Meeting of the Parliament 29 January 2015
The Chilcot inquiry report should be published as soon as possible. Today’s motion could have been agreed while saving debating time in the chamber for matters that require our urgent attention, such as the crisis in our national health service, the failure of schools to tackle educational disadvantage, and the threat to jobs in the North Sea.
On this side of the chamber, there is no quarrel with the position that Chilcot should be published as quickly as is possible. Chilcot must be allowed to publish when ready; there should be no question of any pressure to delay. The full truth of the decision to go to war and the failings during and after the conflict must be fully aired so that they may be learned from and never repeated. Members may recall that, before my own time in Parliament, this chamber did not vote to oppose the war when the question was put before it.
What we will not support if we hear it today is talk of using the Chilcot inquiry as a political tactic. It is too important for that. The report is a matter of national importance, not of nationalist posturing. In the years since the Iraq war, many things have become clear: that the intelligence behind the decision to go to war was wrong—