Iraq Inquiry

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, one of the greatest British leaders of all time, writing between the two terrible world wars of the last century, left us this cautionary reminder. Winston Churchill wrote:

“Let us learn our lessons. Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on that strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The Statesman who yields to war fever must realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events”.

That is a fair epitaph for the Iraq war that Sir John Chilcot was asked to investigate, along with telling us what lessons should be learned.

At the outset I pay tribute to Britain’s Armed Forces and their families who loved and sustained them during the conflict, and especially to the 179 of our service personnel and 23 civilians who lost their lives. Our thoughts and prayers are with them. For my part I can only imagine the pain they are enduring even now. We remember, too, those who suffered physical and mental injuries as a result—what a price they have paid for doing their duty.

My noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon spoke for many in both Houses when she said in response to last week’s Statement that the decisions about when our Armed Forces are deployed are not theirs. As we faced war in Iraq, for the first time in our history the House of Commons was invited to vote yes or no to military action. The decision was made there. I voted for it. Again, my noble friend spoke for me, and, I am sure, many others, when she said that no MP who voted for action took the decision lightly. In my experience of that time, there was mutual respect for all who took a different view. We cannot and will not forget the thousands of Iraqi civilians who have lost their lives in the conflict and since.

The Chilcot report has been a long time coming but we must thank Sir John and his team for taking on this mammoth task. Sir John said that the two key questions for the inquiry to consider were whether it was right and necessary to invade Iraq in 2003, and whether the UK could and should have been better prepared. Politicians, commentators and historians will ponder the answers to those two questions for decades to come but for me, and I suspect for many others, the big question to consider now is: what lessons can we learn from the war and from the process of decision-making that led us into it?

I welcomed the Prime Minister’s Statement last week when he said he was taking on board the question of how decision-making across government can be improved. We all know from the report that Britain urged President Bush in 2001 not to take hasty action in Iraq, and we continued beyond that to seek a settlement and work with the UN before finally concluding that war was the only course left. We know that by April 2002 the Joint Intelligence Committee had concluded that Saddam Hussein could not be removed without invasion, and that by then our Government believed that Iraq posed a threat and had to disarm or be disarmed. Sir John concludes that this implied we would use force if Iraq did not comply.

I do not intend to rehearse in detail the conclusions reached by Sir John in his report. His key criticisms are well known and must be addressed. However, I recognise the importance of his criticisms about process and procedure. He also raises questions about proper analysing and decision-making, and about planning and preparation. However, I note that Sir John did not conclude that the Government acted in bad faith. I paraphrase the comment made last Wednesday by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, who is in his place. He said that the Prime Minister and his colleagues were seeking to serve the national interest. Even though he had opposed the war as an MP, he did not believe the Government were actuated by ignoble motives.

Saddam Hussein was a murderous, evil tyrant, who slaughtered tens of thousands of his own people and caused the deaths of countless others in a war with Iran and through the invasion of Kuwait. Sir John's report makes clear that both we and the Americans had an “ingrained belief” that he had the ability to produce chemical and biological weapons. He had done so in the past and certainly wanted his neighbours and the rest of the world to believe he still had such weapons. We believed it, and this is where the Americans and we stood at the start of the conflict.

Perhaps I may share with the House an American analysis of how the USA saw the conflict. The analysis says that the key assumptions—that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, that,

“Iraqi reconstruction would pay for itself, that the majority Shiite population would welcome coalition forces as liberators”,

that Iraqi tribal structures could be ignored, that only a small military footprint was necessary, that large-scale de-Baathification of the country could be carried out without a problem and that there would be,

“a rapid transfer to Iraqi control”,

—all proved wrong.

The distinguished authors of the report write:

“The failure to plan adequately and comprehensively for the postconflict period ushered in a new, dangerous, and intractable phase that saw a rapid descent first into insurgency and then into intense sectarian violence”.

The plain fact is that post-conflict planning in the US was minimal and it was no better here in Britain. That is the key lesson we must learn. But are we learning the lessons?

The Prime Minister stated that he was taking on board the question of how decision-making across government can be improved. The Minister has given us some indications of what the Government have in mind and have already put in train. In paragraph 409, Sir John says that,

“there should have been collective discussion by a cabinet committee or a small group of Ministers on the basis of inter-departmental advice”.

Do the Government accept that and, if they do, can the Minister say how the Government will respond to this aspect of the report? Sir John goes on in paragraph 410 to say that,

“a Cabinet committee or a more structured process might have identified some of the wider implications and risks associated with the deployment of military forces to Iraq”.

Do the Government agree with Sir John on this? Indeed, can the Minister say whether the Government intend to respond to Sir John’s report as a whole, setting out how we might do things better in the future? Having said that, I appreciate that the Minister has started to advise the House on this already.

One further point is that the Department for International Development has a humanitarian unit for failed states to help them rebuild, yet no equivalent exists for post-conflict states to assist in post-conflict planning. I suggest that there is a role for such a unit within the Ministry of Defence. Indeed, we could look at post-conflict planning with our closest ally, the United States.

NATO has held many joint exercises over the last year, but they were all about war fighting. Should we not initiate with equal vigour joint exercises in post-conflict planning? Such exercises would reveal weaknesses in our planning processes, force allies to agree decision-making structures and familiarise individuals with peers in allied nations—particularly the United States—in terms of how we each operate. This would mean that, if it looked as though a post-conflict situation might be emerging, planning could be smoothly and effectively initiated.

The major failure post the Iraq invasion was that no one felt it was their responsibility to take the lead on this. The Iraq conflict has proved divisive and contentious in this country. It has divided families and communities, and we can all understand that. But it must not be allowed to undermine our determination to protect British interests, and our best interests, by making us resolutely opposed to interventions of any sort in the future—a point made, I think, by the Minister.

There will be times ahead when we face a decision about whether to intervene—whether militarily or for humanitarian reasons—in some situation or another. The Iraq conflict has left many painful scars on the body of our country, but we must not—we cannot—turn our back and fail to intervene when it is needed. Let us remember our successful intervention in Sierra Leone and the benefits it brought to that country, but let us not forget that we did not intervene in Bosnia and Rwanda, or the grave consequences that befell those countries as a result. Regardless of the strong views held on all sides about this conflict, let us all agree that there is one thing on which we should be united: following the Iraq war and the publication of the Chilcot report, we should be determined to learn the lessons of the failure of post-conflict management.