I thank the Backbench Business Committee and the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) for bringing this important debate to the Floor of the House. The discussion has been wide-ranging and I have listened with interest to Members in all parts of the House who have expressed many different views both about the decision to go to war in Iraq and about the decision to set up the inquiry and the way that it was established. Most of all, what unites all those contributions is concern about the length of time that it has taken for the inquiry to report. The delay is deeply frustrating. When the inquiry was announced in June 2009, it was never anticipated that in 2015 we would still be awaiting its publication.
In 2001 Sir John Chilcot said that it would take “some months” to deliver the report, given the complexity of the issues, the nine-year period that the report covers and the sensitivity of some of the information that it looked at. We accept that there is a balance to be struck between the need to be thorough and the need to remain relevant, but when the inquiry was announced it was expected to be published within a year. The right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) spoke compellingly about the subsequent delays, why they may have occurred and what that has meant for the inquiry.
We are keen for the report to be published as soon as possible, but the inquiry was established on an independent basis and we believe still that it would be wrong for the timing to be influenced by political parties. That in no way lessens the potential seriousness of the delay in publication. All of us are, or should be, acutely aware of the impact on the families affected by the Iraq war—179 British servicemen and women lost their lives and many others were injured, and we should remember, too, the thousands of Iraqi families who will be watching these events unfold. I know from my own experience of working with some of the families affected by Hillsborough just what a heavy price families pay for such delays.
Many of the questions that surfaced during the debate are questions for the inquiry. It is right to acknowledge that the reasons for the delay have not yet been made clear. When Sir John Chilcot appears before the Foreign Affairs Committee next week, I hope he will be able to provide some of the answers that Parliament and the public seek. Questions have been raised about the role of the Labour Government in setting up the inquiry, and I want to deal with the accusation that Labour voted against establishing an inquiry and in doing so caused unnecessary delay.
It is fundamentally untrue to suggest that Labour was opposed to establishing an inquiry into Iraq. It was the Labour party that established the Chilcot inquiry,
and Labour MPs voted against initiating an inquiry on the basis only that there were still troops on the ground, and that it would have been wrong to undermine their role and potentially jeopardise their security. This was also the position advanced by the shadow Foreign Secretary at the time on behalf of the Conservative Opposition. In 2006 the shadow Foreign Secretary said that the Opposition
“do not believe that such an inquiry should be established now. As the Foreign Secretary said, important operations are under way in Iraq. Major political decisions in Iraq and efforts to contain the insurgency appear to be in the balance.”—[Official Report, 31 October 2006; Vol. 451, c. 183.]
It is important to remember, too, that the scale and the breadth of this inquiry are unprecedented. It was established with such a wide remit to ensure that the full story was told. Given the numbers of people who lost their lives or were affected by this conflict, it was essential that the inquiry had broad parameters and commanded the confidence of families.