Michael Meacher's contribution to the debate on the Hutton Report

Extract from Hansard.

Mr. Michael Meacher (Oldham, West and Royton) (Lab): Like other Members on both sides of the House who have spoken today, I certainly believe that throughout this episode the Prime Minister has always acted and spoken in good faith; but I also believe that in the aftermath of war Parliament has a right and, indeed, a duty to examine the Government's case for military action. In this case, it clearly rests on four main counts, each of which I believe needs to be examined not so much in terms of what we may know now as in terms of what information was available to the Government on each point before the war. I want to ask what I hope are some pertinent questions on that score.

First, there is the 45-minute claim, which we know from Alastair Campbell's evidence to the Hutton inquiry was included as a result of a request to the Prime Minister. Several Members have asked a question to which we need an answer. Why did the dossier not make it clear that the claim applied to battlefield weapons with a short range of only 20 to 40 km, and not to missiles that could strike Cyprus, let alone Britain?

There has been some discussion in the debate about whether the Prime Minister was aware of that. My right hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), in a diary entry on 5 March last year, recorded a conversation to that effect that he had had with the Prime Minister that day. It would seem to suggest that perhaps the Prime Minister did know. I think that we are entitled to ask: when the September dossier was published and the 45-minute claim was widely reported as applying to weapons of mass destruction—thus greatly exaggerating the threat from Saddam—why did the Government not make more effort to correct the misreporting, despite believing it to be wrong?

Secondly, the dossier claimed that Iraq was seeking to buy 500 tonnes of uranium yellow cake from Niger for nuclear weapons programmes. Britain allegedly received that intelligence from the Italians and passed it on immediately to Washington at the beginning of 2002. The CIA immediately dispatched a former US ambassador, Joseph Wilson, who went to Niger and rapidly confirmed in March 2002 that the claims were wholly bogus. We also know that the CIA later advised Britain for that reason to omit the Niger allegations from the September dossier, so we are entitled to ask why they were still included, even though it had been shown that they were false.

Thirdly, on the detailed lists in the dossier of the chemical and biological weapons that Saddam was alleged to have, all the UN inspectors had found was that such weapons were "unaccounted for". That was the relevant phrase, but the dossier clearly implies that the weapons actually existed. The point has been made, particularly by the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley), that many of Iraq's chemical and biological agents produced before the Gulf war would, if they had not already been destroyed, be so degraded more than a decade later as to be ineffective as warfare agents.

More particularly, Dr. Brian Jones said in his evidence to the Hutton inquiry that his leading chemical weapons expert was concerned that he could not point to any solid evidence of the production of such weapons by Iraq, yet the Prime Minister's foreword to the September dossier said:

"What I believe the assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt is that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons."

Given that the defence intelligence so strongly and widely took the opposite view, how is such a breakdown—it may have been said in good faith—in political access to the relevant intelligence to be explained?

Fourthly, on the claim that Iraq had produced 4 tonnes of VX nerve agents—a claim made and supported by Colin Powell—the Prime Minister told the House on 25 February last year, a month before the war:

"It was only four years later"—

in 1995—

"after the defection of Saddam's son-in-law to Jordan, that the offensive biological weapons and the full extent of the nuclear programme were discovered."—[Official Report, 25 February 2003; Vol. 400, c. 123.]

It so happened that, a week later, Newsweek obtained details of Hussein Kamal's actual International Atomic Energy Agency and UNSCOM debriefing interview. It revealed that he apparently said the reverse, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle) has already mentioned. After setting out the evidence in great detail—embarrassingly so, as one official said—Kamal concluded that

"all weapons—biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed."

I believe that that deserves some explanation, and I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence can throw some light on that and other discrepancies when he winds up the debate.
We look to the Butler committee to explain why, in particular, we were told in the September dossier that Saddam's WMD programme was "active, detailed and growing" and that the intelligence that that judgment was based on was "extensive, detailed and authoritative", when, in fact, Saddam had no WMD at all. That must be central to the new inquiry.

There are two other key issues for the new Privy Councillor committee to throw some light on. The Intelligence and Security Committee report revealed that on 10 February, five weeks before the war, the Prime Minister received an intelligence assessment of the impact on international terrorism of taking military action against Iraq. It judged that al-Qaeda represented—and no one would dispute it—by far the greatest terrorist threat to western interests and that the threat was heightened, not reduced, by military action against Iraq. Why was that rather crucial assessment not given to Parliament before the 18 March vote on military action? It could have had a significant effect on opinion in this House.

My second point returns to the central question. How is it that we were taken to war in Iraq on the grounds that Saddam had WMD, when in fact he did not? Hutton says that the politicians did not manipulate the data, and I accept that. Did the intelligence services get the matter drastically wrong, or did they simply cherry-pick the data to provide the conclusions that they believed their political masters wanted?

The latter was clearly implied by Dr. Brian Jones. He has pointed out forcefully how widespread was the disgruntlement among defence intelligence staff at the way officials at the top of the intelligence hierarchy were consorting too closely.