I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of Iraq: future strategic relationship.

Our debate this afternoon is rightly focused on Britain’s future relationship with Iraq. As right hon. and hon. Members on both sides will be aware, in the past few days we have passed an important milestone. On 1 January, the Government of Iraq assumed full sovereignty for the whole country from the coalition. That is a truly remarkable achievement for a country that, at times, has looked at risk of being sucked under by a wave of terrorist extremism.

The termination of the security aspects of the chapter 7 United Nations Security Council resolution is not only confirmation of Iraq’s regained sovereignty, but evidence of its re-emergence as a new democracy—one that no longer represents a threat to its regional neighbours or its own people. That we have reached this stage at all is testament to the hard work, commitment and, above all, sacrifice of coalition service personnel and civilians, as well as to the service and sacrifice of the Iraqi security forces themselves.

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for allowing such an early intervention. We now have a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq, which is the right and proper thing to do. When will we finally have a timetable for an inquiry into the worst UK foreign policy disaster in living memory?

I do not accept the last part of the hon. Gentleman’s comments at all; I shall come to the first part in due course.

I am sure that hon. Members will join me in expressing our profound gratitude and admiration to all the British forces who have served in Iraq since 2003. In particular, I pay tribute today to the 178 UK personnel who have died on operations in Iraq and the many hundreds who have been wounded, many of them very seriously indeed. All of us in this place and, I believe, the vast majority of the people of Iraq will never forget their sacrifice in the cause of freedom and security.

We continue to work with the Iraqi Government to bring to justice all those responsible for illegal acts against British citizens, including those suspected of involvement in the murder of the six Royal Military Police in June 2003. I am very pleased that we have made progress on that investigation in recent months, and I hope to see further developments in due course. I stress to the House that we remain committed to doing everything that we can to secure the safe release from custody of the five British citizens taken hostage in May 2007.

A new chapter is now opening in our relationship with Iraq, and I want to begin with the issue of security. The security situation in Iraq has transformed over the past year. Today, violence across Iraq is at its lowest level since 2003. Although still capable of appalling atrocities, al-Qaeda in Iraq has suffered severely at the hands of both Iraqi and coalition forces.

A few moments ago, the Secretary of State mentioned terrorist extremism and he has just mentioned al-Qaeda. Will he admit to the House that al-Qaeda was not in Iraq in any substantial form before March 2003? A question has been put to him about an inquiry; there are huge questions to ask about why terrorism was allowed to grow after we went into the country. Why did we not have a plan for peace after the initial war? That is why the House is asking for an inquiry.

At the time of the military intervention in March 2003, we were grateful to have the full support of the Conservative party as Her Majesty’s Opposition. We never made the point—neither in 2003, nor at any other time—that we were intervening in Iraq because of al-Qaeda. The hon. Gentleman should remind himself of the reasons for British and coalition intervention in Iraq in 2003.

It is interesting to hear the grundling and grumping from Conservative Members when they get the whiff of opportunity. I am trying not to be partisan today, but I certainly will be if people want me to be. Personally, I do not want to be. We are always stronger as a country when we stand together and we did stand together in the face of an unspeakable and barbaric dictatorship. As I said, Iraq is now a democracy, and not a threat to its regional neighbours or its people. In intervening, we stood up for the authority of the United Nations and the UN Security Council resolutions.

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I shall not give way to the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood), as I have just done so. I give way to the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey).

Can the Secretary of State confirm that, prior to the decision to go to war, the Government received from the British intelligence services information and judgments that if the war occurred terrorism in Iraq would increase?

I cannot confirm that, I am afraid. [Interruption.] Well, the hon. Gentleman asked me the question and I have given him my answer.

I entirely acknowledge that the Conservative party did indeed stand shoulder to shoulder with the Government. None the less, will the Secretary of State accept that he was slightly incorrect a moment ago when he said that the Conservative party had wholeheartedly and altogether supported the Government? Many of us abstained, as in my case, and, of course, quite a large number of Conservative Members of Parliament voted against the war.

The hon. Gentleman is responsible for how he votes in this House. He has drawn attention to his voting record on Iraq, and I am grateful to him for doing so.

I supported the war, and I have not demurred from that decision. Nevertheless, the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) is very relevant. I arrived in Basra a few weeks after the invasion and was asked in Anglo-Saxon terms by the general officer commanding, “Where the hell is DFID?” There was no plan to capitalise on the first 100 days, and many of the bloody consequences that we have dealt with stem from that early failure of lack of planning. Will the Secretary of State admit that that is an issue that we should explore, not least because we need to learn some lessons for Afghanistan?

I want to talk about an inquiry in a minute when I get to that part of my speech. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman personally for the support that he has given and for the fact that he has been consistent in the views that he has taken on Iraq. Consistency in politics is a pretty good commodity.

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I will give way to my hon. Friend in a second—[Interruption.] No, indeed, and I want to make this clear to my hon. Friend as well. I fully respect the views of all hon. Gentlemen and Ladies in this House about these issues. We are invited into this House by the electorate, we come here and we are entitled—in fact, it is our responsibility—to exercise our judgment in these matters. I have no criticism of people’s positions on this, but I am afraid that I have less sympathy with those who change their position at the whiff of political opportunism—I have no time for that whatsoever.

I thank the Secretary of State for giving way. What estimate can he give us of the number of civilians who have died in Iraq since 2003 and the number of Iraqis who are still in internal or external exile from that country? What investigations will the British presence and any other presence undertake into the effects of the use of cluster bombs and depleted uranium weapons on the people of Iraq for generations to come?

As my hon. Friend will know, I am not in a position to answer his question about the number of Iraqi civilian casualties. It has never been the job of the British military to quantify across Iraq the totality of civilian casualties. That is simply not a job we could do; first and foremost, it is the job of the Iraqi authorities. I am not going to stand here today and say that there have not been significant, appalling loss of life in Iraq since 2003. It has been an extremely difficult campaign, and the violence and terrorism that it has engendered have been significant—the point that I think that the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton was trying to make.

The purpose of this debate is to talk about the future relationship between the United Kingdom, and our allies and partners, and Iraq. I perfectly understand the desire of hon. Members in all parts of the House to go over the decisions that led up to the invasion of Iraq. The hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) referred to the role of other Government Departments in the campaign in Iraq. I am sure that when an inquiry is established, these are appropriate issues that can be looked at. I am not in a position today to say to the House when such an inquiry will be established—those are matters for my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. I want to deal with that issue in more detail in due course.

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I give way to the Chairman of the Defence Committee.

In some of the interventions that have been made so far, it has almost been suggested that history began in 2003—yet before that time, the number of people who were being killed in Iraq was absolutely horrific. The story of 2,000 villages being wiped out in 1988 by the use of chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein is something that cannot just be ignored by this House. Admittedly, it was not the reason we went to war, but let us not pretend that history began in 2003.

The right hon. Gentleman has made the point much better than I have. I agree with his comments. That is not the reason we went to war— that is also very clear from the comments made by my former right hon. Friend Tony Blair in this House on many occasions, and by others since. We should not forget the past in Iraq. It is appropriate to remind ourselves in debates such as this about the legacy of Saddam and the brutal, murderous regime that he presided over. Iraq, in case there was any doubt about this in any part of the House, is a better place—[Interruption.] It is a better place without Saddam and the Ba’athist regime that he represented than it was with the Ba’athist regime. [Interruption.] As for the hon. Gentlemen who are grumbling away, I am sure that we will all have to put up with listening to their speeches in due course. The hon. Member for Carmarthen, East and Dinefwr (Adam Price) will have a chance to make his speech; I just want to get on with mine, if that is okay.

I want to start with the issue of security. As I said, the security situation in Iraq has been transformed over the past year.

The Secretary of State has drawn attention to the circumstances of Iraq under the reign of Saddam Hussein. Does he recall that in the Scott inquiry report, the learned judge who conducted that inquiry recorded the fact that within some weeks of the events at Halabja, the then British Government extended the amount of credit that they were willing to give to Saddam Hussein for purchasing British manufactures?

Indeed, I am aware of that. I am afraid that I do not accept responsibility for that; those were the actions of the previous Government, and, I have to say, not a very credible series of actions.

Today, violence across Iraq is at its lowest level since 2003. While still capable of truly appalling atrocities, al-Qaeda in Iraq has suffered very severely at the hands of coalition forces. Increasingly—this is the positive side of it—Iraqi authorities are able to deliver security on the ground with only limited coalition support. Coalition forces have trained and equipped more than 560,000 Iraqi security forces personnel since 2004, meaning that there are about four Iraqi security personnel for every coalition soldier deployed in that country. In parallel, the coalition has worked very closely with the Iraqi Defence and Interior Ministries to develop their capacity both to support the front-line security forces and to exercise effective oversight of them—something that is very important in a functioning democracy.

No one should be complacent, and we certainly are not, about the security situation across Iraq as a whole. Violence remains at an unacceptably high level in some parts of the country, and undoubtedly significant security challenges remain. However, I believe that there is now good reason to be optimistic about the future of Iraq. That is very much the mood—as I found for myself and other right hon. and hon. Gentlemen have too—in the city of Basra and in and around southern Iraq. The Defence Committee reported last July that the security situation in Basra was “a world away” from what it had been the year before. Very recently, the US ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker, spoke of the situation in the south of Iraq as being “an extraordinary transformation”.

I saw that for myself during a visit to downtown Basra last year. The locals with whom I spoke were confident in the ability of the Iraqi security forces to preserve the peace that they now enjoy and were optimistic about the future. We should celebrate that. I believe that that sense of optimism is now widespread across Iraq. A few days ago, I spoke to the British commander in Basra, Major-General Andy Salmon, who is doing a fantastic job there—I hope that that is also the view of others in this place. He reported that morale among our military and civilian personnel in Basra is extremely high. It is high because they are confident that they will leave behind a positive and lasting legacy—not just of improved security but of increasing prosperity, about which I want to say more in a few moments.

Basra is now reaping the dividends of coalition strategy in southern Iraq. Since 2003, UK forces have worked tirelessly to provide security, while simultaneously developing the capacity of the Iraqis themselves so that progress can be sustained over the long term. We have trained more than 20,000 Iraqi soldiers since 2004: first, as part of building up the 10th Iraqi army division in south-eastern Iraq; and, since 2007, training the 14th division in Basra itself.

UK personnel have also helped the coalition to train Iraqi naval personnel and marines and more than 22,000 policemen. That long-term project to empower the Iraqis has proved instrumental in transforming the security situation. Only a year or two ago, as we all know, the situation was very different. Our presence in Basra—and I accept this—was acting as a magnet for militia violence and as a propaganda tool for extreme nationalists. We knew, as the Iraqi Government knew, that the British armed forces could not by themselves solve all Basra’s security problems. It was essential that the Iraqis took the lead. We therefore developed, in consultation with the Iraqi Government and our coalition partners, a strategy under which we made a calculation about the right moment for UK forces to withdraw from the centre of Basra—very much on our own terms and to our own time scales—and adopted a role of tactical overwatch. The Iraqi authorities were given control of security. As General Petraeus, who personally approved the strategy, said at the time, that was

“a positive step on the path to Iraqi self-reliance”

and it began rapidly to change the security dynamics in Basra. It is one thing for a nationalist Shi’a militiaman to aim his rifle and to shoot at a British soldier whom he perceives as an occupier; it is quite another for him to shoot a soldier wearing the uniform of his own country.

Prior to our withdrawal to the airport, can the Secretary of State give a categorical assurance that there were no discussions with Shi’a militias that, as a quid pro quo for our withdrawal, there would be no attacks on British troops?

There were discussions with local militia; of course there were, and we conducted those discussions openly and with the full consent and agreement of the Iraqi Government and our coalition partners. In counter-insurgency operations, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman would be prepared to accept—I hope that he would—there are times when we need to talk. That is inevitable if there is to be a sustainable long-term solution. I reject absolutely any suggestion that there was a covert agreement that unfairly favoured British security forces. That is not the case at all.

Could the Secretary of State explain why, if the British forces remained in overwatch once they withdrew to the airport, things had to be restored by US forces when the situation went bad?

That is not a full and complete description of what happened later in 2008, and I want to come to Operation Charge of the Knights in a few moments. I do not accept the fundamental premise of the hon. Gentleman’s comments because it rests on the assumption that British security forces took no role in that operation and, as he knows, that is not the case.

Does the Secretary of State not accept that when we made the accommodation and went back to the airport, we did not hand Basra over to the Iraqi Government or the Iraqi army? We handed it over to the Jaish al-Mahdi militia.

I do not accept that as a description either. I would be perfectly prepared to accept as fact the strength and activity of local militia groups in Basra. They were extremely active, and targeted their fire not only at us, but at Iraqi security forces. The point of the agreement, however, was to transfer security authority to the Iraqis. That is what we did, and we had to face, as the hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) recognised, a continuing level of insurgency in Basra. We addressed that together with our coalition and Iraqi partners.

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I have given way to all of the hon. Gentlemen who are seeking to intervene. I hate to say it to the House, but I still have quite a long speech ahead of me. Given that all these issues can be fully aired and addressed in the debate, I would prefer to make a little progress with my speech.

Our withdrawal set the conditions for the Iraqi soldiers that we had trained to secure public support as the first step towards winning back their city from the militias. In March last year, Iraqi security forces surged into Basra, as several hon. Members mentioned, to tackle militia violence and influence. By devising and implementing their own solution, the Iraqi security forces had proved themselves capable of solving an Iraqi problem. During these operations, and contrary to a lot of highly inaccurate reporting, the UK met the Iraqis’ requests to provide close air support for ground operations. We provided aviation assets, artillery, logistics and medical expertise to support the operation of coalition and Iraqi forces. The US also played an important role, which I am happy and pleased to acknowledge, and allowed their personnel embedded with the Iraqi reinforcements that they were partnering in the north of the country to be redeployed to support their engagement in Basra. The end result of Operation Charge of the Knights represented a huge step forward: a secure and stable Basra. I hope that that is not in dispute. The success of that operation and the sustainment of the security gains it achieved are a vindication, not a contradiction, of the long-term strategy that we have pursued with our Iraqi partners.

General Odierno, the current US commander in Iraq, said after a recent visit that our efforts there offered a model for successful transition across Iraq, and said that Basra is the way forward. That success will provide the foundation for our enduring bilateral defence relationship with Iraq in the years to come. Looking to the future, negotiations to ensure a firm legal basis for our military presence in Iraq in 2009 were concluded successfully at the end of 2008 and the new legal basis took effect from 1 January.

I am quite concerned, and would like to ask my right hon. Friend whether I have got this right. I listened to the debate about Operation Charge of the Knights, and I believed that the Chief of the Defence Staff made it quite clear to us that our forces’ involvement in that episode was to help

“to improve the conditions in the city and set the foundations for future progress”.

I would appreciate it if my right hon. Friend would go back over that episode, and state whether I have interpreted Sir Jock Stirrup’s words correctly.

I am not entirely sure that I know the context within which the Chief of the Defence staff made those remarks, or the quote that my hon. Friend is relying on. I have presented a full and fair account of the operations that led up to Operation Charge of the Knights, and an account of the operation itself. It was an Iraqi-led security mission designed to deal with the security challenge posed by local militia groups in the city, and it was supported strongly by US embedded units and British forces in Basra. The purpose of the withdrawal into the contingency operating base in 2006 was as I have described.

I am hearing in the House today that British troops “eventually” got involved. As I understand it—and this was not just quoted in formal Ministry of Defence material I have read, but in an article in The Guardian on 18 December—it is clearly stated that the Iraqis drew up the plan with British prompting and help. I am sure that I have got this right, but I want it on the record. The focus of the plans was to contain the situation on the ground while the Iraqis grew their own forces to ensure that they could deliver whatever was required.

That I certainly can confirm. British forces were strongly in support of this operation and were keen to encourage the operation to begin. It is completely untrue to suggest, if anyone is doing so, that British military forces were reluctant to be involved in Operation Charge of the Knights or somehow did not support it.

Will the Secretary of State give way?

With great respect to the hon. Gentleman, no. We are all looking forward to hearing his speech, but we will hear it more quickly if I can get on with my remarks.

Looking to the future, we have successfully reached an agreement with the Iraqi Government on the status of our forces, and I have arranged for copies of the new relevant texts to be placed in the Library. Many right hon. and hon. Members have expressed their wish for a public inquiry into the Iraqi war. As I said, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has reiterated our long-standing position that this is a matter we shall consider once our troops have come home from Iraq. That has not happened yet. We still have significant numbers of UK combat forces deployed in Iraq, and it is right that at this moment, our full focus remains on completing the tasks we have agreed with the Government of Iraq. We remain on track to complete those tasks by the end of May. I am delighted to report to the House that, as many hon. Members will know, Basra international airport was transferred to Iraqi civilian control on 1 January and is now a fully operational civilian airport. That is the culmination of an enormous amount of work by the RAF’s 903 Expeditionary Air Wing, and represents the completion of one of our key remaining tasks in Iraq. Meanwhile, the 14th division of the Iraqi army in Basra continues to make excellent progress, as do the Iraqi navy and marines, whom UK forces in particular are heavily involved in training at Umm Qasr.

During the Queen’s Speech debate on foreign policy, the Foreign Secretary confirmed that it was not the case that every single British troop would have to come home before an inquiry could be held. The Prime Minister said in his statement on 18 December that by 31 July this year, there would be fewer than 400 British troops remaining in Iraq. If that is the case, will that be the trigger for an inquiry? In the Secretary of State’s estimation, how few troops must remain before an inquiry can be called?

I shall not argue with any of the figures that the hon. Gentleman has used. My point is that we have 4,000 combat troops in Iraq, and they will be there for several months. There is no prospect of an inquiry starting while deployment continues at that level. As I have said, I am not here to make an announcement on the timing of the inquiry. Such an announcement will be made in due course, once the Prime Minister and ministerial colleagues have come to a decision about the right time for such an inquiry.

