Report of the Iraq Inquiry

Debate between Margaret Beckett and Peter Grant

Wednesday 13th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Beckett]

I am familiar with the insistence that, in some way, this is hugely important. That is not the impression that the public are being given or, if I may say so, that the right hon. Gentleman, among others, is striving every day to give them. The public are being given the impression, not that the intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was sporadic and patchy but that it was there, but that the intelligence services and the then Prime Minister knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction and deliberately misled the House. That is not true and was never true. No attempt—

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Will the right hon. Member give way?

[Margaret Beckett]

No.

No attempt to read that into the record can possibly be justified. We did not know it then—no one knew it then—and most people very firmly believed in Saddam Hussein’s intentions.

The third allegation is about the secret commitment. I was not the slightest bit surprised to hear the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) quoting the single sentence that is included in the background notification. I agree with him entirely if his assertion is that it was a profound mistake for the former Prime Minister to use that phraseology. However, I do not read into it the sinister feeling that the right hon. Gentleman does, nor indeed did the Chilcot inquiry. To my mind, if this had been a conversation, rather than a written memorandum, it would have been something along the lines of, “I am on your side, but”—but—“if we are to take action, all these things have to be addressed; we have to go the United Nations and so on.” Chilcot acknowledges that it was Mr Blair’s intent to get President Bush to go through the United Nations route, and that—against the advice of the President’s own allies—he pursued that with determination and had success in doing so.