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Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD): I shall not go further into the internal Labour party argument that has opened up and been acknowledged by the Father of the House.
 
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I did not serve on the Butler committee because my party rightly took the view that it was not allowed to ask, and therefore would not answer, crucial questions about the political context within which the intelligence was considered and the political decisions that may   effectively have been taken. Those decisions go back to neo-Conservative pressures on the Bush Administration, President Bush's false linking of 9/11 to Iraq and the Prime Minister's falsely implied linkage between al-Qaeda and Iraq. In so far as contacts were established, they do not bear the weighty substance put on them. Indeed, the Prime Minister has continued to use the argument that the need to attack Iraq was primarily based on the necessity to deal with a rogue state because of what he described as the

"nexus between terrorism and WMD".

When the Intelligence and Security Committee quoted the JIC's assessment that

"any collapse of the Iraqi regime would increase the risk of chemical and biological warfare technology finding their way into the hands of terrorists",

the Prime Minister said that he was aware of that:

"But he believed that there was an alternative risk of leaving a possible nexus between terrorism and WMD and made his judgment accordingly."

That judgment was wrong, but it was part of the political context.

Let me put it this way: it is impossible to imagine the Prime Minister deciding not to participate when President Bush decided to launch an invasion of Iraq. Can anyone seriously imagine the Prime Minister saying, "No. I dissent. Britain will not join in"? Equally, it is impossible to imagine the Prime Minister deciding that the current threat to British interests which he perceived were such that we would have gone ahead if President Bush had decided not to.

Mr. Robert N. Wareing (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab): The right hon. Gentleman asked whether a British Prime Minister could say no if an American President decided to go into Iraq. Of course, Harold Wilson did say no over Vietnam. Indeed, Clement Attlee went so far as to see Harry Truman to prevent General MacArthur launching an attack on China way back in 1950.

Mr. Beith: I set great store by Britain's alliance with the United States in many respects. I am in no way anti-American. What I am saying is that our alliance with the United States has survived several fundamental disagreements over, say, Vietnam, Suez and the Falklands. However, I still cannot imagine our Prime Minister taking that course of dissent, which puts into perspective the way in which the intelligence was viewed.

On the intelligence, the Prime Minister wrongly quoted—or at least insufficiently quoted—paragraph 483 of the Butler report.

Mr. Salmond: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Beith: No, I want to deal with this point.
 
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I interrupted the Prime Minister from a sedentary position and he started to respond to me. He quoted the report as saying:

"senior Al Qaida associate Abu Musab al Zarqawi has established sleeper cells in Baghdad",

but he did not go on to complete the sentence, which concludes:

"to be activated during a US occupation of the city."

The following paragraph states:

"the JIC made clear that, although there were contacts between the Iraqi regime and Al Qaida, there was no evidence of co-operation."

Again, the Prime Minister rested too much on very little evidence to suggest a linkage.

The way in which the Intelligence and Security Committee dealt with some of those matters fed into the Butler report. Indeed, much of what Butler says can be found in two paragraphs of the ISC report of September 2003. It goes into more detail than Butler, including into the intelligence chain. On the weapons of mass destruction and the intelligence that was subsequently withdrawn, intelligence on 11 September was introduced in great haste and provided some confirmation of the dossier already prepared in the minds of Ministers.

It is not necessary to say much about the Leader of the Opposition's contribution because he sowed the seeds of his own destruction, but I want to dissent from a specific point that he made. He said that the Intelligence and Security Committee had not been told that that intelligence had been withdrawn. That is not the case—the ISC was aware that it had been withdrawn, and the careful wording of paragraph 101, which was dictated by security considerations, states:

"We have seen that intelligence and understand the basis on which the CDI and the JIC took the view they did."

That is Mandarin language, but it does not say that we agree with the intelligence, accept it or, indeed, endorse it in any way.

We were therefore told about that withdrawal of intelligence, but we were not told about the withdrawal of intelligence on the 45-minute claim. In the event, that is not terribly significant, because we demolished much of that claim in our report of September 2003, which stated:

"The 45 minutes claim, included four times, was . . . likely to attract attention because it was an arresting detail".

We said, however, that

"the context of the intelligence and any assessment needed to be explained. The fact that it was assessed to refer to battlefield chemical and biological munitions and their movement on the battlefield, not to any other form of chemical or biological attack, should have been highlighted in the dossier. The omission of the context and assessment allowed speculation as to its exact meaning."

It was clear at the time that far too much confusion surrounded the claim, and it certainly did not mean what newspaper headlines suggested it did. I do not think that very much effort was put into discounting or dismissing those reports. Ministers have appeared on the "Today" programme a number of times to dismiss things that they believed were wrong and to stop their dissemination, but I do not remember any direct policy to do so in this instance.
 
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I have some knowledge of, and considerable respect for, the work of the intelligence services, particularly the Secret Intelligence Service. During this saga, however, they were under considerable pressure to produce evidence on a very hard target. In my opinion, they became over-excited by intelligence that seemed to meet that demand from untested sources, some of which were second or third-hand, which is worrying.

Mr. Bercow : I have been listening carefully to the right hon. Gentleman. Given, however, that many Conservative Members believe—this is not intended in a spirit of malice—that naivety and a reluctance to act are defining features of Liberal Democrat foreign policy, does he accept that to many of us the idea that the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Inverness, West (Mr. Kennedy) could ever exercise the statesmanship demonstrated by the Prime Minister is quite unimaginable?

Mr. Beith: The hon. Gentleman is trying to make this a partisan debate, unlike a number of hon. Members who have sought to prevent it from becoming such. If he wants the evidence, however, he should look at our support for the no-fly zone and the military action that the right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) initiated to ensure that Saddam Hussein could not move into areas where he had previously shown his willingness to poison people with the chemical weapons then in his possession. We were in no doubt about the need for such action. Similarly, we believed that the threat of force was a significant factor, which we needed to retain.

Mr. Salmond: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Beith: No, I have given way twice, so I have reached the limit for which time is allowed.

I mentioned my concern about where the SIS went wrong, but I have a greater concern that for the Prime Minister the intelligence was only relevant insofar as it appeared to support a policy that did not depend on it but on a commitment already made to combine with the US in taking out Saddam's regime on grounds that could be applied to several dictators, proliferators, rogue states and failed states, including some of more immediate concern than Iraq, even on the information publicly disseminated at the time. Liberal Democrats have never challenged the Prime Minister's good faith or his conviction that what he was doing was right and in the country's interests. When considering whether to go to war, however, one needs more than good faith and self-belief. One needs good judgment and the determination to be as clear as possible about the evidence and the likely consequence. Both of those were lacking, because the Prime Minister had two overriding considerations. First, he did not want to be the person who might subsequently be criticised for not stopping Saddam Hussein in his tracks. That is a reasonable consideration, but it must be set in the context of what the consequences of military attack would be and what the grounds might be on which we would attack his regime, bearing in mind that there are a number of other evil regimes in the world, some of which present a more immediate threat. That was the first and overriding consideration, conscious or not, in his mind.
 
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The second overriding consideration was that the Prime Minister did not want to go down in history as the Prime Minister who permanently and fatally fractured the alliance between Britain and the United States. That, I think, was a mistaken judgment, on the grounds that I gave earlier: that Britain and the United States have differed on matters of policy over the years, but there are features to the alliance that are so powerful and enduring that it will outlast particular decisions and particular Administrations. The Prime Minister should have taken more account of that.

5.10 pm

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