Will the Secretary of State give way?

No.

From the end of May onwards, as I have said, there will be a significant reduction in UK force levels as we move to a more normal defence relationship as part of a broad-based and enduring partnership with a democratic Iraq, in which I hope economic, commercial, cultural and educational relationships will come increasingly to the fore. UK military personnel who remain in Iraq after 31 July will do so at the request of the Government of Iraq, to deliver and support specific long-term training initiatives agreed between ourselves and the Government of Iraq. On the basis of our discussions with the Iraqi Government to date, I anticipate that those future activities will involve no more than about 400 UK personnel.

As we develop our bilateral defence relationship, our aim is to focus on key strategic areas for Iraq, in which UK personnel can bring particular expertise to bear and make a real difference. In particular, consistent with a recommendation by the Select Committee on Defence, we have offered to continue to provide maritime support and naval training. That will build on the impressive work done to date by the UK-led coalition naval training team, which has helped to develop a new Iraqi navy from the broken force inherited from the previous regime.

The Government have chosen as the title of the debate Britain’s “future strategic relationship” with Iraq. Will the Secretary of State confirm that in fact we will not have a strategic relationship with Iraq? A strategic relationship would normally imply an ongoing defence commitment or something comparable. There will be some support for naval training, but otherwise we hope that our relationship will be rather like those that we have with other countries in the region, such as Jordan and Egypt. Surely the use of the term “strategic relationship” simply does not describe what will exist after next June.

No, I do not accept that. I am only on page six of my speech, and I want to come to the other aspects of our relationship, including economic and political aspects. Together with the measures to be taken as part of our security relationship with the state of Iraq—I have not described all of them, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman will know—those matters will genuinely constitute a long-term strategic relationship with a very important partner nation in the middle east that has a regionally significant contribution to make across a wide range of subject areas. I therefore do not accept that what he has said is true.

I could go into other aspects of our military and security relationship if the right hon. and learned Gentleman would like me to, but it would not be true to say that the extent of our military engagement after July will be confined to continuing training with the Iraqi navy. We envisage an ongoing role in working with the Ministry of Defence to improve its capabilities and effectiveness. That is the Iraqi Ministry of Defence—the capabilities of my Ministry are fine and do not need any improvement. Another aspect of our relationship will be helping the Iraqi army to develop an officer corps, and working with non-commissioned ranks to improve the training and effectiveness of those very important people.

The right hon. Gentleman is, of course, correct that I have not yet heard the rest of his speech, but I have reread the statement that the Prime Minister gave to the House on similar themes on 18 December. He said that our relationship with Iraq would be

“the realisation of a normal defence relationship, similar to those we have with our other key partners in the region”.—[Official Report, 18 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 1235.]

We do not have strategic relationships with other countries in the region; we have friendly, normal relations. I suggest again to the Secretary of State that a strategic relationship implies an ongoing, substantial commitment, such as the United States will certainly have to the overall defence of Iraq. As I understand, it is no part of the British Government’s policy that we should give long-term commitments similar to those being offered by the United States.

I have great respect for the right hon. and learned Gentleman, so I shall not make the point that we are dancing on pinheads in trying to define what we mean by “strategic”. I do not wish to respond to his point in that way. Clearly, we will not have the kind of ongoing military relationship that the United States will have with Iraq. That is perfectly true. However, considering the other issues that I shall come to, I do not believe that it would be wrong to describe our future relationship with Iraq as being of a strategic nature. It will be, and perhaps we can explore that in more detail during the contributions of other Members.

It seems to me that the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) put his finger on a very important point. The reason why we may be indulging in semantics is that we are seeking a firm definition of what the relationship might be. The nature of it will determine what obligations this country might have towards Iraq. In the light of current public opinion on our commitment to Iraq, those obligations are clearly of the most significant public interest. The Secretary of State says that our relationship with Iraq will not be like that of the United States, but is he willing to be more definitive about its nature?

Well, I may have the chance to do that if I make a little more progress. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is another distinguished Member, and I suggest to him that we have forged a unique and distinctive relationship with Iraq, through some years that have been very difficult given the nature and strength of the insurgency of al-Qaeda, Sunni, Shi’a or whatever origin. I would therefore apply the word “strategic” to the relationship, which was forged in extremely difficult circumstances when the state of Iraq was under siege from terrorist violence.

The actions and interventions of the coalition forces ensured that we could get to this point, and that we could have such a debate about the future of the state. I suspect that many Members had written that off as impossible maybe only 12 or 18 months or two years ago. There is always a temptation in the House to rewrite history, and we all fall victim to it from time to time. We are very keen historians. However, I do not believe that it is fair or accurate to describe as a failure our relationship or the intervention and its consequences, as some have tried to do. If we have the courage to take the opportunity, we can build a strategic relationship and put behind us the disagreements that have bedevilled the debate about Iraq and the region. I am definitely on the side of those who say that we should do that.

The Government of Iraq have indicated that they would like to continue to receive other military training and education from the UK. I briefly described some aspects of that to the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind). We intend shortly to begin more detailed discussion to establish the precise scope of that future activity, but it will be broadly in the areas that I referred to a moment ago.

I turn to the developments in Iraqi democracy and politics, and I shall also come to Iraq’s economy and economic prospects. The Iraqi people have embraced democracy with enormous, and maybe not surprising, enthusiasm. The parliamentary elections in December 2005 saw a turnout of more than 80 per cent., and 2009, too, will be a year of elections, not tyranny, with both provincial and national elections scheduled. Provincial elections planned for later this month will provide Iraqis with the opportunity to hold local politicians to account, and give those who boycotted earlier elections and those who have now renounced violence an opportunity to participate in the political process. In Basra alone, an astonishing 1,272 candidates, including more than 300 women, have registered to compete for only 35 seats on the local provincial council—not like elections in my constituency.

Religious and ethnic minorities will be guaranteed representation on key councils across the country. Nationally, political debate is increasingly lively, with political parties beginning to move away from simple sectarian groupings and form alliances around specific issues. We should all welcome those developments.

Inevitably, there have been problems, but, encouragingly, they have been resolved through political dialogue—not through violence—such as the compromises to ensure the return of the Sunni bloc to Government last summer, and the hard-fought, but ultimately successful negotiations on the terms of the provincial elections law.

The Council of Representatives is maturing as a voice for the Iraqi people. Initially beset by problems of sectarian groupings and absenteeism, there is now an increasing understanding of its role and responsibilities. Significant challenges remain, but, as an institution, it witnesses more political debate and questioning than was evident under any so-called “parliament” in the days of the former regime.

We will continue to support Iraq’s political and economic development, including through our engagement with international organisations such as the United Nations and the European Union. I very strongly welcome the commitments that the EU made in November.

That leads me to economic regeneration and development. Iraq enjoys major oil and gas resources and a skilled and educated work force, which once placed it at the economic heart of the middle east. However, after decades of neglect, Iraq’s private sector is in desperate need of renewal to capitalise on the country’s huge potential and to bring jobs and prosperity to local people.

As the Defence Committee again observed,

“the UK Government has the opportunity to help Iraq realise and reap the benefits of its potential wealth”,

and that will continue to be a major objective of our future strategic relationship.

Why is the private sector the priority for the Government and the occupying forces in Iraq? The public sector has been devastated—by bombs and all sorts of destruction. Why, therefore, have a lop-sided policy for privatisation? Is not that old-fashioned and reactionary of the Government?

Well—[Laughter.]

I am being serious.

My hon. Friend makes a serious point, but let me make two or three comments. We are not talking about the Government’s policy—

You said it.

I am describing the Iraqi Government’s policy to develop a more vibrant private sector. That is the Iraqi Government’s decision, not a judgment call by the British Government. Oil and gas reserves are significant, with assets in the north and south of the country. The Iraqi Government recently sponsored a conference in London to consider the role that international energy companies can play and the extent to which they can help the Iraqis develop a modern and effective oil and gas industry. Few people in the world today—perhaps my hon. Friend is one—believe that all that can and should be done only by state oil companies. That is not the British Government’s or the Iraqi Government’s view. The British Government’s role and objectives are to help support the Iraqi Government to develop those elements of economic policy. It is the Iraqi Government’s chosen path. With great respect to my hon. Friend, it is neither right nor true to describe coalition forces, who operate in Iraq under a UN Security Council resolution, as occupying forces. That is out-dated and inappropriate language.

We have already worked hard to renew vital economic and social infrastructure, stimulate economic growth and attract inward investment, which is necessary to secure the prosperity of the Iraqi economy.

I am sure that my right hon. Friend agrees that the ability of people from Iraq to travel internationally when developing trade links is important. May I therefore raise the problem of getting visas to the UK? For example, people in the Kurdistan region must go to Oman to get a visa. Given that the position in Iraq has improved so much, will my right hon. Friend examine the matter with his ministerial colleagues so that Iraqi people can travel and do business internationally in the same way as everybody else?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who was a Minister in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, for making that point. The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Bill Rammell), tells me that the Foreign Office is looking to improve access to visas and the arrangements that apply, especially to those travelling from specific parts of northern Iraq. Perhaps he can develop that point in his response to the debate.

I pay special tribute to Michael Wareing and his work with the Basra Development Commission, which has successfully raised Basra’s profile through a series of investment conferences—most recently last month in Istanbul—and drawn up an economic development strategy. That will become the work of, and come under the ownership of, the Iraqis later this year. It also addresses specific problems, such as youth unemployment, and recently announced a pilot scheme to provide 500 young Basrawis with employment training through placements with local businesses.

The much-improved security situation means that international companies are now seriously considering investing in Iraq. That is a good thing. The UK has facilitated more than 15 investor visits to show international companies the opportunities available in Iraq. That has led to $9 billion worth of proposals being submitted to the Government of Iraq. The next step is for Iraqi institutions to take forward that work. We have helped create the Basra Investment Commission, the launch of which the International Development Secretary attended in Basra on 6 November. Once fully operational, the BIC will lead on promoting investment opportunities in the city, turning proposals—I hope—into jobs and wealth. The opportunities are substantial.

In addition to the development potential of Basra’s international airport, Umm Qasr is Iraq’s only deep water port. It is busier than ever, but antiquated equipment and methods mean that it does not yet achieve anything like its full potential. The UK and our coalition partners are working with the Iraqi authorities to develop the port, and it is one of the key areas in which international companies rightly look to invest.

Iraq has the third largest reserves of oil in the world, and the potential to be an extremely wealthy country. However, decades of under-investment under Saddam and the effects of corruption and sabotage have left Iraq’s energy infrastructure in a deplorable state. The Iraqi Government are now addressing that issue, looking to place major contracts with multinational companies to help repair and modernise equipment and to develop oilfields more efficiently, while ensuring that the Iraqi people retain ownership of their resources.

There are huge investment opportunities for UK businesses, and the Government of Iraq, from Prime Minister al-Maliki downwards, have repeatedly emphasised their strong desire for increased UK investment in Iraq. I greatly hope that UK companies will be quick to join the rush of those seeking to take advantage of these opportunities.

I have tried to describe the challenges that UK personnel have faced and overcome in southern Iraq. I cannot overstate the contribution of the UK’s armed forces, but the achievements in southern Iraq have not been the result of UK military efforts alone—the mission has been joint in every sense. UK forces have co-operated with the Iraqi security forces and our coalition partners. In a prime example of the comprehensive approach that we have tried to follow, the UK effort has been developed and supported across Departments.

Iraq’s future is now in Iraqi hands, and the continued development of a stable, prosperous and democratic Iraq remains vital to the UK’s strategic and national interests. Such an Iraq will promote stability and prosperity in the middle east and be a key ally in the fight against terrorism, and can make a major contribution to improved global energy security.

Our mission in Iraq has freed Iraqis from the oppression of Saddam’s brutal rule. It has empowered them to build their own democratic institutions and paved the way for a different and more positive future—for themselves and the region. I am proud to say that we are at the point of completing the UK mission. When we have done so, our forces can return home with their heads held high. However, their homecoming—warmly anticipated by their families and loved ones—will not be the end of our involvement in Iraq. We look forward to a long and fruitful bilateral relationship, covering the full range of co-operation and engagement, from security to economic, political to cultural: a relationship based on friendship and respect between Iraq and the UK, forged in exceptionally difficult times and now set to develop as a lasting legacy of the service and sacrifice of so many of the brave men and women of our armed forces, who have made all that possible.

The United Kingdom has paid a high price to remove Saddam and help to build a better Iraq. British forces have been in Iraq for 2,126 days. We have lost 178 of our brave soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, and hundreds more have been wounded. The long-term psychological impact on the members of our armed forces is virtually unknown, and the British taxpayer has paid out more than £6.5 billion since the invasion in 2003.

But when we consider that steep price, we must not forget that under the brutal and authoritarian rule of Saddam Hussein, Iraq invaded three of its neighbours, fired Scud missiles at five of its neighbours and killed hundreds of thousands of its own citizens and Iranians with chemical weapons. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot) has said, history did not begin in 2003. It is hard to believe that anyone still believes that the Iraqi people, the region or the world would have been better off with Saddam still in power. Yet those who believe that the invasion should not have taken place must believe that to be so—I do not believe that and never have.

The hon. Gentleman is detailing the price that has been paid, but is there not another price that has been paid by the people of Afghanistan? The west went into Afghanistan with a clear purpose and mandate and an important job to do, but then it took its eye off the ball and neglected Afghanistan, diverting resources to Iraq before finishing the job and leaving a high price to pay for the people of Afghanistan and for our troops who are trying to clear up the mess that we have left behind.

I will talk about Afghanistan in a moment, but if the hon. Gentleman is saying that the world community should have placed more emphasis on Afghanistan from the outset, he is correct. However, I do not believe that there was a choice between the two. Indeed, there is still a strong case for the international community to play a much greater role and to give greater commitment to the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, where there is much still to be done.

The sacrifices of our armed forces and our loved ones should not—cannot—go unnoticed, and our country and the people of Iraq owe them a great deal of gratitude and thanks. Our mission in Basra is coming to an end. When I met General Mohammed recently, he made it clear that the Iraqis no longer see a combat role for British forces. However, in what can be viewed only as a positive development, not only do the Iraqis want to take control over their own destiny, but they increasingly have the means to do so. The Iraqi security forces have significantly grown, and I have seen at first hand how the security situation has improved in Basra. When I was there only a few weeks ago talking to ordinary citizens on the streets and mixing with them freely, which, for the first time, I did without body armour, I found that the conversations and concerns have moved away from security and on to issues such as access to electricity, clean water, jobs and economic prosperity. That those people can think that way is the result of the hard work and sacrifices of thousands of British, American and Iraqi troops over a number of years.

Although the security situation has established the conditions for what will eventually be a total withdrawal—or an almost total withdrawal—of British forces from Iraq, the Government have a responsibility to ensure that they consolidate the recent success into a long-term vision. It is also vital to point out to the international community that a reduction in British forces in Iraq in no way means a British disengagement from the region. In particular, it would be very wrong for Iran to draw the conclusion that any UK troop reduction represents a change in British policy towards the threat that it poses to the region and beyond. The continued and highly valued role being played by the Royal Navy is testament to our continued engagement and interest in the region and its people.

I want to return to the hon. Gentleman’s first point, about the removal of Saddam Hussein, whom we all detested. However, notwithstanding that regime change was illegal, does the hon. Gentleman really think that it was worth while for 1 million people to be taken out with him, along with another 1 million people before that through sanctions, making more than 2 million people killed so that Saddam Hussein could be got rid of?

It is presumptuous if we think that we know what is good for the Iraqi people better than they do. It is clear to anyone who has been to Iraq and talked to the people there that those people believe that they are better off than they were under Saddam Hussein, because they have a chance to shape their own destiny in a way that they would have been perpetually denied under the authoritarian regime that existed previously. The Iraqi people know that they are better off, and I bend to their judgment on that matter. They are the ones who suffered under that regime.

There is one further point to be made about the withdrawal of British troops and its impact. Let me say a word of caution. No one in this country should believe that removing our troops from Iraq will in some way be a panacea for troop shortages in southern Afghanistan. Many people, including some commentators, seem to believe that a simple shift of British troops from Basra to Helmand is possible. However, for some very good military, logistical and welfare reasons, it is not as simple as that. Although reduced commitments in Iraq may relieve the overstretch of our forces to some extent, the key to alleviating the shortfall in manpower in the vital, if not existential, struggle for NATO in Afghanistan is for our European allies to contribute more troops and equipment to the fight in southern Afghanistan. As we have said so often in the House, it is not acceptable for all the countries to get the insurance policy when only a few are paying the premiums.

It is clear that our relationship with Iraq is changing and evolving, which is natural. That relationship can be viewed in a number of ways, as the Secretary of State said. It can be viewed as a commercial and economic relationship and as a military and political relationship. I want first to deal with the commercial and economic relationship, which the Secretary of State discussed. According to Iraqi Government officials, Iraq’s budget surplus was $72 billion in 2008 and is forecast to be $90 billion in 2009, which is a change from what we are experiencing in the United Kingdom. Needless to say, a lot of money is being awarded in the form of lucrative contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq.

Considering the Secretary of State’s previous incarnation in the Cabinet, I am compelled to ask where Britain plays a role in that process. When I visited Iraq recently, I was horrified to learn that the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform had a representative in the UK embassy in Baghdad until 2007, but that the post was cut in 2008 owing to “resource issues”. How short-sighted can we get? Our lack of trade presence in Baghdad means that we may have shed blood for Iraq but stand little chance of benefiting from the contracts flowing from Iraq’s fiscal surplus.

I found it rather pathetic that the FCO, the MOD and DFID were talking about pooling their budgets to get a trade representative in Baghdad because the Government would not fund one centrally, which was certainly the position at the end of last year. I am sure that when the Minister responds to this debate, the House will want an assurance that that is no longer the case, because it is unacceptable to hon. Members on both sides of the House.

