Stephen's Views on Iraq
I have been a long-standing advocate for an inquiry into the British Government's decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003: a decision which the Liberal Democrats have always opposed - the only major party to do so. I am proud of the fact that my party was united in opposing the war five years ago.
Since being elected, I have voted for three major motions in 2006, 2008 and 2009, calling for the instigators of Britain's involvement in the war to be held to account for their actions. Each time I voted to hold an inquiry as soon as possible, but each time the Labour party used their Commons majority to overturn the proposals, claiming that such an inquiry would undermine "important operations" in Iraq, and that "a time will come when an inquiry is appropriate".
Now that all British troops have been withdrawn from Iraq, this excuse can no longer be maintained, and the Government has accordingly agreed to hold an inquiry. However, they have sought to weaken even this, and in June of this year they added an amendment that allowed major sections of the inquiry to be held in secret, and which retained a narrow membership for its committee, chosen in large part by the Government itself. I am further dismayed that the prospect of an interim report before the general election has been described as "unlikely". The prospect of political embarrassment in the run-up to an election is no good reason to delay the publication of the inquiry's findings.
I do not believe that the inquiry in its current form has sufficient integrity to fully examine the decision to go to war. I fear that we will see yet another example (as we did with both the Hutton and Butler inquiries) of a superficial report that investigates little, accomplishes still less, and leaves all of the public's major questions unanswered. We already know that five years ago, the Government voted for this invasion. We know that Gordon Brown signed the cheques - and the Tories cheered them on. The aim of an inquiry into the Iraq war should be to hold those responsible accountable for their actions, but Gordon Brown himself has stated that it will not do this. Instead, he claims, it will identify "lessons learned": a vague statement for a vague inquiry.
Even with this limited aim, it is vital that the process by which we learn these lessons should be open and public. At least then we might gain some insight into what is undeniably the biggest foreign policy disaster of the last half century. Instead, the Government is once more hiding behind a policy of secrecy and misdirection in an attempt to avoid accountability and embarrassment over its decision to go to war.
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