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The Prime Minister: I do think that it is time that we recognised that the goal now is to make Iraq a stable country. I also emphasise once again that, as I said at the very outset of my statement, the key to this report is balanced judgments. People can pick out one part of the report or not, but the plain fact is that although it does indeed cast doubt on some of the intelligence that was relied on, it most certainly does not conclude that Saddam Hussein was not a threat in respect of WMD.
Mr. Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con): Will the Prime Minister bring himself to accept that Lord Butler has shown more clearly than ever before, in annexe B and elsewhere, that time and again the Joint Intelligence Committee's first publication used language to describe the threat that did not match the language of its own assessments by its own officers?
Can the Prime Minister think of any explanation for the removal of all the caveats and doubts in producing that publication other than that John Scarlett had been persuaded, by the Prime Minister's press secretary and others, to remove all the cautionary words and to stiffen up the case?
Most importantly, does the Prime Minister believe that if, when he came to this House and made the case for war, he had used the actual language of the intelligence assessments that he had read, he would still have won the vote that carried this country into war? I must tell him that I do not think that he would have done.
The Prime Minister: I totally disagree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman. He, of course, opposed the war, and was perfectly entitled to do so. He opposed the war at the time and opposes it now. I have absolutely no doubt at all that had the caveats been put in about the limits of intelligence and so on, the essential fact would have remained—that there was the clearest possible evidence on Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction. Resolution 1441, which was passed subsequent to the dossier, was a resolution of the entire international community.
If the right hon. and learned Gentleman looks at Lord Butler's report as a whole, he will find that the allegation that there was a knowing embellishment of the intelligence is refuted. That is precisely what Lord Hutton looked into, and precisely what Lord Butler, along with everyone else, finds is not right.
I suggest that the right hon. and learned Gentleman, like others who opposed the war, should recognise that he simply made a different judgment as to what we should do in the light of this threat. The argument was not over the details of the threat. The argument was: is the judgment that the best way of dealing with this threat is to get the inspectors back in and leave them there for a period of time, or to continue the sanctions regime, or do we recognise that the only way of dealing with this threat is to remove the person constituting it? That is the difference of judgment between us: it was
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then and it is now. Nothing will change that, but I am afraid that I disagree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman's judgment.
Mr. Robin Cook (Livingston) (Lab): May I welcome the Prime Minister's frank acceptance that there were no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction at the time of war? He is entitled to argue that that does not mean that there was no justification for the war, but it does surely mean that there was no urgent necessity for the war, because there was no imminent threat. Will he now recognise that there was time for Hans Blix to finish his job and to confirm through the process of UN weapons inspections that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction and that, had he done so, we might have been spared the unavoidable conclusion from the content of the Butler report—that we committed British troops to action on the basis of false intelligence, overheated analysis and unreliable sources?
The Prime Minister: I know that my right hon. Friend has always taken the view that it would have been better if we had proceeded with the second UN resolution. I know, too, that he believes that we should have allowed Hans Blix to remain there for a longer period of time. I simply have to say to him that, as I said to the leader of the Liberal Democrats, if we had secured the second resolution, with a series of conditions and an ultimatum, then yes, there would have been more time. As I used to say at the time, it is not a question of a specific amount of time, but a question of Saddam fully complying, because that is what resolution 1441 says—that Saddam had fully to comply. I think that my right hon. Friend would accept that there is no way the UN inspectors would ever have been back in Iraq without the troops being there. And there is no evidence that Saddam was ever complying fully—indeed, the evidence points the other way.
The problem is this. I agree—and I thought that my right hon. Friend put it, at least in the first part of his question, in a moderate way—that we have to put this in a different way with hindsight. I also say that, if it is correct, as Lord Butler also finds, that there was a clear strategic intent, that there was the illicit procurement of material in order to develop WMD, and that Saddam was carrying on developing ballistic missiles in breach of UN resolutions, there is no doubt that he was indeed in breach of those UN resolutions. So the question is this: if we had left the inspectors there longer, with the troops still down there, would they, in the end, have discovered, not that there were no stockpiles, but that there were actual breaches of the UN resolution, as Lord Butler finds?
I have to say to my right hon. Friend that, ultimately, I do not believe that even if we had left the inspectors there—with the troops, because he acknowledges, as I do, that the troops would have had to be there to keep the inspectors there—for three months, six months, or even nine months, Saddam would ever have complied, because he never had any intention of giving up his WMD ambitions. In the end, therefore, we faced the choice of whether to take this on and deal with it or not.
Incidentally, I would also say to my right hon. Friend that that is the reason why he and I, without a UN resolution, took military action in December 1998. We
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did not take that action because we had some doubt about Saddam and WMD—we took that action because we were certain of it and believed that it was the right thing to do. I know that there was a difference between us on the second resolution, but I believed that it was the right thing to do in December 1998 and I believed that it was the right thing to do in March 2003.
Mr. David Trimble (Upper Bann) (UUP): I wonder if the Prime Minister would agree with the following summary, as we stand back from things and look at them. There was, and continues to be, a very good case for the action that was taken with regard to Iraq, but the Government, in their anxiety and eagerness to get the widest possible support for that action, oversold the case, and the reaction from that has led to an undermining of the good case and results in a situation whereby it is now more difficult for us to make progress. Does the Prime Minister remember once making a similar mistake?
The Prime Minister: No, I am afraid that I do not; and I have to tell the right hon. Gentleman that I do not agree with him. Even if one put in all the caveats, as the report suggests, the fact is that what we said at the time, back in September and in March, is that Saddam Hussein is an active WMD threat and has actual deployable weapons. That was the effect of the intelligence. No matter what changes we made to the way in which it was put, that fundamental thing would have remained. I say to the right hon. Gentleman, as I have said to others, that the fact is—this is why I am afraid that I cannot say that we were wrong in taking the action that we did—that even if we accept what is in Lord Butler's report now, that does not mean going to the opposite extreme and saying that there was no threat at all.
Kali Mountford (Colne Valley) (Lab): Is it not the case that the policy of containment could be said to have been working only if we accepted people's containment in a situation of despair and mass graves? Is it not also the case that weapons of mass destruction, and the belief in them, were vital to the Saddam regime to maintain that state of despair? If we are to continue in this way as an international community, should not we now consider redrawing international agreements to ensure that when similar situations arise the case for action is absolutely clear?
The Prime Minister:
I entirely accept what my hon. Friend says. There is a very strong case, in the different world in which we live, for recognising that there may be circumstances in which we have to take such action in future. There is clear evidence of bin Laden, al-Qaeda and this new form of terrorism trying to acquire WMD. The best account of that, strangely, is in the statements made by Dr. David Kay, who was with the Iraq survey group. He says that, because of the nature of Saddam's regime—its instability and the way in which people were treated—the threat may have been different from, but greater than, the threat that we anticipated. That is why I believe that in future we will be placed in a situation where we have to calculate whether we need to take such action.
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