There is a lot of potential for Iraq to become a regional financial and trading hub. We must do all that we can to help that become a reality, because, as the Secretary of State correctly said, a stable and prosperous Iraq is in all our interests. That is why we welcomed the Prime Minister’s announcement about the formation of a Basra Development Commission in October 2007, with one of its goals being to

“co-ordinate projects to strengthen Basra’s position as an economic hub, including the development of Basra international airport and the renovation of the port.”—[Official Report, 8 October 2007; Vol. 464, c. 24.]

The Prime Minister was referring to the port of Umm Qasr. I recently visited the airport, which is clearly ready for business. I also welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement that the airport was transferred to Iraqi control, on time, on 1 January.

There are currently discussions about building a new deep-water port near Basra. Such a facility in the north of the Gulf could be the starting point for goods to be moved overland by rail from Iraq to Europe via Turkey, offering an alternative to the Suez canal and the strait of Hormuz and reducing the overall time to transport goods to Europe, which would be a major strategic advantage for us in the west. There is also talk of creating an economic free zone around Basra like that found in Dubai. Those would be extremely welcome projects not only for the people of Iraq, but for the region and, I believe, for us. We need to know what the Government think they can do to ensure that those projects become a reality.

There is clearly a lot of reconstruction going on in Basra. When one visits it, it is not hard to imagine what a beautiful city it must have been and, almost by definition, could be again. There are plans to build a new bridge across the Shatt al-Arab waterway, which would drastically decongest the waterway and allow more shipping to get into the port. What are we doing to help all those projects? How is our expertise helping to make them a reality? I hope that the Minister will address those issues, because they will affect our future relationship with Iraq.

Turning to our military relationship with Iraq, I welcome the fact that the Government believe that, some day, our military relationship will be

“similar to the normal relationships that our military have with other important countries in the region”.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) has referred to that point as well, which is something that we should be aiming for. Right now, the main effort of the British Army is to train the Iraqi 14th Division so that it can eventually act autonomously while conducting security operations.

But, as Britain’s military role is transformed from being ground based to being maritime based, how will the status of forces agreement impact on our Royal Navy’s ability to accomplish its mission of mentoring and training the Iraqi navy? I ask that because it is my understanding that the Australian Government have removed the Australian navy from Iraqi territorial waters—and, consequently, from coalition task force 158—over concerns about the status of forces agreement. There are differences between the UK-Iraq agreement and the agreement between Iraq and the United States. The UK’s agreement gives Iraq far wider jurisdiction over UK service personnel, stating that they

“shall be subject to the jurisdiction of Iraq with the exception of crimes committed by them while on duty which are not committed with intent or do not arise from gross negligence, and with the exception of those committed by them inside agreed facilities and military installations used by them, in which case they shall be subject to the jurisdiction of the country to which they belong.”

The qualifiers relating to intent and gross negligence do not appear in the US agreement. There is also no mention in the UK agreement of the due process protections offered to US service personnel. The House and our armed forces must be completely reassured that our forces are not in any way compromised when it comes to their legal protection. This is important because the Royal Navy is doing an outstanding job in securing Iraqi oil platforms and increasing the capability of the Iraqi navy as part of CTF158.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene. He has raised some important questions, and it might be helpful if I briefly seek to answer them while I am here. In relation to the agreement, we have obviously acted in accordance with the clear advice that we received from the Chief of the Defence Staff and the service chiefs that the agreement was acceptable. There are differences between the UK and US agreements, which largely concern the different roles and missions of the UK and US forces. On the hon. Gentleman’s point about the Royal Navy, let me reassure him that, while Royal Navy personnel are serving on board Royal Navy vessels and ships in the Gulf, those vessels and ships come under the definition of being a UK facility or base, and the personnel on them are not subject to any extent to Iraqi criminal jurisdiction.

I am grateful for that clarification. I imagine that the House and the Select Committee will want to consider that important issue in greater detail, and any further clarification that the Government can give us will be welcome.

I have mentioned the importance of the Royal Navy, because we tend to concentrate on what the Army has done in Iraq. All the senior American officers whom I recently met in the Gulf—and at the Pentagon last week—hold the Royal Navy in very high regard. In fact, Vice-Admiral Gortney, the commander of the US fifth fleet and the combined maritime forces, told me just a couple of weeks ago that the United Kingdom’s minesweeping capability is the best in the world and that it is vital in ensuring that the mission in the Gulf succeeds. When comparing the British maritime presence in the Gulf with the American presence in the region, the proportion of UK involvement is a lot higher than our contribution to the ground forces in Iraq ever was. Furthermore, the deputy commander of the combined maritime forces in the region is British. Consequently, the Royal Navy has a great deal of influence over maritime operations, and we should be very proud of its achievements and its international status.

No one can be in any doubt that fairly grave mistakes were made in the early days of the war, including the failure to plan for an extended occupation, the extent of the de-Ba’athification, the disbanding of the Iraq military, and the ultimate empowering and arming of sectarian groups. We have an obligation to learn from any mistakes made in the run-up to the Iraq war, the war itself and the post-war period, which can be accomplished only by holding an inquiry. In the US, several inquiries have been conducted, including the Baker-Hamilton study, and these have helped to improve US policy. Since the present Prime Minister took over from Tony Blair, the Government have announced at least 50 separate reviews of different areas of policy. Why is it possible to conduct reviews of those areas but not of the conduct of the Iraq war?

We know that all but around 400 British troops will be home by July, and that the ones left in Iraq will have a fundamentally different mission. Surely the Government could have announced a timetable for the creation of the full-scale Privy Council inquiry that the Conservatives have called for. That they have not done so does not reflect well on their moral authority in those areas. It is almost six years since the war began, and it is vital that the process is started now before memories begin to fade, if we are to learn the appropriate lessons.

I have talked about the strategic relationship between Britain and Iraq. However, as with all things in the middle east, it is important that we see such a relationship in regional terms. Let me offer just one example of how a matter, which, at first glance, appears to be an internal Iraqi matter, can have regional implications. The upcoming provincial elections in a few weeks’ time will be of the utmost importance. Not only will they be important in measuring progress inside Iraq’s democratic institutions, but they will also have an impact on the broader region, especially where there is a Kurdish population.

In particular, it will be worth watching the election results in Ninawa province, where, in January 2005, the Kurds won a huge proportion of the vote—about 65 per cent.—because the majority Sunni Arab population boycotted the elections. If the Sunnis come out and vote in force this time and the Kurds lose power, there could be implications around the Iraqi Kurdish region. The worst-case scenario is that any unrest within the Kurdish population in Iraq will spill over into the Kurdish populations in Turkey, Iran or Syria, which is, of course, the last thing that the region needs.

The success of the forthcoming elections will be measured by three factors, namely the level of violence or non-violence during the election process, voter turnout and the willingness of all concerned to accept the results. In any system, it is often not the first set of elections that are problematic but the subsequent ones, in which there might be a change in power. The House must say with one voice that we must take every opportunity to impress on the Iraqi Government the need to make a reality of the religious tolerance that is written into the Iraqi constitution.

My hon. Friend is making a powerful argument. When I visited Iraq last year, members of the Government made it clear that they were deliberately delaying local elections because of concerns that polarisation might take place once the elections had been conducted and that a flare-up in ethnic tensions might result. It is therefore surprising that we have decided to leave Iraq so soon, when such a monumental event is about to take place.

As I think that I have made clear, it is a matter for the Iraqi Government, as they increasingly take control of their economic, military and political processes, to determine whether we should become involved at any particular place or time. They clearly feel that they have the internal security apparatus to deal with the undoubted problems that will exist as a result of the tensions inherent in their political system when the elections take place at the end of the month. All that we can hope is that they have made the correct judgment, and time will tell whether that is the case.

There will also be a regional impact in respect of Iraq’s own increasing military capability. The Iraqi army is now at 203,000 personnel and has a current growth ceiling of some 300,000. The Iraqi military is currently purchasing hundreds of American M1A1 main battle tanks and a number of C-130s, and there is the possibility of procuring American F-16 fighter jets. Obviously, those purchases make some of the neighbours nervous.

It seemed early on that the procurement process in Iraq itself was quite chaotic—the Ministry of Defence is not alone—and that the hardware was being bought without due thought to training and support. I think that that is now being ironed out and that most observers feel that under American advice, some of those processes are being smoothed out. Perhaps it is just a lesson to those in Iraq that they do not want to run before they can walk, and that they should listen to the advice offered without regarding it as interference from outside. That advice is well meaning, because, having made so many sacrifices, the US and the UK want Iraq to succeed and do not want to interfere in how it does things.

A strong Iraq is in all our interests, and a large and capable Iraqi army can contribute in many ways to a regional balance, especially towards Iran. Conversely, we must understand the impact that a large Iraqi military has on its neighbours such as Kuwait, which has shown mixed feelings towards the al-Maliki Government. If we simply look at a snapshot of Iraq’s regional relations, we can see the difficult road that lies ahead for Baghdad. Although Prime Minister Al-Sabah recently visited Iraq, Kuwait is naturally cautious about Baghdad’s motives, and there are still concerns over unpaid debts.

Iraq and Iran have poor relations, although Iran was the first country in the region, if not the world, to set up an embassy in Baghdad after the 2003 invasion. The issue remains of Tehran attempting to maximise its influence with Shi’a members of the Iraqi Government and Shi’a-dominated regions, which our forces have seen with deadly consequences in the south, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) has mentioned.

Iraqi-Syrian relations are only a little better. Iraq accuses Syria of not doing enough to stop the flow of militants, while there is also concern about the large number of senior-ranking Ba’athists who fled Iraq in 2003 and who are currently resident in Syria. These tensions need to be defused over time, but perhaps the most urgent need is for an improved relationship between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Government have yet to send an ambassador to Baghdad. That is unfortunate, as it leaves the Iranian influence unbalanced. It would be to the benefit of all if the Saudis, as a regional leader, were to have a stronger diplomatic presence in Iraq.

Iraq and Jordan enjoy good relations. King Abdullah was the first Arab Head of State to visit Iraq since the 2003 invasion, and Jordan receives cheap oil from Iraq. The main concern is the status of Iraqi refugees, but that issue is capable of resolution. Iraq’s relationship with Turkey is a pivotal one. Turkey has been a very constructive and helpful partner in the development of the new Iraq, for which the international community should give it greater credit.

There is, however, one problem about the forthcoming elections, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East has alluded. There will be a temptation for the Iraqi Government to play the “Arab-identity card” in those elections, which might attract Sunni voters and diminish the support that al-Qaeda still seems to have in parts of the north. However, it would be extremely unfortunate if Sunni-Shi’a tensions were to be replaced by Arab-Kurd tensions. Any destabilisation of the Kurds is likely to have a negative effect on Iraq’s neighbours, particularly Turkey, which would be destabilising for the region and strategically bad for all of us.

Finally, whatever mistakes were made in the early part of the war in Iraq, the decision to surge American forces was brave and effective. As we look to Afghanistan, we need to understand why the surge in Iraq worked. More forces enabled a change in the strategic approach, where forces moved off their forward operating bases to give security to the population where they lived. There was also an Iraqi surge with a huge increase in security forces to hold areas once they had been cleared of insurgency and militias. There were consequently no safe havens for insurgents, who were relentlessly pursued throughout Iraq. Support was given for the tribal uprising against al-Qaeda in Iraq, and the political mission to separate the “reconcilables” from the “irreconcilables” under General Petraeus was absolutely key. The Iraqi Government showed that they had the will and the ability to deal with the Shi’ite militias—possibly the single most important event since 2003—and their more open and honest engagement with the media has greatly helped, too.

All those things have helped to contribute to a more stable and secure Iraq. A stable, secure and prosperous unified state is in all our interests. Nothing, however, can be taken for granted. Progress has been made, but the situation remains fragile and therefore reversible, which requires all the help that we can give.

I thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for a fine speech, which reminded us how a democratic and prosperous Iraq can become a source of stability and good sense in a region cursed by instability and the lack of sustainable democracy. I also thank the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) for his fine speech, highlighting a number of issues that I, too, hope to deal with briefly.

As the hon. Gentleman reminded us, Iraq has a long way to go to attain stability and prosperity. He mentioned the problem of the forthcoming elections, especially those that will eventually happen in Kirkuk. For a long time, that whole region has been particularly cursed by attempts at ethnic cleansing by resettlement under the Saddam regime and all manner of evils. There is also the wider problem of reconstructing proper and peaceful relationships that should obtain between Sunni, Shi’a, Kurds and Christians. We have heard very little today about the Christian community in Iraq, which has suffered greatly in recent years. It is good to know that the subject is now being openly debated in the Iraqi media. I think that we should welcome that, but none the less keep a very close eye on the issue, as we should be very concerned about it. As I say, the disputed lands around Kirkuk remain a particular problem. I welcome the huge amount of diplomatic energy going into the task of resolving the issues of ethnicity, property, language and, most importantly, the administrative demarcation in that area.

I would like to deal briefly with the developing economy of Iraq, as I believe that many of the problems faced in the great cities of Iraq—Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Kirkuk and Irbil—are a consequence of the chronic high levels of unemployment. As I have heard many times and as we should remind ourselves, it is often said in the middle east that the Egyptians write the books, the Lebanese publish them and the Iraqis read them. That is a coded way of saying that the Iraqi people are among the most talented in the middle east, and we should never forget that. The Iraqi diaspora has been a consequence of a series of dreadful Governments and dictators; it has resulted in Iraqi doctors, surgeons, scientists, engineers, architects and a whole host of professionals moving all around the world—living proof that Saddam’s regime resulted not only in the murder and torture of tens of thousands of his own citizens, but in the stunting and destruction of the huge potential of the country’s talented people, whether they be Shi’a, Sunni, Kurd, Christian or people of no religion.

You do not have to be a scientist, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to realise that the most obvious and probably the easiest way to kick-start the economy is to help the Iraqis to reconstruct their oil and gas industries. We heard from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the hon. Member for Woodspring about the size of those reserves, and in a little while I will talk briefly about the nature of them. I saw on a number of visits to the south, the centre and the north of Iraq how its oil and gas industries were run down and pillaged by a combination of Saddam Hussein’s corrupt regime and collaborators such as President Chirac’s France, which grew fat on busting the sanctions imposed by the UN and from the disastrous and even more corrupt oil-for-food programme.

People tend to forget that the duplicitous and lying statements of the Chirac regime in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq were designed to protect the disgraceful but enormously profitable relationship that he had built up with Saddam Hussein over the previous 20 years. Most disgraceful were the brazen sanctions-busting scams that France was part of, making itself and Saddam richer, and allowing Saddam to fund his appalling brutal regime.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) is regarded as a queen of Kurdistan; I have heard her described as that myself. She knows full well what those sanctions did—not the sanctions themselves, but the way in which regimes such as Chirac’s, corrupt as they were, colluded with Saddam to destroy, for example, much of the Iraqi agricultural economy. I was in Irbil quite recently and saw and heard for myself how people will not go back to working on the land because they are used to getting their boxes of food every week. That continues to this day, and a huge part of one of the most fertile places on the face of the earth lies fallow as a consequence. Yet I heard opponents of the war at the time say, “No, no. Sanctions are the proper way forward”, when sanctions were being busted, when people were making fortunes out of them and when, most important of all, the Iraqi people were being destroyed by them.

We should learn from that. It is very important. People have called for inquiries, and we have had inquiries and will have an inquiry in the future. The most important thing that we should learn from that is why we have dual standards and hear people say, “It was quite wrong to remove Saddam Hussein, but we should be thinking about removing Robert Mugabe or intervening militarily in Darfur or the Congo.” It is interesting. I am not quite sure what gives rise to it. I suspect that it is something to do with anti-Americanism. There seems to be a rabid belief that anything that is led by the Americans must therefore be wrong. It amazes me how often I hear that stuff.

The barmiest of the criticisms are the ones that say that we invaded Iraq for its oil. If we wanted to get Iraqi oil, we could have done exactly as the French, Germans and so many others did. We could have done deals with Saddam Hussein that would have got us that oil and got it cheap, but we did not. We faced up to what was a very, very difficult decision. I watched carefully at that time how the Security Council was manipulated by France, Russia and China. They did not want to upset their cosy relationship with Saddam Hussein; they were making too much money out of it.

The French wanted to build nuclear reactors, and indeed did build two. Someone properly said—I am not sure who; it might have been the hon. Member for Woodspring—that the war did not start with that invasion of Iraq, but much earlier. We should never forgot that, because it is very important. I know that the nationalists, who have left their seats, have a penchant for supporting dictators. They say, “Who supported Saddam Hussein in the early days?”, as if that is an excuse for not doing something about him when he is murdering his own citizens. I am not sure that we have really learned those lessons, and we need to. Tens of thousands of Kurds, Shi’ites and other enemies of Saddam were raped, murdered and tortured by a regime that had been courted and armed by France and, I have to say, by Governments in this country in the past because Iraq was seen as a strategic counterbalance to Iran and Shi’ite nationalism. Those are very dangerous games to play.

I was glad to hear the Front-Bench spokesmen on both sides of the House say that the way forward is to help the Iraqis to reconstruct their industry so that the area is one of prosperity and stability. That is what we have to do. Both opening statements were tremendous in the way in which they spoke of some of the schemes that are up and running. We did not talk about the work that the British Army did in and around Basra. The great date plantations and the reconstruction of Basra’s water supply system were tremendous achievements, set up and built under very difficult circumstances.

I know from personal experience how difficult things are in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is easy to say that we can send our aid agencies there to work, but they can only do that if they are secure—if our young people are not murdered when they try to reconstruct water supply systems, agricultural canals and so on. I was glad that there were no facile statements about that.

It is a bit rich when people come out and say, “Saddam Hussein was only one of a number of dictators. Why pick on him?” I was brought up to believe that wherever there were dictators, we should try to drag them down and help wherever we can to liberate people who are suppressed by tyrants. I hope that as a country we will consider how we might be able to do that better. I will tell you how we will not do it: on our own.

