Iraq Inquiry Report — House of Commons, 2016-04-14
Topic: Government Operations
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): It is an honour to speak in the debate, but I take no pleasure in doing so. I do not think that we should be having this debate, because the Chilcot report should have been published by now Time has been a huge issue since the genesis of the report. We should particularly bear in mind that Sir John Chilcot promised that the report would be delivered by 18 April, or the week commencing 18 April, and I understand that he will honour his word. Also, the Prime Minister promised to have it security-cleared within a fortnight, which would be by the week beginning 2 May. The promise that I seek from the Minister is that the Government will keep their word, and that a fortnight after Sir John Chilcot has delivered his report, we shall see it published As many have said, and as was said at the press conference, publishing a report is not a difficult matter these days. It is no longer a matter of "cold lead". It is, as we heard from the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), a matter of pressing "send" and the thing is published. People have waited far too long for this report, and further delays are only adding to the pain of the families who are looking for closure. Delays also add to the ever-increasing time during which we have failed to learn the lessons of Iraq, which we should have learned several years ago There are further timelines relating to the Chilcot report. On 29 January last year, there was a debate—also hosted by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden—on a motion calling for the report to be published by 12 February 2015. There was uproar in the House during Prime Minister’s questions and at other times when it was suggested that the report could be delayed beyond the general election of May 2015. We are now in April 2016, and again there is uncertainty about the report. This report was kicked off in 2009, but there was another timeline before that of impatience for the report. I remind the House of a cross-party debate held here on 31 October 2006, when I was quite a new MP, having been here for about a year and a half. It was led by Adam Price, the then hon. Member for Carmarthen, East and Dinefwr. It is instructive to go back and look at the words that Adam used at the beginning of his speech. He said: "It is about accountability. It is about the monumental catastrophe of the Iraq war, which is the worst foreign policy disaster certainly since Suez, and possibly since Munich. It is about the morass in which, regrettably, we still find ourselves. It is also about a breakdown in our system of government—a fault line in our constitution that only we, as Parliament, can fix. Fix it we must, if there are not to be further mistakes and other Iraqs under other Prime Ministers, in which case we shall only have ourselves to blame."—[Official Report, 31 October 2006; Vol. 451, c.163.] Those words still ring true today There was another debate, to which Tony Blair refused to come, despite saying a few weeks earlier to a Conservative Member that he would come at "any time" to a debate on Iraq. Part of the defence for that was that soldiers were in the theatre of operation, but that was admirably dealt with by Douglas Hogg, then a Conservative MP and now Lord Hogg. He said during world war two, the debate on the Norway debacle was led by his father, and that took place when troops were in action. The key moment of the Norway debate—I am not certain about the name of the inquiry—led to the removal of Chamberlain and the installation of Churchill, which may have been instrumental in changing the course of world war two, because this Chamber had shown that it was not afraid.