1859 The Chilcot Iraq Inquiry

I have not devoted myself to the 4th inquiry into the conduct of the British Government and the war on Saddam Hussein’s regime, as much I should be doing, but proposes to remedy this as the enquiry moves forward and interviews the major politicians and civil servants over the next month.

The witnesses announced to appear include the Rt Hon. Margaret Beckett Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Rt Hon Hilary Benn Secretary of State for International Development, Rt Hon. Tony Blair Prime Minister, Rt Hon. Des Browne Secretary of State for Defence, David Brummell Legal Secretary to the Law Officers. Alastair Campbell Director of Communications and Strategy to the Prime Minister, Sir Suma Chakrabarti Permanent Secretary, DFID, Rt Hon. Ann Clwyd Prime Minister’s Special Envoy to Iraq, Lord Goldsmith Attorney General, Rt Hon. Geoffrey Hoon Secretary of State for Defence, Rt Hon. John Hutton Secretary of State for Defence, Lord Jay Permanent Secretary, FCO, Sir Bill Jeffrey Permanent Secretary, MOD. Sir Nicholas Macpherson Permanent Secretary, HMT, Sir David Omand Permanent Secretary Security and Intelligence Co-ordinator, Jonathan Powell Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister, Rt Hon. Dr John Reid Secretary of State for Defence, Sir Peter Ricketts Permanent Secretary, FCO Nemat Shafik Permanent Secretary, DFID, Rt Hon. Clare Short Secretary of State for International Development, Air Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup Chief of the Defence Staff, Rt Hon. Jack Straw Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Sir Kevin Tebbit Permanent Secretary, MOD, Lord Turnbull Cabinet Secretary, Lord Walker, Chief of the Defence Staff, Elizabeth Wilmshurst Deputy Legal Adviser, FCO, Sir Michael Wood Legal Adviser, FCO.

From having only dipped into inquiry hearing before, but having watched Alastair Campbell Director of Communications and Strategy to the Prime Minister, 2001 – 2003 yesterday and Nemat Shafik Permanent Secretary DFID from 2008 to the present time, this morning, I am impressed with the quality of the questioning and responses. Those who have axes to grind, opposed the war, are convinced of their viewpoint regardless of the evidence given to the enquiry. Many believe the enquiry has been fixed with its major conclusions written beforehand and will have had their prejudices confirmed by what Alistair said and the way the Inquiry Panel approached their questions to him.

Although my experience was not of sitting on an enquiry of such political significance, it was a major event of that time, 1980, with some fifty Barristers, solicitors and their staff attending the opening and closing day and the main public agencies, police, local authority and health authorities, and individual officers having legal representation and the foster parents and neighbours having none. The inquiry had its own QC and staff and the Panel was Chaired by a junior Judge. There was no powers to insist on the appearance of witness but everyone agreed with the exception of one key individual and the hearings were all held in private despite considerable media interest which had in effect led to the inquiry being called. This one experience would not justify generalization if I had not studied all the inquiries held into similar situations beforehand and then read the reports and the surrounding media to all those held subsequently over the next decade.

The first observation is that there is a significant difference between legal inquiries especially those where witness are compelled to attend and to take an oath and those which are structured as searches for the truth. In the former, Witnesses submitted statements and attach papers including their original records, all those involved in the inquiry, not just the panel members, and including the law officers representing witnesses were able to see all these papers and those provided by public, managerial, professional and trade union bodies. In this situation the hearings were scheduled to last three weeks but went on for over twice the period and in terms of hours even longer, as originally the hearings were from Monday afternoon to Friday Morning with breaks during the day, but they became five full working days in order to include all the relevant people and the way the process developed.

Immediately following the opening presentation by Counsel for the Inquiry and the first questioning of witnesses, the two colleagues rebelled at both the adversarial approach and the particular manner. Unless the approach was changed they would withdraw and the inquiry would collapse. While I was also horrified at the manner adopted, the Chairman had explained the format at our preliminary meeting in which Counsel for the inquiry went through the submission, followed by the legal representative for the witness, if they had one, and then the Chairman and other panel members were invited to ask a question, through the Chairman, if necessary.