I notice that in Hillary Clinton’s appearance before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations yesterday she said:

“Now, in 2009, the clear lesson of the last twenty years is that we must both combat the threats and seize the opportunities of our interdependence”

with other countries,

“and to be effective in doing so we must build a world with more partners and fewer adversaries. America cannot solve the most pressing problems on our own, and the world cannot solve them without America. The best way to advance America’s interest in reducing global threats and seizing global opportunities is to design and implement global solutions. This isn’t a philosophical point. This is our reality.”

I am glad to hear that. It is very true and reflects what both Front-Bench spokesmen said. We have to do this work in partnership with other countries. We have to recognise who can help us. Most importantly of all, we have to recognise that the people who are going to change Iraq most fundamentally are going to be Iraqis themselves.

I am listening carefully to my hon. Friend. How important does he see the development of democracy in Iraq so that it becomes a genuine and stable democracy, not just in terms of the Iraqi people, which is of course enormously important, but in terms of the region as a whole?

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence made that clear, as did the hon. Member for Woodspring. Without democracy in Iraq, I cannot see how the middle east can possibly look forward to any stability and any sustainable prosperity. Democracy is enormously important. What I found most dismaying—it did not matter where I went in that region—was that as often as not 50 per cent. of the population were not contributing to the economy in any obvious way. Of course, the women were supporting their men at home, but they were not being liberated—their aspirations were not being allowed to be seized and turned into reality. They do not have a democracy that allows it to happen. Democracy is an incredibly important element. I believe that if we help to argue the case for democracy in the region in whatever way we can, it will happen.

I have no doubt that the nations of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia—and all the other nations in the region—want democracy. People want democracy, but they will have to design their own democracy: it cannot be imposed, as is obvious from what has happened over the last four or five years. They will work out their own models for democracy, but they need to do so very quickly, because they need to be able to tap the potential of all their people. That is how we will bring about peace and prosperity.

If a future Iranian Government, with the support of the Iranian people, wanted to renationalise their oil industry and resources, would they be allowed to do so?

I am pretty certain that the British Government have no say in what Tehran does. I only wish that we did, because we might be able to stop Tehran murdering people because they happen to be homosexuals.

What about the Iraqi Government?

The Iraqi Government will decide for themselves what they want to do with their oil industry, and quite properly so. If they need the expertise which, in my view, they do need in order to start tapping great oilfields such as the north and south Rumaylah fields, which are some of the most benign oil-bearing structures in the world, and if they are to repair the appalling damage done by the racketeers of Saddam Hussein and Jacques Chirac to those structures in order to rip easy money out of them, they will need the BPs of this world. They will need Esso. They will need companies that know how to do those things. The fact that the oilfields happen to be owned by a state Government does not mean that the necessary expertise is in place, and it is doctrinaire madness to say that the expertise of those companies should not be brought in. That is not the way to rebuild the oil and gas industries in Iraq; and they need to be rebuilt, because that is how we will get people back to work in cities such as Basra.

It is clear to me that the people of Basra themselves understand that, after the sacrifice of many lives—the lives of British soldiers, American soldiers and, most, important, Iraqi soldiers—they now have within their grasp the opportunity to express themselves as entrepreneurs, as they have done in the past. Basra was always regarded as one of the places to which people wanted to go in the Gulf, and it will become that again. All the small businesses that are springing up in Basra will grow and sustain the economy of Basra and its great surrounding region. I am confident that Basra will again become the great entrepôt of the whole region, not just Iraq, and that the communication spine that runs through Iraq up to Irbil and the cities of the Kurdish-administered area will become the gateway to that part of the middle east. That, I believe, will bring prosperity and peace to the region—and God knows, it needs them.

The hon. Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells) has made a powerful speech, and he will be surprised to learn that I agreed with quite a bit of it. I particularly agreed with his point about the talents of the Iraqi people.

My constituency contains a number of Iraqis who came to this country fleeing both the tyranny of Saddam and the chaos of Iraq since the Kurdish-run forces invaded. One Iraqi asylum seeker came to my surgery one Saturday morning during the foot and mouth problems that we experienced some time ago, before the Iraqi war. He greeted me with the words “Mr. Davey, I do not seek your help; I want to help you.” Of course, as a Liberal Democrat I thought that he wanted to deliver leaflets, but no; he wanted to help with foot and mouth disease, because he was a trained vet. Iraq had had foot and mouth disease as well, and he said that he had diagnosed and treated it and carried out vaccinations.

Although it was a Saturday morning, I immediately rang the then Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, which, as the hon. Member for Pontypridd will remember, was on a 24/7 footing. I managed to contact one of the people responsible for recruiting vets to help with the problem. I said, “I have a vet here who has seen foot and mouth and wants to help.” The official asked, “Is he a member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons?” I said, “Probably not.” When I asked what was the key issue, the official said, “We have to make sure that his English is good.” My constituent had seemed to communicate very well with me. I told the official that I did not think sheep or cows spoke English, and that MAFF was taking a rather silly approach.

I have told that story to illustrate the fact that we sometimes do not use people’s talents—whether they are from Iraq or from other countries—because of our shameless bureaucracy. We should bear in mind the need to maximise the talents of people from around the world.

I parted company with the hon. Gentleman on what I considered to be his inaccurate analysis of the way in which we should deal with dictators. I share his view that we should wish to see the demise of all dictators, and to promote and enhance democratic forces throughout the world, but I do not agree that we should act against international law in doing so. I believe that if we take measures to get rid of dictators and promote democracy, we should do so within what I concede is the imperfect framework of international law. That is one of the many reasons for the Liberal Democrats’ concern about the invasion of Iraq.

As we move forward in the 21st century, we must develop international law. I think that the notion of the responsibility to protect that was signed up to by the United Nations in 2005 represents an important advance in international law, and that we should work hard on that so that we can take the necessary measures. However, I do not think that in 2003 we were right to anticipate legal developments and go against international law. Our action put us outside the law, which is why so many people opposed it and why it was ultimately so wrong.

Let me ask the hon. Gentleman a simple question. Are the people of Iraq better off without Saddam Hussein?

Of course I think that they are better off. However, although I listened to what the hon. Gentleman said and will make one or two points about it shortly, it is clear from the opinion polls that I have seen—conducted by American academic institutions that study opinion in Iraq—that there is no homogenous view that everything is rosier, and that the coalition troops are welcome in Iraq. Far from it: according to the latest analysis of opinion by the Brookings Institution, nearly three quarters of Iraqis oppose the presence of coalition troops. I think that the hon. Gentleman should be a little more cautious in his own analysis.

Unusually—because I respect the way in which the hon. Gentleman approaches this issue—I did not think that much of what he said carried any force. I think that he underestimated the costs of the Iraq war, not in terms of finance or lives but in terms of the historic failure that it was and the historic legacy that it will leave: the damage that it has done to this country’s reputation and the moral leadership of America—which is so important in the world—and indeed to the cohesion of the world, in such difficult times as those that we are experiencing now.

When the hon. Gentleman talked of whether it had been right to go to war in Iraq, he failed to remind the House of the reasons that we were given for the war. In debates such as this, it is essential that we do not try to rewrite history. Too many victors in the past have had the privilege of rewriting history, but we must not do that in an open democracy. I pay tribute to the Secretary of State, for at least he did not try to do it. We were told by Tony Blair that if Saddam Hussein was to give up his weapons of mass destruction, he could stay. This was absolutely not about regime change. Let us remember that before we get on our high horse and become too self-righteous about the way in which we voted in the debate on the issue.

The hon. Gentleman has made a major point. Does he agree that members of the Christian community, people whose relatives have been killed recently in outrages in Mosul and those living in Jordan or Syria after being chased out of Iraq in recent months would not necessarily see the invasion as a success in any event?

I entirely agree. I am not sure that the Christians who have received such appalling treatment, the 4.7 million refugees and the families who have seen loved ones killed are all that happy about the invasion. They may have wished to see the back of Saddam, but they probably did not want to see it at the cost of the huge loss of human lives and the misery that has been caused.

I want to make it clear that the Liberal Democrats agree with what the Secretary of State said about the role and expertise of the British armed forces. We completely agree that the British armed forces have done a fantastic job; whether or not we agree with the Iraq war, we can put aside such disagreements in acknowledging how fantastic and world-leading our troops have been in the way they have gone about their security tasks and helped to rebuild Iraq.

We part company with the Secretary of State’s on some of his analysis, however. On the future of Iraq, as well as its current state and what happened in the past, I want to urge a note of caution that comes not from my own analysis but from reading some of the analysis done by General Petraeus, and in particular the update on Iraq that he gave to Congress and the President in October last year. There are many risks ahead of us that the Secretary of State did not bring out. I understand why, but it is very important that in looking ahead we are not complacent. Although the Liberal Democrats strongly support the decision on the withdrawal of the troops and wish it had come sooner, there were always going to be risks when the troops were being withdrawn and directly afterwards.

Does the hon. Gentleman believe that the naval troops should be withdrawn?

If the right hon. Gentleman is talking about the slightly fewer than 400 troops who will remain after 31 July to help to train the Iraqi army, the answer is no, I do not think they should be withdrawn. As he well knows, they are training for an essential purpose in respect of the waterways, which are very important for international shipping. It is my understanding that they will be there with the full agreement of the Iraqi Government for that very purpose.

That is indeed correct, but what then is the difference between them and the Army troops who have been there training the Iraqi army with the consent of the Iraqi Defence Ministry?

I think we need to be a bit careful about how we interpret why certain people have been there. I did not agree with a lot of what the Secretary of State said about the pull-out of troops from Basra to Basra airport. That is of relevance to the point made by the right hon. Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot). I think his Conservative colleagues agree that that was a UK political decision, and that it was not, perhaps, supported by the generals or the Iraqi Government. Indeed, colleagues of mine who have gone to Iraq and talked to Prime Minister al-Maliki and others get the impression that the Iraqis were never terribly keen on how we behaved at that point. Many people feel that either we should have been all-in and doing the job properly or we should have withdrawn many months ago. That is a consistent position, but I think the UK approach to our troops being there over the past 12 to 24 months has been completely wrong and the worst of all possible worlds.

In respect of the withdrawal, it is quite possible that the security situation will significantly worsen; the ethnic rivalry might escalate. The hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) rightly warned us about the possibility of Arab-Kurd tensions, as well as of Sunni-Shi’a tensions and, indeed, intra-Shi’a clashes breaking out again. It is also not absolutely clear that the extremists—be they al-Qaeda, some of the Sunni militias or others—will not revive, and that Iran or other states will not try to foment trouble. Tensions are bound to occur when all the displaced families return, too; millions of refugees will come back, and that is bound to cause tensions and, potentially, violence. As I have said, these are the concerns of General Petraeus; they are not simply made up by those on the Liberal Democrat Benches.

That is why I would like to ask the Secretary of State the following questions—he did not allow me to intervene on this matter, although he was generous in allowing interventions—and I hope that his ministerial colleague will respond to them at the end of the debate. What assessment have the Government made of the dangers of unrest when the troops are withdrawn? What is the Government’s assessment of the strengths of the militias? From looking at recent history, it is not clear to me that it is the success of either the coalition forces or the Iraqi security forces that has led to the downturn in the violence. It may well be down to strategic political decisions by the militias—particularly the Mahdi army, but also others—not to take to the streets at this moment. I know there is no certainty on this and it is a difficult question to answer, but this is clearly a critical decision for the months ahead, and I hope Ministers can give some indication of the Government’s thinking on it.

In the context of the uncertain security situation as our troops come home, may I ask Members to remember the families and friends of the five British hostages who have been held in Iraq since May 2007, who do not know when their loved ones are coming home? At this time, the Government must make it a top priority to use every available opportunity and make every possible effort to secure their release.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention. I know that she has been working tirelessly on behalf of the relatives of her constituents who are in Iraq. I hope that Ministers can give her some reassurance later in the debate.

There are other uncertainties ahead, as well as those on security. There is uncertainty about the fragile state of Iraqi democracy. One hopes that this month’s provincial elections will go well, but what will happen next December with the more important parliamentary elections? Will any Iraqi Government be able to meet either the needs or the expectations of the population? Yes, any such Government will have the oil wealth, which is obviously a great benefit to them, and they will have the strong educational standards of the people of Iraq, but will they be able to recover from the situation they will be taking over? Will the provincial and regional powers all work with the central Government, especially on matters such as oil and ore revenues?

I list these problems for the Secretary of State, not to challenge the case for withdrawal—quite the reverse, in fact—but because the majority of them were entirely predictable before the invasion of 2003. These risks—these storm clouds, as General Petraeus characterised them to Congress—would have been apparent to anyone deciding to intervene in Iraq both from the history of Iraq and from the nature of the appalling regime of Saddam Hussein. The uncertainties and problems we now face were totally predictable, therefore. I concede that the Government and the US forces have tried to minimise these risks. They have put in place a number of measures that we Liberal Democrats argued for, such as the training of security forces and economic development, but although good efforts have been made to minimise the risks, the risks are still there—they are inherent. Although we fervently hope that they can be dealt with and there will be successful outcomes, we must be realistic.

That is crucial in terms of the first months of President-elect Obama’s strategies. I think he will face real pressures within America. I think there are people in the Pentagon who may well want the withdrawal to be rather more phased—indeed, to be conditional on what is happening on the ground. There are certainly some noises coming from the Pentagon to the effect that its assessment is much narrower than the wider political assessment that Obama’s team is making. One can understand that generals are reluctant to cede hard-won territory, especially when in their judgment the Iraqi army may not be ready, but they will have to do so if we are to allow—require, almost—the Iraqi authorities to take responsibility. There are huge dilemmas and risks in that transition, and we need to face up to that in our debates. Liberal Democrats believe that President-elect Obama is right to see that there are more risks in staying on and not withdrawing, but he will need—and deserve—Britain’s support when the going gets tough in Iraq over the coming months. He is right to want to bring the US troops home faster than others in America want, and when the difficulties arise I hope that Members in all parts of this House will give the new President support. The erstwhile coalition’s prime role now should be non-military support, and again I agree with the hon. Member for Woodspring. When a large contingent of our troops has left, we will still have responsibilities and we will still need to support democratic forces in Iraq and the rebuilding of its society and economy.

I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman. Does he agree that President-elect Obama need not worry about the support of this House, because for the past six years our policy has been “the American President, right or wrong”?

In one way, I hope that the hon. Gentleman’s assessment is right. There are some hon. Members whose support for the Iraq war comes from the neo-conservative ideology that led us into it but who may disagree with his timetable. When Liberal Democrat Members, and some of the nationalist parties, argued for a timetable for withdrawal, we were criticised by the Government and Conservative Members but, unsurprisingly, they have had to come round to our view.

Something else that we share with Barack Obama is our outright opposition to the Iraq war from the outset, which Labour and Conservative Members did not share.

I am grateful for that intervention. I am sure that hon. Members are aware of that.

We hope that Iraq will have the rosy future that the Secretary of State outlined, but we must be slightly less Panglossian about what is happening in Iraq today. To be fair, the Secretary of State admitted that many people are still dying. Hundreds died last year in bombings carried out not just by terrorists and al-Qaeda but by resistance forces in Iraq. The Americans refer to an irreducible minimum of casualties, and of awaiting a political accommodation, which we hope will happen. We hope that Iraq’s security forces will perform ever more effectively, but the truth is that the security situation is still extremely fragile, and many polls suggest that in four of the main provinces many people believe that the security situation is worse than it was before 2003.

The hon. Member for Pontypridd mentioned the economy and concern about the high level of unemployment. He is absolutely right; it is a huge drain on Iraq’s society and economy. In many ways, this is a bad time for the Iraqi economy to have to get its act together, because of the world downturn. As the price of oil is now much lower, the previous boost no longer exists. We must consider how to support Iraq’s economy.

I take issue with the Secretary of State on the basic utilities in Iraq. Before the war, people in Baghdad enjoyed electricity for 16 or 24 hours a day but, according to the Brookings Institution, they now have it for only 14 hours a day. There is a huge amount of work to do just to get back to pre-war levels of electricity in Baghdad. I am happy to admit that the supply in the rest of the country is now better than before the invasion, but in Baghdad there are still huge problems.

The same applies to other things. There is still a shortage of food in various parts of Iraq, 40 per cent. of the population does not have good access to clean water, and 30 per cent. does not have access to good health services. Before the war, there were more than 34,000 doctors, but 20,000 have left and 2,000 have been murdered. The health service in Iraq today is in an abysmal state. Let us be clear that although withdrawal is right, we will leave a country that is worse off in many ways than when we entered it, and that is before discussing refugees and so on.

On the cost of the war, and therefore the need for an inquiry, I was disappointed that the Secretary of State was yet again unwilling to give the number of people who have been killed since 2003. He said that that is not the Government’s responsibility, but there are many sources for such figures. As we try to learn the lessons, we must understand the sheer scale of the human cost. I also want to dwell on the cost to the British military, not just the lives lost but the wounded and those who will be left scarred for the rest of their lives, and the impact on their families. Charities such as Combat Stress, which are looking after almost 3,500 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, report that ex-troops, who previously waited 13 years before asking for help, are doing so after just 11 months because of the stress and trauma that they have suffered. The suffering among our veterans is huge, and I hope that the Secretary of State will say more about what the Government are doing to redouble their efforts to help our troops.

The hon. Member for Woodspring told us about the financial cost, which has been more than £6.5 billion, and is still £4 million a day. Will the Secretary of State comment on Professor Stiglitz’s estimates? He examined the cost to US taxpayers and came up with a figure of $3 trillion. Estimates for the UK, not just of money paid out for the war and its aftermath, but of the social and economic cost of dealing with veterans and providing future support for Iraq, are up to £20 billion. Will the Secretary of State say whether that figure of £20 billion is valid, because my reading of Professor Stiglitz’s report suggests that it was based on sound economic analysis? He is, after all, an economics professor of real standing.

