I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is making an extremely interesting speech. He has spoken on these matters extremely interestingly for 10 or 15 years, to my knowledge. However, I am slightly puzzled by his line of argument. First, he is of course right about the recall of Parliament, but that is entirely separate from the matter that we are discussing. Of course Parliament should be recalled when something important has to be discussed, but that has no relevance whatever to what we are discussing now. Secondly, he may not like the outcome of the vote on Iraq, and he may say that people were cajoled and persuaded by the Whips to vote in a particular way and all those things, but that is precisely what happens for every single vote in this place, and quite rightly, too; that is the nature of democracy.
The interesting thing about the Iraq vote is that for the first time in 250 years this Parliament voted to go to war. Incidentally, the hon. Gentlemen is wrong in saying that there was simply that last vote on 13 February—I think that was the date. There was also a vote in November and another in December. The House of Commons voted three times to go to war in Iraq, and
that was the first time in recent parliamentary history, going back to the 18th century, that Parliament had in fact voted to go to war.