Chilcot Inquiry and Parliamentary Accountability

Debate between Alex Salmond and Chris Skidmore

Wednesday 30th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Alex Salmond]

The Minister mentioned Sir John Chilcot’s evidence to the Liaison Committee. The passage in which Sir John concludes that a reasonable man could not have come to the conclusion that Mr Blair did about weapons of mass destruction was followed by the Chair saying:

“So he misled the House, or set aside evidence in order to lead the House down a line of thought and belief with his 18 March speech”.

Has the Minister read that passage in the evidence?

[Chris Skidmore]

The important thing to recognise is that the Chilcot report—in paragraph 537 of the executive summary—explicitly does not question Mr Blair’s belief at the time that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. Paragraph 533 states:

“There is no evidence that intelligence was improperly included in the”

September 2002

“dossier or that No.10 improperly influenced the text.”

In paragraph 491, the report is explicit that

“Cabinet was not misled on 17 March”

2003.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alex Salmond and Chris Skidmore

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Skidmore]

My hon. Friend is right that we need a clear and secure democracy if we are to continue to have confidence in our system. In the elections for police and crime commissioners, about 8 million people voted and there were more than 300,000 spoiled ballot papers. For the EU referendum, in which 35 million people voted, there were just 25,000 spoiled ballot papers. There is clearly an issue that the Government will want to look into.

[Alex Salmond (Gordon) (SNP)]

Has it occurred to the Minister that if the Government were not so aggressively making it difficult for millions of people to be included in the register, and if the previous Prime Minister had not so arrogantly dismissed the case for enfranchising 16 and 17-year-olds, the referendum result would have been different, and he would still be Prime Minister?

[Chris Skidmore]

It is important to recognise that in the referendum a record number of people voted on one side—17.4 million voted for the UK to leave the European Union—and that a record 46.5 million people were registered to vote, of whom 3 million registered using the individual electoral registration system online. That shows that people have full confidence in the future of our new system.