The Stiglitz figure of $3 trillion represents 30 per cent. of the US national debt for a foreign policy adventure by neo-conservatives. At a time of a credit crunch, we can see the folly of that adventure undertaken in 2003.

The hon. Gentleman will expect me to agree with him yet again.

The cost of the war will rightly be audited in terms of lives lost, the impact on families and the actual money spent, but—I think the hon. Member for Woodspring got this wrong—it must also be audited in terms of this country’s foreign policy objectives and our influence going forward. As my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) said in an intervention on the hon. Member for Woodspring, the cost in Afghanistan alone has been huge, and the military overstretch means that we have been unable to be as effective in Afghanistan as we could have been.

There has also been an impact throughout the middle east, including Iran. Hon. Members on both sides of the House are rightly worried about Iran and how emboldened it has become, but I submit that without the Iraq war, Iran would be far weaker than it is today and be far less able to throw its weight around. It is rubbing its hands in glee about how power has shifted across the middle east. Tony Blair promised us that with the war would come a major effort to obtain a middle east peace settlement. He said that time and again from the Dispatch Box. Nearly six years on, what do we have? We have seen little progress. Mr. Blair’s great friend, President Bush, turned his attention to a peace process in the middle east only in the final year of his presidency—so much for the promises that we were given in this House by Prime Minister Blair. That has been a massive failure in foreign policy.

One hopes that the Annapolis process will not be completely damaged by the appalling situation in Gaza. When I went to Israel last November, I heard that there had been some progress with the peace talks. I am happy to acknowledge that. However, it has taken some time and the development is still very fragile.

Let us look at the impact on terror and on terrorist movements across the world. In an exchange with the Secretary of State—again, he was unfortunately unable to answer me—I made the point that the Government were warned at the time that if they went into Iraq that would feed international terrorism. I think that it is a fairly objective judgment to say that world terrorism has been strengthened by the war in Iraq. I deeply regret that. It was a huge mistake that has fed jihadists around the world and is still a huge weapon to them in recruiting people to their cause.

The most ironic factor is the cost to our relationship with the United States. If there was one secret justification for what happened, it was Tony Blair’s desire to stand shoulder to shoulder with President Bush. He wanted this country to be friendly and powerful, cementing the special relationship. Now we have a President-elect who was against the war and who described it as a “dumb war”. That is one of the major lessons that we should learn: Presidents of America change and politics change. Yes, the Americans are our friends. They should be our greatest friends. We share so much with them and we share their values, but the true friend speaks candidly, is frank and tells the truth. Our failure to be honest and truthful with President Bush has not strengthened our relationship, but undermined it. What I fear most is that President Obama will look at this country and say, “I’m afraid you made the wrong judgment. You could have helped to stop this war or have prevented it in the first place, but you failed to do that.” That means that we are not in a strong position with the new President, and I deeply regret that.

There are many other costs that I could talk about, such as the impact on security in this country with respect to Muslim communities and the damage done to British politics by the way the Labour and Conservative parties seem to ignore public opinion. However, I want to conclude by making the case for an inquiry. The Government have said that there will be an inquiry, but their refusals to say when it will happen or what the criteria will be for setting it up do them no credit whatsoever. It is time that the Government came clean about when an inquiry will be held. The Secretary of State’s failure to say even what level of troops we need to have left in Iraq before an inquiry will be triggered is quite shocking. I hope that he will go back to the Prime Minister and say, “Parliament wants to know when an inquiry will be set up.” Until we get an answer, we will continue to harry him and his colleagues in this House.

I found the speeches made by the two Front Benchers to be very comprehensive and fair, and I want to congratulate them both. I also want to congratulate my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells). He has been liberated by coming to the Back Benches; he might not think so, but I believe that he has. He has been trenchant and passionate in his views for as long as I have known him, but he was somewhat constrained during his period on the Front Bench. I look forward to hearing many more speeches from him.

I want to pay tribute not only to our military, who have done a tremendous job in Iraq, and to the American military, but to all the officials who have had to go Iraq as part of their job. Many have volunteered to go back to Iraq for a second or third time. They have been very brave, because things have been difficult since 2003. It has been dangerous and risky and the officials from all the Departments involved have done and continue to do an excellent job in Iraq.

I have obviously been involved for a very long time and I have visited Iraq 18 times since 2003, when I was made the special envoy on human rights in Iraq by the then Prime Minister. I continue to be the special envoy and to visit Iraq regularly. I want to set out my views on the situation in Iraq now. Whether we were for or against the war, we all have to move on. We need to look at the best ways—

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

May I finish the sentence? We need to look at the best ways of helping the people of Iraq rather than continually harking back to the past. I, too, would like to go back to the past at various times, and to as far back as 1988. We remember well what happened at that time, and when we have an inquiry, perhaps those circumstances might also be considered, including the bad policy decisions that were made then to support the regime of Saddam Hussein.

The right hon. Lady just talked about moving on, but does she think that we should move on without an inquiry? Surely we need an inquiry into the war and into the reasons given to us for the war.

It has been made clear by everybody concerned on the Government Benches that there will be an inquiry.

When?

The Prime Minister has also answered that question. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman has not been in the House very often, but the Prime Minister has answered that question several times. As soon as our troops are totally withdrawn, there will be an inquiry. I do not think that there is an issue, so I do not know why the hon. Gentleman is making one.

My involvement with, and interest in, the human rights of the Iraqi people goes back three decades. I led the non-governmental organisation the Campaign Against Repression and for Democratic Rights in Iraq—CARDRI—in the 1980s and I chaired the non-governmental organisation INDICT for seven years until 2003 as it gathered evidence of the crimes committed by Saddam Hussein’s appalling regime. We hoped to be able to get indictments against leading members of that regime and to bring them in front of the world’s courts. We made every effort to do that at the time and thus to avoid armed conflict. That did not happen and we were thwarted in various ways that I do not want to go into today.

As other Members have pointed out this afternoon, we must not forget how vile Saddam Hussein’s regime was, or the brutal way in which it used violence, rape, torture and the threat of violence as everyday tools of the state to keep the population in check and to deal with those who disagreed with him. I had an Iraqi friend who volunteered for CARDRI when he was a student in London in the 1980s. Every fortnight, he used to bring me a list of the names of those who had been executed at the Abu Ghraib prison. At times, I challenged him about the accuracy of those reports, but I am sorry to say that they were indeed accurate. Since the war, we have been able to establish that everything that was alleged to have taken place during that awful period actually happened.

In 2002-03, when the prospect of intervention in Iraq arose, it appeared that all other options had been exhausted. They included UN resolutions and sanctions, although, as my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd said, the sanctions regime might have worked if people had been serious about it and if it had not been directed at the regime and away from the people it was meant to help. We even attempted indictments against leading members of the regime. I went to several countries, including Switzerland, Norway and Belgium, to get those indictments and I tried in the UK. For people who argue for the strengthening of international law, that attempt was a case in point; those indictments could have been made—they could have been made in this place—but they were not made at the time because people were afraid to use international law to bring members of that regime to justice.

I was never in any doubt—and never will be—about the morality of ridding Iraq and the world of Saddam’s regime. Since 2003, I agree that Iraq has gone through some terrible times. Insurgent groups have used violence and terrorism to try to stop democratic progress and to drag Iraq into the abyss of sectarian hatred and bloodshed. I have always believed, however, that the wisdom and ingenuity of the Iraqi people would win out and that Iraq could and would become a functioning democracy. Iraq has come a long way since 2003 and it has made real progress.

I should like to give pen portraits of all the people I know who are contributing to the future of Iraq, in which I hope we all feel engaged. One of them is the man I mentioned—a young Iraqi student in the mid-1980s. He made quite a lot of money in the UK, but as soon as 2003 came he sold his manufacturing businesses and went back to Iraq. He is still there. He invested all his money in setting up a broadcasting station, which is now one of the most successful operating in Iraq. There are many such heroic stories of young Iraqis, forced to go to other countries during the Saddam regime, who have chosen to return to their country and contribute to its future.

Last week, I was in Cambodia visiting various organisations, one of which was the Cambodia Trust. It was set up in the UK by Dr. Peter Carey and others to help provide services for the limbless in Cambodia—the result of land mines, which I am sorry to say we helped to plant, and other activities. However, the Cambodia Trust and other organisations are helping some of those people. I met three young Iraqi men who had come from Iraq to learn how to do that work. I spoke to each of them individually; they all said they were glad that the Saddam Hussein regime was no more. They were pleased that some countries had intervened on their behalf. People tend to forget that.

I have been going to the Kurdish area of Iraq since the early 1990s. I was on the mountains between Iran and Iraq when Saddam Hussein’s helicopter gunships were bombing the Kurds. It was a horrific sight. Those of us who saw pictures at the time will remember seeing Kurds fleeing across the mountains in terrible weather conditions. I shall never forget meeting some of them—I was the only woman there and people holding babies in their arms pushed the babies at me. Of course, the babies were already dead. We never forget things like that.

I was with the Kurds regularly during the ’90s when they were camped out in the mountains and Saddam Hussein was attacking them. At various times before 2003, they tried to overthrow the regime but each time they were brutally repressed. The same is true of the Shi’a; when they tried to overthrow the regime, there were terrible consequences. There is, for example, a mass grave in the south of the country in which 15,000 people, who are likely to have been Shi’a, are said to be buried. The excavations are still going on. Those people tried to overthrow the regime, but they failed. That is when they asked us to help.

I remain concerned, as I am sure many others do, about the humanitarian situation in Iraq and the region. I think that a co-ordinated international effort, with the Government of Iraq in the lead, is the best response. In 2008, we contributed £17 million to help displaced Iraqis. Our total humanitarian contribution since 2003 has been more than £149 million.

As we know, there is a large number of internally displaced people, and many refugees in Syria and Jordan. Some of them have returned, but not all. I have been to visit refugees in Syria. I must pay tribute again to the Syrian Government for their support for those refugees. It is easy for everybody to welcome refugees in the first instance, but it is difficult to continue that support when it puts strain on a country’s housing, employment and education systems. Having seen what happened there and having talked to the UN, I think it is important that the Government of Iraq continue to recognise that they have a responsibility to those refugees who unfortunately had to flee to other countries and to the internally displaced people in Iraq, some of whom are in a very difficult situation.

Organisations such as the UN are providing assistance to the most vulnerable people, whether displaced inside or outside Iraq. Those organisations give support in the provision of food, water, shelter and medicine. The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) mentioned the lack of electricity, water and so on. One of the problems for the people trying to repair that situation is that the infrastructure had been neglected for years. It was crumbling, even before the war. Obviously, the people trying to put that right are proceeding as fast as they can, but because of the security situation, they have not been able to do it as quickly as they would like. More than 4 million people have been displaced; probably 2.8 million of them are inside Iraq and about 2 million are in neighbouring countries.

The number of Iraqi Government Ministers who are doing a tremendous job is clear to all of us who visit Iraq regularly. The decision to create a Human Rights Minister was important, as the role has endured. I know the present and the previous Minister well. Both are conscientious and dedicated to human rights. I met the current Human Rights Minister, Wijdan Mikhail Salim, in October in Geneva. She used to be a planner in Sadr City before the war. She is a very brave woman, and she spoke frankly about the limitations on the work of the Ministry of Human Rights, but also its successes.

For example, the Ministry responded very quickly to the threats made against minorities, including Christians, in Mosul last autumn. Of course, not only Christians are affected; I wish that people who are lobbying on behalf of persecuted people would also mention the other minorities, of which there are a number. The Human Rights Minister sent blankets and food aid, as well as an inspection team. The newly trained Iraqi army, sent by Prime Minister al-Maliki, also responded quickly to what was going on in Mosul.

I congratulate the right hon. Lady on mentioning that a number of minorities exist in Kurdistan. On the basis of her experience, what is her view of the ability of those minorities to show tolerance to one another? There are sometimes accusations that Kurds have behaved unreasonably towards Assyrians and Christian groups generally.

I was not talking specifically about the Kurds, but about the persecution of minorities in other parts of Iraq as well. The Iraqi Government are well aware of that and have been attempting, through rapid response, to protect those minorities as quickly as possible when they are made aware of situations.

I want to mention the subject of detention. Since I started going to Iraq in 2003, it is one of the issues on which I have particularly been working. Detention is a crucial human rights issue anywhere in the world. Over the past five years, in association with the Americans, I have kept a close eye on detention in Iraq. As the American troop surge reached its peak last year, the number of Iraqis, mostly young Sunni men, in US detention reached 27,000—far too many. Many of those people were detained during the wide security sweeps and had done little or nothing wrong.

I agree that the surge has been incredibly successful in reducing violence in Iraq. Some of us who were present at a meeting last month organised by the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) heard more about it from a young US army captain. Along with the so-called Sons of Iraq, the armed local Sunni groups who have pushed al-Qaeda out of their provinces transformed the security situation in 2007-08, as I have seen for myself. The number of detainees held by the Americans in Iraq has fallen to about 16,500. That is a good reduction from 27,000, but 16,500 is still a very large number.

Even after the change in the status of US forces, the detainees will remain in the control of the United States for some time to come. Let me say right away that I think that that is a good thing. The Iraqi Government do not at present have the capacity to look after 16,500 detainees adequately and without the risk of mistreatment. I hope that we will support the United States authorities in that, and I hope they understand the importance of handing that group of people over to the Iraqi Government slowly and carefully. Those against whom there is no evidence should be released, and the rest should be charged and face a fair trial in the Iraqi justice system.

I am not exactly clear what the right hon. Lady is saying. Does she support internment?

Oh dear. No.

I know that many Members take an interest in the situation of women in Iraq. In many parts of the country the situation of women is improving, but I know that things have been very bad for women there over the past five years. Women now have the opportunity to take part in the political life of the country. We ought to applaud the fact that 25 per cent. of members of the Council of Representatives—Iraq’s Parliament—are women.

Better than ours.

Indeed. We have attempted to link up with those women by video on several occasions. Colleagues in all parts of the House agreed to take part in video conferencing, but that has not happened yet—on the first occasion there was a sandstorm; on the second occasion there was an important vote in the Iraqi Parliament; on the third occasion there was a security issue; and on the last occasion the Iraqi Parliament suddenly went on holiday. We have not yet managed to organise that video conference, but we still hope to do so. The group of women MPs whom I meet in Iraq are varied. They come from all sides of Iraq and many are extremely impressive, but some are very new and need to be encouraged, which is one of the things that we can do here.

As hon. Members have said, provincial elections are due to take place in Iraq on 31 January. Again, the Iraqi Parliament is to be congratulated. Recently, it passed legislation ensuring that 25 per cent. of those elected in the local elections will be women. Furthermore, it has agreed that minority groups—Christians, Shabaks, Yezidis, Mandaeans and others—will be guaranteed representation, which I welcome.

I am enjoying the right hon. Lady’s contribution. I would certainly say that getting more women elected to this House is important, but does she agree that electing women is particularly important in countries recovering from conflict situations? As Security Council resolution 1325 points out, the role of women post-conflict can be vital in rebuilding a country, and it is important that our Government take their commitments and national action plan under that resolution very seriously.

I absolutely agree. The hon. Lady agreed to take part in one of the video conferences that we had to cancel, and I hope that she will participate in a future one. It is important for those women to feel solidarity with women in this Parliament. They value the British particularly—I cannot emphasise enough how much the Iraqi people value British involvement. Our continued involvement is certainly important in rebuilding the country.

We should remember that for the first time in many generations, Iraqis enjoy basic rights—for example, freedom of speech, expression and association and the right to take part in democratic processes. I remember meeting the leader of Baghdad city council in 2003. I asked him how things had changed. He looked at me and said, “Madam, if I had met you two years ago, I would have been able to say to you only, ‘Hello’, ‘Long live Saddam Hussein’ and, ‘Goodbye’. Now I can say anything I want to you.”

About two years ago, I went to the marshes with an Iraqi Water Minister—it was the first visit to the devastated marshes by a new Iraqi Government Minister. The water ministry is responsible for re-flooding the marshes, which were drained by the previous regime. Life is beginning to return to the marshes, although there are not as many people as lived there previously—many of the people fled or were killed when Saddam Hussein attacked the Marsh Arabs. However, we met a representative group, and as we went round the villages, people ran out, hugged us and laughed and clapped. We sat down with the community leaders in a big building made of rushes, as all buildings on the marshes are. They started banging the floor and saying to the Minister, “We want better roads, education and better housing.” I sat there and thought that two years previously they could not have done that—if they had done so, they would not have been there today.

Freedom of expression is important, as we have seen in the Iraqi press, which we have played an important role in retraining. The Institute for War and Peace Reporting, based in this country, has done good work on retraining Iraqi journalists. Previously, they had to write reports from reports that had been given them and could not change anything. When we see them rethinking and challenging ideas that people have given them, it is impressive. I hope that we continue to support the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, which does excellent work in Afghanistan and many countries that I have visited where freedom of the press has not been part of the culture.

There are human rights issues and challenges facing Iraq today. When the Prime Minister addressed the House just before Christmas, he said that

“the relationship between Iraq and Britain will be strengthened at a cultural, economic…and social level”.—[Official Report, 18 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 1241.]

He talked about our commitment to the economic development of Iraq and scholarships in the UK for Iraqi students, which is all very welcome.

A few weeks before Christmas, I went to the British Library, which had organised an event for the chief librarian of Iraq’s main library in Baghdad, Dr. Saad Eskander. Since the war, he has had a good relationship with the British Library. He gave us a slide show and a talk about how he had found Iraq’s library when he went there in 2003. The library was no more. All the documents and books had been burned, and there were just ashes on the floor. Then he showed us what he has done since, with the help of the British Library. He has been able to rebuild some of the collection through copies of books and documents that existed there. We listened to him talk about his enthusiasm for rebuilding the library in Iraq and how many young people he has brought in to work there, particularly a large number of women. He said that he would very much value continued British help. At the end of his speech, the audience of a couple of a hundred people—librarians and chief executives from all over the country—got to their feet and applauded him, because his story was such a poignant example of how to rebuild from the ashes. There are many other examples in Iraq of people who do similar things.

