Meeting of the Parliament 29 January 2015
I do not believe for a minute that the publication date of the Chilcot inquiry’s report is among the top 10 concerns of the Scottish people, but I strongly believe that it is hugely important that we are all given the earliest possible opportunity to find out what happened, and why, during the build-up to and conduct of the Iraq war, so that we can learn the relevant and necessary lessons.
It is clear that the inquiry is incredibly thorough and detailed—the First Minister alluded to that. In his letter to the Prime Minister of 20 January, Sir John Chilcot said:
“Our report will be based on a thorough and comprehensive account of the relevant events from 2001-2009. We are determined to fulfil the responsibility placed on us to identify lessons to be learned from the UK’s involvement in Iraq, including the way decisions were made and actions taken, over this long period.”
I very much welcome the thorough and comprehensive nature of Sir John’s inquiry—that is absolutely as it should be. I share the disappointment that the report will not be published sooner than will be the case, but it is imperative that the process is completed properly. I say that for two reasons—so that the British public are fully informed and so that the report is published without fear of its being challenged on the ground that the due processes were not properly undertaken.
I will expand on that. Two of those due and necessary processes seem to be causing much of the delay that is so frustrating us all. The first involves the declassification of documents that would not normally see the light of day for many a long year but which are, understandably, deemed to be important to the inquiry. In particular, discussions over correspondence between Tony Blair and US President George Bush seem to have taken up an inordinate amount of time. However, I note with some pleasure that Sir John Chilcot, in his most recent letter to the Prime Minister, indicated that agreement had now been reached on those matters.
The second process, which the First Minister referred to, has become known as Maxwellisation. That process gives any individual whose involvement has been criticised or questioned in a draft report sight of that draft and a right to respond before publication. I fully understand that that process has not been responsible for most of the delay, although the process is on-going, and I am clear that the published report could be challenged by anyone who had not been afforded that right. That might be highly unsatisfactory—indeed, it is—to those of us who are impatient for publication, but it is part of the due process that has to be undertaken, and it cannot and should not be controlled or timed by any Government.
We cannot escape the fact that the report could have been published some considerable time ago. As the Prime Minister pointed out yesterday in the House of Commons, he first voted for an inquiry in 2006, but that was rejected by the then Labour Government. Labour MPs voted against it in 2006, 2007 and 2008.