After a day of discussion a compromise was reached where a member of the panel began the questioning depending on their area of expertise, with other panel members following if necessary, then the legal representative for the witness and the other legal representatives and then Counsel as a long stop. This lengthened the process considerably but the atmosphere significantly changed for the better. The change meant that panel members had to study the papers with even greater attention than before and spent their evenings and weekends preparing for their questioning sessions as well as creating manual data files of relevant information as the hearing progressed. There were a dozen box files which increased to a score before the work ended. There was no luxury of having all the papers and the transcripts of evidence together with videos available on a lap top through a private internet site. This was still the time of manual typewriters and index cards.

The solution was the worst of both worlds. In the full statutory inquiry, such as Waterhouse, where witnesses are compelled to appear and provide their original records, merit proper representation and the processes for this form inquiry where action against individuals could follow all the parties know where they stand and the role they will play. There are a whole range of fact finding and truth searching inquiries, some may follow closely the format of the legal. Only one or two individual examine all the available documentation with the formal appearances of witnesses, although the individual may have direct contact with individual to seek additional information and fro clarification and then there is a draft report to some supervising body and for child care there was formal structure developed over two decades covering the agencies and the officers with a direct interest, responsibility and duty in relation to child protection in the community with for a separate a separate mechanism were the child was in directly in care. Local authority had the additional problem of such inquiries being held in a Party Political environment where the controlling political party is always concerned about criticism especially of its politically based or demonstrably unfair, while the opposition parties will be on the look out for any situation which could embarrass and damage ruling Party politically. It is the nature of party politics. Variation of the inquiry is the extent to which individuals are invited to contribute, including making a personal appearance, whether they are to have trade union, professional, managerial or legal representation, whether the media is to have any role and whether some or all of the proceedings are to be made public. Usually where more than one agency is involved those on the panel represent the different interests and the role of panel varies from giving advice and information to the Chairperson, although my involvement was in the days where the individual was still described as Chairman irrespective of their physical appearance.

Where the inquiry is to establish the facts and make general conclusions and recommendations the more informal inquisitorial approach is preferred. My view remains that witnesses should know the area of questioning to be covered and to submit an outline of their position which should be discussed with advisors beforehand, preferably legal, especially if the information or comments provided is usually treated as confidential, or may refer to other colleagues or service users. However the approach provides opportunity for the panel to raise issues and in such a way that the more formal approach dopes not usually provide and witnesses to also expand their answers.

This is the approach of the Iraq Chilcott Inquiry and where all the panel of four have an equal opportunity to lead questioning and to raise issues according to their expertise and the terms of reference. The Inquiry members are Sir John Chilcot (Chairman), Sir Lawrence Freedman, Sir Martin Gilbert, Sir Roderic Lyne and Baroness Usha Prashar. Sir John was a top level former civil servant and who was a panel of the Butler Iraq Inquiry. Sir Lawrence Freedman is presently Professor of War Studies at Imperial College London and was a foreign policy advisor to Tony Blair. Sir Roderic Lynne had a career at the Foreign Office and in the Diplomatic Service. Baroness Prasha sits in the House of Lords as a Cross Bencher and has held a number of senior position such as Chairman of the Judicial appointments Commission and the Royal Commonwealth society and all are members of the Privy Council, which means they will have been security cleared at the highest level and therefore able to hear and read restricted national security information.
This does not mean that the approach and scope of the inquiry is limited because of establishment figures sympathetic to the Civil services and British political system.

The terms of reference are broad as the chairman said in his introduction. "Our terms of reference are very broad, but the essential points, as set out by the Prime Minister and agreed by the House of Commons, are that this is an Inquiry by a committee of Privy Counsellors. It will consider the period from the summer of 2001 to the end of July 2009, embracing the run-up to the conflict in Iraq, the military action and its aftermath. We will therefore be considering the UK's involvement in Iraq, including the way decisions were made and actions taken, to establish, as accurately as possible, what happened and to identify the lessons that can be learned. Those lessons will help ensure that, if we face similar situations in future, the government of the day is best equipped to respond to those situations in the most effective manner in the best interests of the country."

Nor does it mean that the panel is closed to what has or may emerge during the inquiry before coming to an assessment, judgement and conclusions. In my only experience of the more formal panel while I did not object to the inquiry format, just the way it was original implemented, I found myself unable to accept the assessment and conclusions proposed by the Chairman in consultation with Counsel for Inquiry and his team, and this led to all three of the panel members eventually submitting a second report which I drafted.