A couple of months ago, I chaired a human rights forum on Iraq at the Foreign Office. Fifty people were there, and three Iraqi Ministers were among the participants. There were people from non-governmental organisations and trade union groups, officials and academics. The universal view at that meeting was that British involvement in building Iraqi civil society would be essential in future. We agreed that the group would meet regularly, every three months, and that working groups would focus on freedoms, the rule of law and the role of women. We will also involve NGOs from Iraq, which I had hoped would be able to take part in that first meeting, but the line broke down or there was a problem in Iraq, so they could not get the sound link. There are many NGOs working in Iraq, and it is very impressive to see them do so. The British Government have assisted NGOs in getting off the ground. There are people working with the disabled and with widows, and people working on corruption, which is a brave thing to do in any country, but particularly so in Iraq at this time. People are working on all aspects of life in civil society. When one spends a day or two with them, one feels that there is considerable optimism and determination among the Iraqi people.

Everybody agrees that women are a key part of rebuilding the country and establishing it more firmly as a representative democracy. We must continue to lobby the Iraqi Government, so that when the national elections take place at the end of the year, the 25 per cent. quota for women is still in place. The women MPs whom I know, who have built a strong caucus within the Council of Representatives, must be allowed to continue to speak out and shape the future of their country. The Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament has recently been forced to stand down. One of the things that he did prior to being asked to step down was verbally to attack women in Parliament for not having suffered enough. At that point, all the women stuck together and walked out of the Parliament. It is heartening to see such groupings forming.

The freedom of the press is crucial in Iraq. I receive a synopsis of the Iraqi press every day, and it is amazing to see the spread of opinion across the publications, daily and weekly, that exist in that country. I have been contacted on a number of occasions by concerned Iraqis, the National Union of Journalists and others about violence and threats made against journalists in all parts of Iraq. I have lobbied the Iraqi Government in Baghdad and the Kurdish regional government to treat all those cases with great seriousness. We must keep the pressure on to ensure that Iraqi journalists can work without fear. One of the obvious developments in a democracy is that the press are more or less free to write what they like, which is essential in Iraq. That is one way of ensuring that corruption does not take place.

I return to the example of my friend who runs the radio station. Some time last year, he was approached by an official from a department who was planning to advertise on his station. He was told, “We’ll pay you so-and-so, but you’ll have to give me back so-and-so.” My friend was very brave; he said, “Can you please sit there? I have to go and do something for a moment,” and he went upstairs to his studio and broadcast over the air what had happened in the room below. When he went back to the room, the man who had made the offer had disappeared, and an official appeared about a week later to apologise profusely that anyone should have done something like that. To have such brave people speaking out is the best way of combating corruption.

I have taken an interest in the rule of law in Iraq for a long time, and Indict has supplied 35 box-loads of evidence to the trials that continue in that country. The rule of law has developed a great deal since Saddam’s time, when the law was used as a brutal tool of repression. I hope that we will continue to press the Iraqis on the implementation of their amnesty law. It is a well-written law that should allow for the release of those who have been held without trial. We should also offer advice and training to the Iraqi authorities charged with running prisons. Right now the Iraqi Ministers of Justice, the Interior, Defence and Labour and Social Affairs run prisons. Many of those prisons are overcrowded, and the situation for the inmates is intolerable. I hope that we will continue to provide any support that the Iraqis ask for to improve conditions in their prisons. We have supplied specialists at various times to give advice on how to run prisons, including prison officers from this country. That support must accompany training for judges to allow those who are arrested to be brought to trial quickly and fairly.

I know that as our military support to Iraq draws down, our work to support the growth of civil society and a culture of human rights will continue. I am hopeful that in 10 years’ time, Iraq will be a country where all of us, if we want to, can go on holiday in safety and that we will see a much-strengthened Iraqi democracy to which we have done much to contribute.

I never thought in 1984, when I stood for Parliament against the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd), that it would give me such pleasure to follow a speech of hers on a subject such as this. I found it extremely moving. The optimism that we are now expressing in relation to Iraq may well mean that her role as special envoy on human rights is no longer needed, and there could be no greater tribute to her than that.

While I am on a Welsh theme, I shall say how much I enjoyed the speech of the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells). As the right hon. Lady said, he has clearly been released from his chains. He relaxed into his speech in a way that I think the entire House found enormously enjoyable.

Whatever the controversy over the origins of the war in Iraq, over such things as dodgy dossiers and 45 minutes—frankly, I found neither of those nearly as important as the media have since made them out to be—and over the planning for the aftermath of the war, which was much more important, the fact remains that our armed forces went in with our allies the United States, the Danes, the Australians and many others. They went into Iraq and made great sacrifices. They were doing it for us, for this country, but also for the good of the region, Iraq and the world. The result, as we now see, has given rise to the hope that we have discussed throughout the debate.

The Defence Committee has visited Iraq regularly. Our analysis of what happened between 2003 and 2007 was that things were getting steadily worse. When we visited in 2007, for example, we found that there were rockets and bombs where we were every couple of hours or so. We were meant to have dinner with the President of Iraq, but the place where we were to have it was destroyed half an hour before we got there. Luckily the dinner was not, and it was sent round to the British embassy with the usual Iraqi hospitality that we have come to expect.

We found also that when we were in convoys in 2007, there was such a threat from the local population that everybody was forced off the road as our convoy went past, and guns were trained on them because of the risk of suicide bombings. We found that we were not allowed into the centre of Basra because we were considered too high-value a target.

By contrast, last year we were there for five days and there was not a single rocket or mortar attack. Things were so busy that only the vice-Chairman of the Committee and I were able to go into Basra, but we did so in a convoy that, far from forcing everybody off the road, got stuck in a traffic jam. Nobody seemed the least bit bothered about it. Not only were there no rocket or mortar attacks, but we heard afterwards that British troops who went into the centre of Basra in military uniform were not allowed to pay for anything because of the popularity of the British, to which the right hon. Lady referred. I hope that we can recognise the value of what the British have done in Basra and elsewhere in Iraq to the same extent that the people of Basra do. We should not constantly denigrate what we as a country have done.

Operation Charge of the Knights transformed the situation in Basra. My understanding of what happened is that there was a general misunderstanding—at the British level and the Baghdad, Iraqi Government level—about the level of militia control of Basra. Prime Minister al-Maliki decided to send in the 14th division. The decision nearly foundered and failed, and reserves had to be sent in. Prime Minister al-Maliki’s decision was a surprise to the United Kingdom and the United States. The time scale was brought forward in a way that was perceived as unwise because of the risk of failure, which British and US military advisers identified.

Nevertheless, Prime Minister al-Maliki’s decision was brave. He was determined to take back his country from the grip of the militias. He recognised the importance of taking back Basra—the country’s economic heart. When the exercise nearly failed because of the militias’ grip, other Iraqi reserve forces came in, with United States mentors. A major battle for Basra took place and it was successful.

We should pay great tribute to the Iraqi troops for their achievements, the British troops for the training that they gave the Iraqi troops and the American mentors, who managed to establish in the eyes of General Mohan that American troops could be welcomed on the streets of Basra. That also transformed the standing of British troops in Basra.

As I understand it, the Basra police were involved in the battle for Basra as follows: a third fought on the side of the Iraqi army; a third stayed at home, and a third fought on the side of the militias. The Iraqi army took on those who fought for the militias and defeated them. That was a crucial defeat. We contributed a great deal with a small police mission from the United Kingdom, which did good work, to training the police. However, it is essential, if we are considering our future strategic relationship with Iraq, to ensure, through training, that the Basra police do not revert to the corruption and militia control that previously existed. It is therefore essential that the size of the UK police mission and its formulation is good enough and strong enough to ensure that the police in Basra remain in the supportive state that they have now reached.

When we last visited Basra in June, we found that people spoke about the economy much more than security. That was a great step forward. Despite the traffic jams, which are a good economic sign, we noticed that there was high unemployment in Basra. Despite the security achievements, high unemployment had become the greatest risk.

Iraq is potentially one of the richest countries in the world. The oil infrastructure is in serious need of renewal and expansion to exploit those riches. That is not a criticism of Iraq, except in that it is a criticism of Saddam Hussein, but the situation represents a major opportunity for British companies. As the hon. Member for Pontypridd said, we need the Shells and the BPs to go in there and exploit those resources and renew that infrastructure. We have a combination of experience that could be absolutely optimal for getting that oil exploited by and for the Iraqis. We have oil expertise and a level of good will among the Basrawi population that is second to none. That good will needs to be built on.

I was therefore particularly worried by the strong point that the shadow Secretary of State for Defence made about the low importance that appears to be given to the development of British-Iraqi business links by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. We must address that, because it is essential that Government agencies pull out all the stops to help the links between Britain and Iraq to grow, particularly in the oil sector, if it is true that the Ministry of Defence and DFID are thinking of pooling resources to get a representative. One representative is not enough. We need far stronger representation in Iraq in order to help the Iraqis build their economy and to help British companies, too, to benefit from that.

I want to turn, penultimately, to naval training, because, still on the issue of oil, the two oil platforms, one of which we visited in June last year, produce 90 per cent. of Iraqi income. They are terribly vulnerable and are protected by an Iraqi navy that is mentored and trained by the Royal Navy. The importance, therefore, of the work of the Royal Navy is obvious. The Royal Navy is involved in a huge task that is essential to the economic viability of the whole of Iraq. However, I am not entirely sure that the Secretary of State’s comments gave quite enough prominence to that importance.

I hope that the naval training that the Royal Navy carries out in Iraq will recognise that Iraq intends either to double or to treble the size of its navy in one year. That is rather a tall order. The Iraqi navy will still be a navy of small size, but it is important that we have a mission that is large enough, strong enough and of a high enough quality to be able to ensure that that transition works and works well.

I would be grateful if either the Minister in his reply or somebody in a letter could tell me whether the order for ships that was originally made from Malaysia by the Iraqis remains on foot or whether it has been cancelled. If it has been cancelled, as I fear it may have been, it would be good to know, from a naval point of view, what size the Iraqi navy will be, in view of the importance of the task that it will be undertaking.

In conclusion, I would like to read a couple of sentences from a briefing that the Iraqis themselves gave us for this debate. The fact that they are looking beyond the shores of their country to what is happening in other Parliaments is also a welcome development. What the Iraqis say is this:

“We believe in an Iraq that can be a beacon for democracy, freedom and moderation in the Middle East. It is the undemocratic nature of regimes in this region that has bred poverty, backwardness and extremism in a region which should be one of the most prosperous regions in the world. A democratic Iraq, that is stable and unified, will turn the tide against those who rule through tyranny.”

Even as an aspiration, that is a fantastic thing to say, and it is a tribute to the Iraqis. It is also a tribute to those British men and women who have sacrificed so much and achieved so much in order to allow the Iraqis to have that aspiration.

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot). I am pleased to say that he was as excellent as a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee as he is now, and he is of course much missed. We have heard some excellent contributions today. Both Front-Bench teams presented to the House a commonality of sentiment and a drive to persuade us that although we have achieved much so far, there is much more to achieve, and that we can do that and support it whenever the Iraqis should request it. It is also a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd). Both engaged the attention of the House and both were compassionate. They drove the idea that much has been achieved, and that there is much more to do.

For me, this is one of the most important debates that the House will enjoy—I hope that “enjoy” is the correct word to use. We are talking about Britain’s future relationship with Iraq. Iraq could choose not to have a future strategic relationship with Britain, but we are all fairly clear, if not very clear, that it does wish to have such a relationship. In speaking about that relationship, I wish to concentrate on the central role that the British armed forces have played in Iraq over the past five years.

Before I begin that part of my speech, however, I hope that the House will tolerate my saying that, in 2003, I was very enthusiastic that we would deploy effectively in Iraq with the US and all other friends. I was confident and enthusiastic that we would get rid of a tyrant, that we would end up unshackling the Iraqis, that they would be pleased and purposeful and that they would soon see their way to establishing an institutional civil life that would be peaceful and secure. I believed that all that was possible. I am really sad to have to stand here today and say that, in large part, the Iraqis have suffered an awful time over the past five years. That is not just because of the sectarian hatred, the suicide bombers and the constant insurgency; it is because we have watched Iraqi against Iraqi, shockingly perpetrating the most appalling loss of life among children and the elderly, with their indiscriminate action against innocent people.

The assessment that I made was wrong. I am totally miserable that it should have been so wrong, but I am pleased that we are now beginning to see real signs of stability: a sovereign Government; the rule of law; the freedom of the press; and people feeling that they can be involved in their country and wanting to take up the responsibilities of being involved. The birth of Iraq’s democratic state has been a journey, and it has seemed at times to be a very long one. It has been a journey of hope, then of tragedy, involving a savage disregard for human life, and now of hope again. This afternoon, I want to celebrate the deployment of the British armed forces in Iraq, and to look forward to their withdrawal. I am absolutely of the belief that the Iraqis, the British armed forces and the coalition have faced significant challenges, but they have also delivered significant achievements.

I have over a period watched and read the words of the Chief of the Defence Staff Sir Jock Stirrup, and those of General Sir Mike Jackson, while I have read the clear and careful analysis expressed in Defence Select Committee reports, particularly the June 2008 report on “UK operations in Iraq and the Gulf”. That, along with all the other statements made by people in serious commanding roles within the armed forces, has persuaded us that, in their different ways, the armed forces have defined a significant change in Iraq—a change for the good. I acknowledge, as the chiefs have said, that now is probably the time for the armed forces to leave Iraq in the competent hands of the Iraqis.

From all that I have read, I believe that General Sir Mike Jackson has put forward the most convincing argument that the UK military’s role is complete. He has made it clear on a number of occasions that there are still problems and conflicts but that they are non-military, so it is time that non-military Iraqi involvement became a fundamental part of the resolution. In exposition of current conflicts, he points to the fact that there are invariably conflicts between groups and between different parts of the Muslim world; in all honesty, I, too, believe implicitly that conflicts are inevitable. Frankly, the only way to resolve inter-group conflicts is through political institutions.

rose—

Before I give way, let me finish clarifying what General Sir Mike Jackson said, as he issued the statement that the military’s and the soldier’s job was done and it was time for civil and political action to take over.

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for quoting General Jackson who was, of course, responsible for the British Army at the time of the invasion. He went on, however, to be very critical of the Government, saying that there was no proper reconstruction plan. That is a matter of huge concern on this side of the House and it explains why we want to see an inquiry, as it was precisely the absence of a plan that left our forces exposed. We are congratulating ourselves in today’s debate on how wonderful Iraq is, but we should have been able to have such a debate perhaps two, three or four years earlier.

I am sure the hon. Gentleman will know that I am bound to say that if we could all read a crystal ball, we might all have understood what the insurgency and the suicide bombings were actually going to throw at us. We might have made a much clearer assessment of al-Qaeda’s involvement; we might have done—

Al-Qaeda was not there.

No. The hon. Gentleman implies from a sedentary position that such an assessment had been made. Let me say to him quite frankly that I do not believe that that was the case. There was a debate in this House about the position there. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman and I should agree to disagree for the moment.

I appreciate that I am testing the hon. Lady’s patience, but this is a fundamental point. She says that al-Qaeda became a problem, but it was the absence of a plan that allowed al-Qaeda to take advantage of the security vacuum that was then created. If we had had a plan, which would have involved the Department for International Development—DFID is the problem here because of the lack of Whitehall co-ordination between the two Departments—we could have gone into the country, taking advantage of the fragile umbrella of security that we had created, to build reconstruction and development. If we had done that, al-Qaeda would not have been allowed to step in. It was not in the country before March 2003.

The hon. Gentleman and I will have to agree to disagree on that.

I want to take the House one stage further and reference the statements made by the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki. He has made many calculations about the competence of Iraq’s army and police force to deliver a secure Iraq in which all civil society can survive. Again, some of his words are quite clear. Although he thanks the British troops for the role that they have played, he goes on to say that their continued stay is not necessary for maintaining security and control. That gives me a tremendous amount of confidence. This is a man who for years has watched, worked with and relied on the support of the coalition team, in particular the British armed forces in Basra. What he then says takes us to the point of acknowledging what our future strategic relationship could be about. He qualifies his statement that Iraq may need UK forces because of their experience in training and their technical knowledge by saying that as a fighting force, their job is done. I hope that that will be part of how the Ministry of Defence, and perhaps DFID, will see the way the British armed forces can continue to have a positive relationship, on Iraqi terms, with the Iraqi Government.

I am not saying that all is achieved; I am simply making the argument that our British Army has faced significant challenges and has made significant advances. I am confident that we are seeing for the first time a trusted system of law and order developing. Yes, the development is cautious, but it is happening. Without the British deployment, it would not exist. To argue otherwise is nonsense. We want a competent police force in Iraq, but we know that the Iraqi Prime Minister is more than prepared to bring British forces, including police forces, back into Iraq to support any future development or need. All that suggests that we are seeing the institutional development in all parts of Iraq that is capable of developing a stable and peaceful country.

I am delighted to hear from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence that women are clearly valued and seen as part of the whole system. Many hon. Members would expect me to make that statement, and they would certainly expect my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley to do so. It is easy for us to acknowledge the strategic value of the armed forces, the police and the rule of law. All those elements are crucial; they are part of an institutional delivery. However, the absolute fact is that too often too many people give women a specific role that is outside civil society. Frankly, it is a wrong that undermines an effective force.

