in him? If he said that in his judgment war was necessary, would the country trust him? The issue is the Prime Minister's credibility. The question that he must ask himself is: does he have any credibility left?
The Prime Minister: Let me first deal with the issue of good faith. The right hon. and learned Gentleman supported the war—indeed, he supports it still.
Mr. Howard: On the basis of what you said.
The Prime Minister: Oh, is that reason? Let us just look at that for a moment. Was the right hon. and learned Gentleman duped into supporting the war by me? Let me quote something that the shadow Foreign Secretary said six months before the dossier was published:
"The Iraqi threat is indisputable. Horrific weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a despot who will use them or give them to others to use in every part of the world."
A few months later, before the dossier was published, he said:
"We know there are weapons of mass destruction."
The Leader of the Opposition made a speech to Murdoch's News Corporation in March this year, after the Hutton report, after all the arguments about the intelligence, and I managed to get hold of a copy. He said
"The war against Iraq was necessary. It was just. It was, indeed, arguably overdue."
"The British Conservative Party has been consistent in its support for the British Government"—
that was in March this year, not March last year—
"and for our armed forces, over the war in Iraq. Indeed"—
"Tony Blair would not have won last year's vote in the House of Commons . . . which gave him the mandate to go to war, without the support of the Conservative Party."
So let us have no more of him being tricked into
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supporting the war by me. The fact of the matter is that he thought it was right then and he thinks even now, does he not, that it was right to go to war?
Mr. Howard: Answer the question.
The Prime Minister: Go on—just a nod of the head will do. The right hon. and learned Gentleman thinks even now that it was right to go to war, does he not? So let us leave aside his usual opportunism and understand that we both agreed that Saddam was a threat, we both still think Saddam was a threat and we both think the war was justified. Let us therefore concentrate on making Iraq better, not on point-scoring that has nothing to do with the central issues.
Mr. Charles Kennedy (Ross, Skye and Inverness, West) (LD): As the Prime Minister rightly acknowledges in his statement, whatever views we all took about the war, there is no doubt, given the importance of this report and others and his statement this afternoon, that nothing will ever be able to erase the loss of British military life and the loss of life of innocent Iraqi civilians.
Our fundamental disagreement, as the Prime Minister knows from the time that he announced the setting up of Lord Butler's inquiry, remains. We argued from the outset that we wanted the political judgments that informed the decision that the Prime Minister took to go to war to be placed properly under the microscope. As we have seen from the very thorough and detailed piece of work that Lord Butler has produced, that was not possible within the remit set. However, what is possible within the remit and the words that Lord Butler has chosen to use in his report is to pose some direct questions to the Prime Minister arising from it, not least because the Prime Minister said in response to me when he made his statement setting up the inquiry that on the issue of political judgment
"to subcontract to some committee the issue of whether it was right or wrong to go to war is not merely wrong: ultimately it is profoundly undemocratic."—[Official Report, 4 February 2004; Vol. 417, c. 755.]
Lord Butler states in chapter 5 on page 99 that
"from the evidence which has been found and de-briefing of Iraqi personnel it appears that prior to the war the Iraqi regime . . . did not, however, have significant—if any—stocks of chemical or biological weapons in a state fit for deployment, or developed plans for using them."
As the Prime Minister says he accepts the report in full, he must accept that observation. Can he therefore square his acceptance of that observation with his own words in the introduction to the dossier, in which he wrote:
"I believe the assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons"?
Does not Lord Butler's conclusion, which I quoted, reinforce what the Prime Minister had said much earlier, in 1998, when he argued that the policy of containment was working?
In chapter 7, on page 141, Lord Butler points out:
"These international agencies"—
that is, UNSCOM and the International Atomic Energy Agency—
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"now appear to have been more effective than was realised at the time in dismantling and inhibiting Iraq's prohibited weapons programmes."
"The value of such international organisations needs to be recognised and built on for the future, supported by the contribution of intelligence from national agencies."
If the Prime Minister accepts the first part of that observation, as he has acknowledged, what steps will he take to make sure that the conclusion is followed, to underpin those international organisations for any similar events in future?
Moving away, as we did, from the containment policy at the time of the September 2002 dossier, huge focus was placed on the 45 minutes claim. I take issue with the Prime Minister when he says this afternoon that that dossier assumed importance after the event. Surely he, like the rest of us, remembers, for example, well-publicised events such as tanks being deployed at Heathrow airport and the newspapers being full of the 45 minutes warning. That was the context at the time.
Lord Butler says of the 45 minutes claim:
"the JIC should not have included the '45 minute' report in its assessment and in the Government's dossier without stating what it was believed to refer to. The fact that the reference in the classified assessment was repeated in the dossier later led to suspicions that it had been included because of its eye-catching character."
If the Prime Minister accepts that conclusion, could he tell us who bears the ultimate responsibility for the claim's inclusion and its highlighting in that way?
Finally, in chapter 5 at paragraph 465, Lord Butler states:
"We conclude that it was a serious weakness that the JIC's warnings on the limitations of the intelligence underlying its judgements were not made sufficiently clear in the dossier."
That goes to the heart of the matter for many, many people. The legality of the war was a key issue. The advice of the Attorney-General has been looked at, as well as the advice—at times conflicting—from within the Foreign Office. It is acknowledged that twice in the past such advice has been made public. Is it not time that all of us were able to see the full advice tendered by the Attorney-General?
Lord Butler speaks of a collective failure on the part of the Joint Intelligence Committee, but if that collective failure applied to the JIC, did it not also apply to the key political players in and around No. 10 Downing street at the time?
The Prime Minister presides, we are told, over a Cabinet process of informality on such important issues. If he accepts the report's conclusions and recommendations, does he have any procedures in place, or is he planning any changes to his management of Cabinet government for such an important issue as war and peace? Surely we have a right to be told that.
Inevitably, Lord Butler and his colleagues, deep and elaborate though their task has been, have not been able to address the fundamental question that many of us wanted to have addressed from the start: what was the key reality of the political judgments that led us to this war? When the Prime Minister now says that the outcome was desirable, albeit arrived at by insufficient conclusions and methodology, surely that is not a
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satisfactory way to proceed. Congress is continuing to try and get to the bottom of these matters. Surely the British Parliament should be seen to do better as well.
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