I had no quarrel with the overall format of the proposed and subsequently published Chairman’s report, the chronology account of events, the review of the role of individuals, the conclusions and the recommendations. I could not agree with the overall assessment and conclusion, When I failed to persuade the chairman to change his position, a view shared by the two other colleague members I decided not to sign the final report and to provide a short letter explaining my concerns. However the other two members wanted to know my reasons in more detail and suggested that I submit these in my own format. After consultation it was agreed I would do this and advised the sponsoring authorities and the Department of Health accordingly.

Although the change in procedures meant that I had been forced to undertake an in depth study of the background papers, witness statements and my notes on the interviewing, I needed to go through everything again to provide the evidence for my contention that local authority had been negligent and individual should have done a better job despite the mitigating factors of the loss of a key file, the refusal of a key witness to participate and the failure of the local authority to reassemble the information from other departmental records. This was difficult situation for me as I was criticising colleague managers and professionals.

My local authority had been reimbursed the full cost of my salary and overheads during the absence on the inquiry and for the days which had been spent considering the Chairman’s prepared report and I had been given a honorarium for participation in addition to generous expenses. This ended when I and my colleagues took the decision to present a document on our own assessment and conclusions.

The drafting took a considerable effort on my part getting up at five am to go to the office and work on the submission until to or 9.30 to 11 am depending if I had a meeting or other commitments that morning, and then completing a normal day at the office which went on into the evening to ensure my day job was not affected. Having prepared the submission it was circulated to the two colleagues with meetings in which the emphasise, the working and the conclusions were discussed line by line until we reached agreement, and which we did, on a document then submitted to the Chairman and Local Authority.

This enabled the Chairman to alter his Report in an attempt to answer and challenge some of the points raised in what had become our submission. However I been academically thorough in my search for hard evidence to substantiate the argument and found that there were not half a dozen or a score of opportunities for managers and professionals to recognise the danger all the children were in, and to have effectively listened to the repeated warnings by neighbours and foster parents, as I had originally determined, not even 50 or 75 but a 100, some more important, than others, but building and substantiating our conclusions that the local authority had in effect been negligent in undertaking its statutory duties to protect the deceased child. The general media gave prominence to the schedule of these incidents and our conclusions but there was criticism within the social worked media that there were two reports and towards the tenor of what became the majority submission. It was all carefully prepared and mild by what happens to day. I also had no problem with both reports being published as they complemented each other over the chronology and factual information and I have held the view fro several decades that it is possible for individuals to have the same factual information and make differing assessments and conclusions.

I give one example of how the same information can be misinterpreted. It was stated that one witness, according to the records, had returned to the home to check on the situation on one crucial day. I had accepted this position until carefully studying a copy of the original record, first noting that the writing of the two entries was different, then the initials were also different and that the visit and note had been made by a different colleague and in the particular circumstances this was significant. When I raised the matter in the report without explaining the specifics it was commented on in the amended report of the Chairman and mentioned in the media. Someone had not been as thorough and carefully studied the original record.

Both reports had been circulated to witnesses and interests mentioned in them, and no doubt were also considered by lawyers they had instructed. There was no legal challenge to our report which did not have the advantage of the legal knowledge and experience open to others. As Mulder constantly says in one of my favourite TV series of all time, The X Files- The truth is always out.

For some extraordinary reason some of those prejudiced against Alistair Campbell, and some may have good cause, anticipated he would give different evidence to this inquiry to that previously stated to other inquiries and to the media, He could not have been more unequivocal. I was also impressed with Nemat Shafik who is Permanent Secretary of the Department for Overseas Development and who only became a British civil servant in 2004 having previously been with the World Bank and its youngest Vice President. The level of immediate knowledge and the ability to articulate was awe inspiring. A very different character is the former Head of the British Civil Service and Cabinet Secretary Lord Turnbull who arrived at his post as the Iraq strategy had been agreed between the USA and GB with the USA agreeing to try and get a second resolution before invading. He was no less impressive with his candour. What has amazed me is the openness and frankness in which civil servants are able to comment on political action and on individual politicians.. I will cover the main issues when other witnesses appear.