The United Nations once made the statement that when we persuaded the mother in the family, we persuaded the family. That family is part of the community, and that community delivers. It is crucial that we celebrate the Iraqis’ vision to allow women to be a 25 per cent. part of local government at this stage. We must congratulate them on that. There is a future relationship to be built there. I will not repeat it. My right hon. Friend has made clear statements about how she is developing a relationship with Iraqi women, and many in the House would support the development of that relationship.

The Select Committee report makes other observations about where the British armed forces and DFID have been seen to deliver effective and valued training and mentoring. It mentions the MiTTs, the military transition teams, which have worked alongside Iraqis in training and mentoring. A very effective relationship has developed, based on both trust and competence, which I believe will continue in the future. The report also mentions the value of the provincial reconstruction team. Working with the provincial government, it has assessed and prioritised existing Iraqi funds with the aim of implementing good policy and achieving good governance, and I hope and believe that that too will continue.

Many Members have referred to Iraq’s economy and the serious concerns that people rightly have about it. We know that unemployment rates as high as 90 per cent. have been recorded in Basra, but we also know that the economic development team’s main aim has been to achieve lower unemployment, and to meet overriding priorities that will enable the economy to develop. It is crucial for the provincial reconstruction team to be seen to have a future and a strategic role.

I believe that mistakes have been made over the past five years and that there have been serious misunderstandings. I, and perhaps others, did not anticipate the level of insurgency. I was mortified to observe the lack of control in prisons: Iraqi prisoners, at the time and subsequently, have made serious allegations of abuse, and many of us witnessed much of that abuse on television. A significant number of people have been killed, including many of our own armed forces, and many more have been left wounded. At times, there has been considerable political and military friction within the coalition, which, although it was ultimately resolved, was seriously distracting.

Having said all that, however, I believe that the achievement in Iraq over the last five years has been considerable. I do not mean just the provision of water and electricity, and I do not mean just the way we have worked to achieve an effective police force—which we will continue to support—and an effective army. We have achieved considerable change, and people feel that they know the benefits of freedom.

Soldiers from my constituency return and tell me that some of the best moments for them have been experienced on the football field. Instead of playing with a rolled-up piece of rag, children were playing with the footballs that had been produced, and goalposts had been erected. According to the soldiers, the children were small and many looked as though they needed a good meal, but they were tenacious on the football field and invariably won their games.

Sometimes we gain more through the way in which we involve ourselves and form relationships, and the British armed forces have delivered and developed relationships in a very valuable way. The friendship and respect that have developed between the two countries in so many different ways will be invaluable to future strategic relationships. Let me leave the final words to Sir Mike Jackson who, although he has made serious criticisms about the way we deploy, has also been very complimentary. In December 2008, in a statement to us all, he said that conflict between groups was a political phenomenon that could only be solved politically. The soldiers’ job was done. They had created the conditions for political solutions. Iraqi civil society was now in the hands of Iraqis. Hopefully, a British Government will always continue to support them.

While listening to the hon. Member for Stockton, South (Ms Taylor), I am afraid that I reflected that there were voices—informed people—who warned about the vacuum that existed immediately after the invasion. I myself prepared a paper for the shadow Cabinet at the time saying that all the ingredients for an insurgency war were in place. I had meetings with the Secretary of State at the time about it, and I remain grieved that nothing was done. When I complained on the Floor of the House that we were withdrawing our troops too quickly and that they were overstretched, I was accused of nitpicking. I did not need a crystal ball; many experienced military and other figures warned about the consequences of the vacuum that we had left, and I wish to address that in my comments.

I remain convinced, as I was in 2003, that the removal of Saddam Hussein was the correct course of action. As history will record, the new Iraq that is at last emerging from the turmoil of the past six years demonstrates that the decision we took alongside the United States—and which was supported by almost 40 other nations—was the right one. Our soldiers, sailors and airmen have performed in Iraq with exemplary courage, skill and determination, and I salute them and honour those who have fallen and those who still suffer from their injuries.

The failures in strategic planning for the aftermath of the war meant, however, that the struggle in Iraq has been much more prolonged and bloody than it needed to be, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) pointed out. British politicians and officials cannot escape their share of the blame for this. The failure in post-conflict planning, coupled with the fact that the Department for International Development is simply not engineered to cope with post-conflict reconstruction, meant that we wasted the vital first 100 days of hope after the invasion—that is the limited window that exists in a post-conflict situation. We should have been able to prove to the Iraqi people that the removal of Saddam Hussein would lead to improvements in their lives, but, tragically, we and the Americans missed that window. The lack in our case—in Regional Command (South)—of a single campaign plan and a single integrated command across the British military and civilian effort was fatal in that respect. That is of even greater relevance to our current difficulties in Afghanistan, and it is the need to learn the lessons from these mistakes, and to learn them quickly, that makes the case for a full public inquiry into Iraq so compelling.

Unfortunately, when we consider the future strategic relationship between the United Kingdom and Iraq, we are left to ponder what might have been. The excellent mentoring role played by our armed forces in the south of Iraq, which Defence Committee members witnessed when we visited this year, last year and in previous years, could have created a platform for a sustainable and productive mil-mil—military on military—relationship between the British and Iraqi armies, and could have led to the kind of strategic relationship that our country has developed with, for instance, Oman.

Thanks to its oilfields, southern Iraq is likely to develop into one of the richest areas in the region, as the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells) pointed out. The UK has expended a great deal of blood and treasure in trying to ensure that sustainable and prosperous future for the south of Iraq, and yet at the very moment that one might actually call victory, the Government seem determined to snatch defeat from its jaws by withdrawing precipitately and leaving the long-term benefits of a strategic relationship entirely to the Americans. Our withdrawal would be understandable if our mission were truly accomplished, as the Government claim—after all, Iraq is for the Iraqis and we have no strategic interest in maintaining security with our own troops in Basra indefinitely—but the awkward fact for the Government is that the moment the Union flag is lowered over the Basra air base, the stars and stripes will be hoisted in its place. Far from our mission being over, the Americans will have to fill the gaps left by our departure.

The manner of our withdrawal is symptomatic of the Government’s dual failure in Iraq: it is both a tactical and a strategic defeat. The failure was caused not by any lack of skill or courage on the part of our armed forces, but by a collapse of political courage on the part of the Government, and the inability of Ministers ever to come to terms with the size of the job that they had asked our soldiers to undertake.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the filling of British commitments by United States forces probably dates back to that best-kept secret of the Iraq campaign, the so-called Najaf gap of 2006, when the previous Prime Minister promised to fill the gap left by the withdrawing Spanish garrison, but never fulfilled that promise?

I do not know what discussions took place between the British and American Governments about that. I have no doubt that the promise was made, and I have no doubt that it was broken with the understanding of the Americans because it coincided with the commencement of our operations in Helmand province. My hon. Friend is right to point out another example of how we always promised more than we could deliver. At the heart of those failures was the fact that Ministers, and perhaps civil servants, never truly understood the nature of military tasking and the consequent burden that the armed forces would have to bear to follow through our commitments.

From Operation Telic 2 onwards, the number of British troops in multinational zone south was never sufficient for the task in hand. By May 2004, a year after the invasion, there were just 8,600 British troops in Iraq, compared with 18,000 a year before and 46,000 at the time of the invasion in March 2003. Even at those reduced levels in 2004-05, before the deployment to Helmand, our armed forces were still operating beyond the defence planning assumption set out in the 1998 strategic defence review. At the heart of the problem was the fact that the Government insisted that the budget for the armed forces was sufficient, although it was planned as a peacetime budget and we were fighting a considerable war.

Our armed forces, as the Government had configured them in the 1998 strategic defence review, were not large enough for the task that the Government required of them in Iraq, and the situation deteriorated when we deployed in Helmand in 2006. As the need for more troops in the politically “good” war in Afghanistan grew ever more urgent, the so-called “bad” war in Iraq became ever more embarrassing for the Government, and the number of troops in Operation Telic dwindled further to 7,200 in May 2006 and to just 5,500 in May 2007, shortly before the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, left office. That was one year before Operation Charge of the Knights.

It might have been assumed that the steady reduction in the number of the British forces occurred because the situation in Iraq was improving, but everyone in the House knows that 2006 and 2007 were the bloodiest years of the war. In the 21 months from the beginning of 2006 to the withdrawal from Basra palace in September 2007, British forces suffered 64 combat deaths, just under half of the 136 combat deaths sustained during the six years since operations began in 2003. Faced with an intensifying insurgency campaign in southern Iraq, the Government simply failed to provide the men and equipment necessary to have a chance of defeating the militants. Indeed, in late 2007, the Prime Minister came to the House and announced that there would be a further troop reduction in the following spring to below the 5,000 level that the Select Committee on Defence had been briefed was the bare minimum.

Let us take a step back for a moment. Originally, Mr. Blair, when Prime Minister, was determined to hang on in Iraq to preserve our strategic relationship with the Americans, but I shall argue that our failure to provide the necessary military capacity has ended in materially damaging the very relationship that he most wanted to maintain.

Most shameful was the Government’s attitude towards our troops still serving in Basra. Lacking the courage to try to explain their mission to the British public, Ministers continued to send our troops to Iraq in the knowledge that their mission lacked the support of the British people. Nothing can be more dispiriting to a soldier than knowing that the sacrifices that he and his comrades are making are not appreciated by those in whose name they are being made.

The mood of those deployed in Basra in 2007 was summed up by one Army captain, who told The Times:

“We didn’t ask to come here…We are making incredible efforts and sacrifices. Yet sometimes it feels like our country and Government act like they wish we weren’t here at all.”

I am glad that the Government appear to have learned the lessons from Basra and have made considerable efforts since to demonstrate public support for the armed forces, but the words of that captain should make every Minister hang his or her head in shame. Indeed, that is a lesson that we should take on across the whole House.

The Government ran out of the political will and military capacity to do the job, which led to our tactical failure in southern Iraq. As the Americans surged into Iraq in the first half of 2007, the British Government were looking to get out. It is extraordinary to see the difference between what we were briefed in Basra and what we were briefed in Baghdad about the likely efficacy of the surge. Those events led to our strategic failure with both the Iraqi and American Governments. What General Petraeus’s chief counter-insurgency adviser described as the British

“defeat in the field in southern Iraq”

during 2006 led to our being sidelined by the Iraqi Government and the American military in Baghdad.

The British contribution to the Iraqi army’s Operation Charge of the Knights in March and April 2008, which succeeded in driving the Mahdi army out of Basra, was severely limited by what we had available and by the political timidity of our own Government. Prime Minister al-Maliki told The Times later that year that the “British military doctrine” may have been one of the reasons that prevented the spread of security. It is worth reflecting on the fact that had the British Army had the capacity and political backing to do the job that was necessary in Basra, Operation Charge of the Knights should never have been necessary. It was only necessary because we basically had to walk away and hand the city over to the Jaish al-Mahdi—JAM—militias.

Although we can recover from that tactical setback relatively quickly, worse by far has been the effect on our relations with the Americans. I was a little surprised to hear the Secretary of State tell the House on Monday that relationships and confidence between the British and American militaries were as good as he claimed. I choose to put a favourable face on that, which is that both sides are doing as much as they can to repair the damage and to restore confidence. I commend him for that. I am sure that he was not misleading the House, but our American partners would welcome some candid and open frankness about some of the shortcomings of our military effort and the political backing for that effort rather than a pretence that everything in the garden is lovely.

Although the Americans under General Petraeus have revolutionised their approach to counter-insurgency warfare, our armed forces were never given the capacity to undertake truly effective COIN operations, and we were therefore unable to defeat the Mahdi army. The view in Washington is that we failed in southern Iraq and that is having serious repercussions on how the Americans view our contribution in Afghanistan and on our future role as their primary ally of choice.

A report currently circulating in the Ministry of Defence reveals the serious doubts in Washington about the British performance in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to one British source, the report showed:

“Britain’s military ability is no longer rated as highly as we thought it was.”

The painful lessons of Iraq for the British have yet to be applied fully in Afghanistan. We are more effective at counter-insurgency than we were, but we still suffer a command chain divided between the MOD and DFID—a divide that stretches right to the heart of Government, and the further up the command chain, the more serious it is. The result is a complete lack of strategic co-ordination between the civil and military efforts. If we ask the question, “Who is the Secretary of State for Afghanistan?”, the answer is that there is a Cabinet Committee that meets once a fortnight. We cannot conduct a war on the basis of a Cabinet Committee that meets once a fortnight.

One of the things we should have understood from the tragedy of our experience in Iraq is that although we have excellent tactical effectiveness on the ground in Helmand and a brilliant campaign plan, we do not have a plan to win the war at grand strategic level. Until the Government grasp that point, we will simply be passengers in whatever the Americans decide to do. Furthermore, there is a danger that if the British Government do not significantly increase their military and civilian reconstruction commitment in Helmand in a co-ordinated fashion in early 2009, the Americans will feel compelled to take over command of Regional Command (South) and will regard subsequent improvements in the security situation as attributable to their efforts, in contrast to the perceived British failures between 2006 and 2008. So stretched is the British Army at present that even with the draw-down from Iraq, it is likely that no significant increase of British forces in Helmand will be possible, so such a scenario may be one that we have to accept.

The erosion of American confidence in the British military is the greatest strategic failure of UK foreign and defence policy for decades. Enthusiasm for EU and UN initiatives is no substitute. Faith in international institutions is too often misplaced, as they all too often prove wholly ineffective. The Government continue to profess that the transatlantic alliance remains the cornerstone of British security policy, but with the election of possibly the least Atlanticist US presidency since before the second world war, and plenty of rivals for US attention elsewhere in the world, our relationship with the UK is now at its most vulnerable since the Vietnam war.

That is the legacy of the Government’s failure in post-invasion Iraq. We damaged our standing in the wider world by going in, even if it was the right thing to do, and damaged our relationship with the US by never having sufficient political will or military capacity to keep the promises we made to the Iraqi people and to our allies. The result is that we have taken much of the pain for none of the gain. Such is the opprobrium in which we are held by the Iraqi Government that French or German companies are winning far more contracts in Iraq than British companies. The Minister grimaces at that—I will give way to him if he would like to dispute it—but the fact is that French and German companies, alongside the Americans, are winning the lion’s share of the contracts.

The Government are holding this debate because they think they finally have some good news from Iraq and they want to crow about it. It is good news that Iraq is improving and that our troops will be able to come home. At least they can hold their heads up high for their achievements, but they come back knowing—as we all know—that they have been let down at almost every step of their journey to and from Iraq.

We are in danger of becoming dewy-eyed over the debacle in Iraq. In this century, we have never had a serious strategy for dealing with Iraq. That was the case as we went into the war and after the war, and I fear that it is also the case today.

The decision to offer UK support to the US invasion was made by the Prime Minister, pretty much alone, in Crawford, Texas in April 2002. The only thing that seemed to be on Tony Blair’s mind at the time was winning influence with the United States, a strategy whose success is now rather in doubt, as we have just heard from my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin).

There is no evidence that before the then Prime Minister went to Crawford, he sought or received any advice from the Ministry of Defence. He is reported to have gone to the chiefs on his return from the UK and said, “Let’s make a plan to support a US invasion.” On the day of the invasion, we still had no agreement with the US on the political end state. Indeed, for the UK, the end state, according to a note from Downing street of 22 October 2002, was for Iraq to become a

“stable, united and law abiding state”.

For the Americans, the end state seems to have been destroying Saddam’s leadership and his supporting power base. Those are two completely different things.

The fact is that we ended up in Basra only because of a decision made in the Turkish Parliament. Originally, we were to go in via Turkey, and our troops were to have been in Mosul and the Kurdish areas, which would have been a completely different proposition. We involved ourselves in an American-led invasion through a decision taken by our Prime Minister at a ranch in Texas, without reference to the people who would carry it out. We ended up taking responsibility for southern Iraq almost by accident.

Once we were in, we tried desperately to find the justification for being there—that is, weapons of mass destruction. We could not do so, and we have spent all our time since trying to get out of the country. We reduced our forces as soon as possible from 46,000-odd men and women to about 15,000. At the same time, we were telling anyone who wanted to hear how great we were at counter-insurgency. Our focus was not on development or the restoration of security for Basra—security which, by the way, we were obliged to restore under the Geneva convention—but on the reduction of forces.

We were also pretty complacent. I remember a friend of mine returning from a trip to Basra. He said that he had wandered around among the civilian population and realised what a big problem unemployment and the lack of fast resumption of some services would be. He said that he was amazed at the complacency that he found within the Ministry of Defence on the issue.

After the start of the Shi’a insurgency and increasing militia control of Basra and Amarah, we built a new police force. I suppose that it could be argued that it made sense to go to the existing groups of armed men, but unfortunately they were the militias, so almost from the off, we took away the pre-existing structures and put in post people whose first loyalty was not to Iraq, but to their own factions. The police were really just militias in uniform. The best example of that was Basra’s so-called Serious Crimes Unit, which was packed with people from the Jaish al-Mahdi—the JAM militia—who conducted their terrorist operations in police uniforms with police vehicles and weapons. They kidnapped the British CBS journalist Richard Butler last year, and they took two of our special forces people, who had to be rescued from a police station in Christmas 2006. As a senior Iraqi general was later to say, the police were, at the time, the cause of our security problem.

At that point, the increasingly terrorised civilian population lost confidence in the British, but we were busy being complacent about Iran. We made no serious attempt to control the border, possibly because we did not have sufficient troops. There was easy movement of men and equipment across the border, which fed the Shi’a insurgency right across the country. Nearly all that stuff came through the UK area.

From the start, we spent a lot of money on development, but as in the case of Afghanistan, we decided that it was important that the Iraqis were seen to be delivering services to the people, so we pumped the money through the provincial council in Basra. Guess what? A lot of people got rich, but services did not improve dramatically. Even today, Basrawis ask, “What did the British do for us?” There is little recognition of the UK’s effort, although I am told that much of what we see in Basra has been done by the British. We have not got the credit for our effort.