I have listened to more Benny Goodman

Columbia Jazz Benny Goodman-
Lets Dance, Flying Home, Good enough to Keep, A smoo oooth one, Scarecrow, Clarinet a la King. Jersey Bounce
Mission to Moscow, Body and Soul, After you’ve gone, is a
King Porter Stomp, Down South Camp Meeting, South of the Border, Wrapping it up,

Although I have remained full of cold, although it is easing at present, I have had two good days. Yesterday, in the continuing absence of snow I set off early afternoon and had the long awaited hair cut at a new establishment opened by the former railway station and which until a year ago was a newsagent and then until August a nail bar. The duty Barber was someone who remembered me from his time at the establishment previously used when my mother was alive. It was a chance to catch up although the conversation was mainly about the weather in different parts of the country and my recent experience in London.

I had planned to then visit PC World on the Team Valley Trading Estate before the evening rush hour commenced, but on the spur of the moment called in at the supermarket beforehand rather than on return for Tissues, some medication and good health supplements, plus fresh fruit and vegetables, and surface cleaner. The afternoon was dark and on the main road to the junction with the AI. M and the Sunderland Road to Newcastle there was smoke from what I presumed was a fire of some nature. Arriving in Gateshead I forgot the best way to the trading estate where the retail park is at the far end and taking the major signposted route made a mistake and ended on the road to the Metro centre my next destination. I therefore continued to Ikea for some black boxes and made another mistake and bought larger boxes than planned although I am fortunately to make use of the increased capacity.

I like Ikea and the exercise required by following their one system around the store is good exercise although there are short cuts, although not having visited I was unsure if what I wanted was at the previous location on the first floor or had been moved. On the way I spied an offer of cerise facecloths. Recently I had replaced my existing worn items which a pair from the supermarket but these shed colouring when soaked in hot water.

There were four large mounds of cleared snow and grit where staff had obviously been employed in clearing the car park for shoppers and which were taking time to dissolve. Before departing the outer retail park I called in at Staples for white paper and purchased five reams for a penny less than £10 although elsewhere in the store the price ranged from £12 to £26, although for the £26 it was possible to get 10 reams for £39. 5 reams of card would have cost around £37. I missed the quickest way back to the main road to Gateshead and the A1 going South from which there is a turn off to the one end of the Team Valley Trading estate. The three lane traffic was solid and slow so I was glad to get off as soon as I could. Before then I had made one full circuit of the metro centre site with two wrong turns before getting on the right track. There was a long tail back to get to A1 road so I was delighted that I could get to Gateshead by a different route after visiting PC World. This route takes one into the Bensham Heights with there is a significant fundamentalist Jewish Community associated with a college for the training of Jewish Ministers. I had nearly taken this road on first reaching Gateshead, but hesitated being unsure and seeing the major road sign direction. Traffic was also heavy and at a standstill on the Felling bypass where at one point I found myself behind a gritter so I kept a good distance which led one smart Alec to jump into the space and then he realised why the gap was there, hee hee, and quickly let a couple of other cars in from a side road to act as buffer to save his paintwork. At the Hewarth Interchange junction I took the road to Hebburn and turned down past the South Tyneside College passing the Cock Crow where I would sometimes have a meal before or after visits to the football at St James Park for more than decade. This brought back into the road towards South Shields when as expected there was a further hold up at the Tyne Tunnel A19 junction. As explained on a previous occasion there are two major roadways from the south, midlands and Yorkshire to the North East. The M1 which becomes the A1 M until reaching the west side of Newcastle and the A19 which passes through Sunderland, South Shields and Jarrow on its way under the river and then into Northumberland to the west of Newcastle and with both roads connecting to form the A1 to Scotland and Edinburgh.

There is no crossing the Tyne between these two roads and which is why a second tunnel is being cut to enable two lane traffic in both directions. To complete the good period with no snow fell over night and this morning someone called offering to clean the guttering which at the back in particular was very much in need. At £30, although it took only a few minutes, this was a bargain.

At PC World I had been unable to resist buying Zumar which is a companion type game to Luxor. although I am yet to complete all the levels of Luxor I fear I have reached as far as my manual dexterity and visual acuity will take me. I have on the other completed all level of bonus game
Luxor Majong with the highest total todate of 15.8 million points, previously 15 and 13 million. I will continue play this game from time to time while moving to Luxor and a war game set in Roman times which I am yet to sort out.