Because we had no clear strategy at that period apart from the reduction of troop numbers, we lost out to JAM. By 2006 it was JAM’s laws that counted, not what the British or the Iraqi Government had to say. For example, a hospital director in Basra tells the story of a male and a female doctor who were chatting. They continued chatting as they went out into the street, just by the gate. Someone from JAM ran out and fined the man for talking to a woman to whom he was not married and who was not a relative. The following week the same thing happened, but the fine doubled. The hospital director still asks how we could have allowed JAM’s law to take over.

We were unable to keep control over Amarah. By August we had retreated, but that was okay because we were handing over to the Iraqi army. The base that we had left was looted by the militias. As one very senior British officer put it, there was only one serious attempt to produce a counter-insurgency plan. That was General Richard Sheriff’s Operation Sinbad in late 2006. Sinbad was a brave attempt to take control of the city, but when in December 2006 the then Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Des Browne), returned to England after having been out there and being briefed on it, he is reported to have been extremely angry that the ground truth had not been getting through about the seriousness of the situation in southern Iraq and specifically in Basra.

The truth of Sinbad was that General Sheriff did not have the resources that he needed or Iraqi political top cover, and the Iraqi 10th Division stationed in Basra was not ready to do the job. Sinbad failed to deal with JAM, and from that point we started to spin the situation differently—it was no longer a question of insurgency. The Government made it clear that there would be no long-term resources of the kind needed for a proper counter-insurgency operation, so the line was that it was a matter of criminality, that the militias were just common criminals, that there was no political motivation to the militias’ actions and that we were dealing with Palermo, not Beirut. We said that it was a police problem, not an army problem, and certainly not a problem for a foreign Army like ours.

At about the same time, the US was putting lives and money on the line. After Sinbad, we made some serious attempts to capture and kill the JAM leadership in the first half of 2007. The problem, yet again, was that that was not part of a plan. We could take things, but we could not hold anything or build anything. By this point, 90 per cent. of the violence was directed at us. Why? Because we were the only people who were challenging the militia for control of the city. The casualty rate had reached such a level that when there was an opportunity to make an accommodation with JAM, we took it because we had to.

The deal was that JAM would stop killing British soldiers, if we released a load of prisoners and withdrew our forces into the airport. Suddenly, behold, peace reigned, but not for the people of Basra. JAM was in undisputed control, and its law was in force—extortion, smuggling, murder and rape. The funds from JAM’s control of Basra went to pay for the insurgency in Sadr City and elsewhere in the Shi’a uprising across Iraq.

In fairness, that was probably a sensible decision at the time, because we were losing a lot of troops and reconciliation seemed an obvious thing to do. But in retrospect, what have we done? Far from handing over Basra to the Iraqi authorities, as the Secretary of State said earlier, we handed it over to a murderous militia. There is a view, with which I have some sympathy, that if the people of Basra had not gone through that ghastly experience, they would not have welcomed the Iraqi Government as they did after Operation Charge of the Knights. That is a view.

I hear the hon. Gentleman’s point, and I will give my version of it if I catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I want to put something to the hon. Gentleman. “Newsnight” did a poll—at the end of 2007, I think—that showed that more than 80 per cent. of people in Basra did not want the British there. Does that not form part of the hon. Gentleman’s view?

It is tragic. I was in Iraq in the first war as a soldier and in the second war as a television correspondent. I shall never forget being in Kirkuk as the Iraqi Government were falling. Very few European people were around, and I was literally mobbed. This guy who was in the process of looting two incubators from the hospital came up and hugged me because people were so happy and they wanted to thank anybody European. Later, however, there were the sorts of polls that the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen) has mentioned; I thank him for his intervention.

Not only the Iraqi people were fed up with us by that point. By March-April 2008, the Iraqi Government in Baghdad were fed up with the situation in Basra and believed it to be the fault of the British. As they saw it, we were sitting down at Basra airport in testudo—a tortoise formation—as if we were Roman soldiers with our shields around us. In fairness, I should say that the provincial reconstruction team was still doing its job and that we were still training the Iraqi army. However, our accommodation with the militia and, again, our lack of any clear purpose, prevented us from operating in the city.

It was clear to the Iraqi Government and the insurgents that, at that point, the main British strategy was that there should be no further loss of British life. The Iraqi Government became so impatient with us that on Monday 24 March, Prime Minister al-Maliki personally came to Basra to sort out the problem. My understanding is that no reference was made to the British before he came, although I think that he mentioned it to the Americans—who were not keen, by the way, because at the time they were trying to sort out al-Qaeda in Mosul. Essentially, the initiative was an Iraqi one.

On Tuesday 25 March, Operation Charge of the Knights was launched. Contrary to what the Secretary of State said, UK troops remained at the airport. By Friday, the US deputy core commander had come down to Basra and essentially taken control from the British—speak to the guys who were there. He brought with him Predators, Apaches, more Iraqi troops and firepower. Belatedly, UK military transition teams did give support—it was the 10th Division, I think. I am told that it was marvellous to see how our troops really got their act together and supported when they were given a part. However, it is simply disingenuous to suggest that Operation Charge of the Knights was, after the initial hiccup that has been mentioned, a joint thing.

By June, Amarah had been won back, but not by us; Prime Minister al-Maliki saw us as pretty irrelevant. He blamed us for the accommodation with JAM—although he might have been being disingenuous, because another British general swears blind that al-Maliki’s office was consulted about the accommodation before it happened. However, the bottom line was that al-Maliki felt that he was there to clear up the British mess, and that has shaped the UK-Iraqi relationship ever since. Although in Basra there is great respect for British troops, in Baghdad things were not the same because of the lack of any policy or strategy from the top. All along, all the British Government wanted was to get our troops out of Iraq.

Now—guess what?—the Iraqi Government are very enthusiastic to help us with that agenda. The status of forces agreement that will get us out of Iraq will leave us with fewer than 400 military personnel there. The Prime Minister will get the laurels for getting us out of Iraq, and Prime Minister al-Maliki can claim that he kicked the British out and that there is no further need for British forces in Basra. So from 30 June, apart from the people at our large embassy and in the provincial reconstruction teams, we will have only these servicemen and women: those at the naval training team at Umm Qasr, those training officer cadets at “Sandhurst in the sand”—al-Rustamiyah—and logistics and other advisers in the Iraqi MOD. That is down from nearly 5,000 personnel. We will also lose the deputy commanding generals in the multinational force and the multinational corps.

Since 2002, no one has really articulated our strategic relationship with Iraq. What is it? Despite all the good words over the years, it has always seemed as though the stories that we were told about what was happening on the ground were geared towards only one thing—getting us out of Iraq and away from the decision made by Tony Blair in Crawford. Right now, it seems that our strategy is to get out of Iraq before a UK general election, thereby removing a rather awkward election issue. While I agree that it is high time that we left, the manner of our departure and our conduct over the past five years sacrifice a strategic relationship with the second-biggest oil producer in the world and a people who, despite everything that has happened, still hold us in high regard and great affection.

The minuscule footprint that we are leaving behind does not include our highly successful mentoring role with the Iraqi armed forces. We are blowing an opportunity for an Oman-like loan service arrangement. In fairness, the Secretary of State said that the Basra Development Commission, under Sir Michael Wareing, is going well, but will British contracts be so welcomed, relevant or assured without British troops there? As my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot) said, others will seem to reap the benefits. Then, of course, our many friends in the Gulf remain nervous of Iraq and its history. We now have a great opportunity to try to break down that mistrust and set up Iraq as a bulwark against Iran’s continued export of terror.

The Government’s narrative is that the job is done in southern Iraq, but they choose to ignore some of the worrying reports of evolving terror networks, of which the Minister will be aware. Our troops and commanders on the ground have indeed done an extraordinary job. The trouble, throughout, has been a lack of strategy from London. Since our strategy was only ever to get out, we are left with nothing apart from a rather damaged reputation. We have no serious strategy for Iraq, we have no serious strategy for Afghanistan either, and we have no serious strategy for winning the war on terror that I, like everyone else in this House, am quite keen to win.

The truth is that Iraq remains a disaster for the United Kingdom, whatever the long-term benefits to the Iraqi people. As well as all the lives lost, the decision made at that ranch in Texas has acted only as a massive driver of radicalisation across the Muslim world. We are not leaving Iraq or Basra with the job done; we are leaving Iraq with the job made very much harder.

This is an opportunity to voice a parliamentary verdict on the excursion into Iraq. The Archbishop of Canterbury, in his modest way, called the Iraq war “wrong”. It was more than that—it was illegal. The whole idea of regime change is illegal under international law. It was said by very many international jurists and experts that it was illegal. Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations at the time, described it as illegal. It was also amoral—it was mass murder for a huge robbery.

During the current recession and the banking crisis, we have heard the phrase, “Small crooks rob banks and large ones own them.” The really big boys—the US corporate gangsters—steal countries, and that was the intention in Iraq and how the occupation was pursued. It brought about the deaths of more than 1 million Iraqis, and the deaths of 178 British troops and more than 4,000 US troops, as well as many others, on top of a further 1 million who died in the 10 years leading up to the war on account of sanctions. Five million Iraqi refugees were forced to flee their homes. It was and remains a humanitarian catastrophe.

This time last year, there was a World Health Organisation conference in Geneva, at which it was reported that the Iraqi Government estimated that 70 per cent. of critically injured people die due to the shortage of competent staff, lack of drugs and equipment. The Iraqi Medical Association and Medact said that Iraq did not have a functioning and reliable health service. The situation was so bad that scissors and needles were the only equipment that some hospitals had. There were no chairs or paper, and hospitals were left to decay. There was a lack of ambulances, with stretchers made from cloth and a shortage of medication. Medical training was non-existent or insufficient. Electrical supply to hospitals averaged an hour a day, and could come and go at any time. Access to a hospital or a doctor was a huge problem because there was no security. It was the Iraqi Medical Association that pointed that out.

Oxfam has said that 4 million people regularly cannot buy enough to eat, and 70 per cent. are without adequate water supplies, up from 50 per cent. in 2003 when we went in. Some 28 per cent. of children have malnutrition, up from 19 per cent. when we went in. Because of the climate of fear and the trauma that they have endured, 92 per cent. of children suffer learning problems. Oxfam has also said that there has been a global apathy about all of this, and nowhere more so than in the occupying countries.

Human rights abuses have reached a new low. An e-mail came today from Human Rights Watch, the United States organisation, which has just published its 2009 world report. It is worth quoting two bits from it:

“The incoming Obama administration will need to put human rights at the heart of foreign, domestic, and security policy if it is to undo the enormous damage of the Bush years”;

and Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch says:

“For the first time in nearly a decade, the US has a chance to regain its global credibility by turning the page on the abusive policies of the Bush administration…And not a moment too late.”

We have reached a new low: Guantanamo Bay, Haditha, Abu Ghraib, Falluja, extraordinary rendition, phosphorous bombs. All that is damaging to us because our credibility in arguing for high standards of human rights around the world, which are very much needed, has been shattered—shot to ribbons.

It has been costly. The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) referred to the winner of the Nobel prize for economics, Joseph Stiglitz, and his book “The Three Trillion Dollar War”. I have here a review of this book in Tribune, which says:

“Consider just a sprinkling of the Stiglitz-Bilmes catalogues of cost as they attempt to break down the Three Trillion Dollar War: The US spends $16 billion every month on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—on top of ‘regular’ defence spending; By the year 2017, the American taxpayer will have to finance $1 trillion in interest payments alone to cover the cost of borrowing that money; The total bill for the US will be—and the authors insist that this is, deliberately, a conservative estimate—at least $3 trillion; They add that the rest of the world, including Britain, will probably have to find about the same amount again to cope with their own losses.”

We will be paying the interest on the debt caused by it. The Liberal spokesman mentioned a figure of £20 billion, but I suspect that it will be more than that.

The situation has damaged UK armed forces. I have served on the Defence Committee, and I have a lot of time and support for members of our armed forces. The majority of them are very brave, but I do not go along with the bluster that we hear in the Chamber about their being the best in the world. They have often been exposed in Iraq as impotent, and too often as venal, as in the cases of Baha Mousa, Camp Breadbasket and the killings at Amarah of people who had been captured.

More seriously, when the Labour Government came to power—again, I refer to my time on the Defence Committee—we were told that our forces would be a force for good. That idea is in the same bin as the ethical foreign policy because of what has happened in Iraq, which is damaging to UK armed forces. The UK has been an active partner in the US ruling coalition.

I think that the hon. Gentleman is making a mistake. He is quite wrong in saying that our forces have not been a force for good. It may well be that the Government have done the wrong thing, but to allow the blame for that to be attached to our armed forces seems disgraceful.

The hon. Gentleman has misinterpreted my point. I pointed out the quality of the troops, but they have to do the job that the Government and Parliament tell them to do, which has been a disgraceful job. In that sense, they have become not a force for good in Iraq but the opposite of that, given the catalogue of cases that I mentioned.

The UK has been an active partner in the ruling coalition, but it has tried to evade its guilt for complicity in the atrocities of the war and the occupation. Repeatedly, Ministers have answered parliamentary questions by saying, “The US answers for what the US does. Nothing to do with us.” But the UK was up to its neck in the policy and the atrocities that followed from it, including the disbandment of the Iraqi Administration under the guise of de-Ba’athification. Many other appalling things also happened as a result of decisions that we made and things that we approved.

I always like to bring a bit of culture to the House, so I wish to quote a man who died recently, Harold Pinter, our Nobel prize winner for literature. He said in his speech when he accepted the prize:

“We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it ‘bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East’.”

He said:

“As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with al-Qaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of 11 September 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.

The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all.

The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”

That is what Harold Pinter said in his acceptance speech.

I also want to read a poem of Harold Pinter’s, called “God Bless America”:

“Here they go again,

The Yanks in their armoured parade

Chanting their ballads of joy

As they gallop across the big world

Praising America’s God.

The gutters are clogged with the dead

The ones who couldn’t join in

The others refusing to sing

The ones who are losing their voice

The ones who’ve forgotten the tune.

The riders have whips which cut.

Your head rolls onto the sand

Your head is a pool in the dirt

Your head is a stain in the dust

Your eyes have gone out and your nose

Sniffs only the pong of the dead

And all the dead air is alive

With the smell of America’s God.”

Harold Pinter—worth quoting in the House. We were a coalition partner, who rode along with such policies.

I want to put a few things on the record. On 22 December, the brave journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown wrote in The Independent:

“So to the Iraqis, the beneficiaries of our noble ‘sacrifices’. This week, Nahla Hussein, a left-wing, feminist Kurdish Iraqi was shot and beheaded for her campaigning zeal. Fifty-seven Iraqis were blown up in Kirkuk. Christians in Mosul are being savagely persecuted and sharia law has replaced the 1959 codified entitlements given to women in family disputes. Women in Iraq have fewer rights today than under Saddam. Yes, there is some normality in parts but tensions between Shias and Sunnis are explosive. When troops are withdrawn next year, expect more bloodshed. The resources of Iraq, meanwhile, are being plundered.

For these blessings, one million Iraqis had to die and their children still suffer from illnesses caused by our weapons and our war. Five million Iraqis are displaced and, of these, the US took in 1,700. It is easier for an Iraqi cat or dog to gain entry to the land of the free… we took in 300”—

against a refugee count of 5 million. That shows a lack of commitment, which Oxfam pointed out.

We were not the second biggest army in Iraqi. Private mercenaries comprised the second biggest army by far. They immediately had immunity under the Bremer arrangements, which we supported, from the law and prosecution. A briefing from War on Want contains a heading “UK companies are making a killing”. Some have Members on their boards. Those companies have contracts worth hundreds of millions of pounds.

I want to put on the record the way in which the mercenaries operate. On 19 December, Tribune included a review of “Big Boy Rules: America’s Mercenaries Fighting in Iraq”, a book by Steve Fainaru. It states:

“This moving book reveals the human cost of Bush and Blair’s illegal war in Iraq. Written by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Steve Fainaru of the Washington Post, it follows a group of mercenaries, mainly American, as they roam across a war-torn country immune to any laws of decency, fighting a war by proxy and for profit.

As well as defining the ‘fight, survive, get paid’ rules under which they operate, he describes the corruption and moral bankruptcy of the American-led, British-supported policies of so-called ‘reconstruction’. So-called because it is palpably clear the outcome is to line the pockets of the mercenaries—and the American corporations which employ them—at the expense of the Iraqis.”

The article continues:

“Iraq has proved a magnet for those war-like men from around the world, including Americans, Brits, Aussies, Kiwis, Fijians, South Africans, Peruvians, Chileans and many more, who find fulfilment at the end of a loaded weapon aimed at a fellow human being. Cover-ups are the norm in the shoot first and, if you can be bothered, ask questions later culture of this murky yet officially sanctioned world.

How can people sink to such levels of barbarity? And what does this say for the governments who condone their actions by employing them? There’s sadness, too, that Iraq, anxious for change after Saddam Hussein, was condemned to the chaos and pillage of these licensed bandits.”

The militias of the various Iraqi groups mirror those mercenaries. Some are run by the Iraqi Government. Many—for example, the facilities protection service, which has killed ordinary Iraqis—do the same job as the mercenaries.

Although I agree with the hon. Gentleman about abuses on the part of some private security companies, the vast majority have been working in support of the reconstruction of Iraq, filling gaps that our militaries have been unable to fill, so I think that he is being a little hard on those companies.

They were doing a lot more than that, by the way. The situation was set up by Bush and Rumsfeld and we went along with it, in a privatised war in some ways—I will say more about that—to make profits and fill the pockets of those American gangsters.

There are still unanswered questions about Britain’s role in Amarah, about Camp Breadbasket and about complicity in the air strikes. In January last year, 40,000 lb of explosives were dropped on southern Iraq in one day, with a rate of four bombings a day. Then there was the Hercules crash. Questions have been asked about the machinery being brought in. I agree with those asking such questions, but they hide a deeper question: what were those special forces troops who died doing? There had been an election, and it is believed that they had ballot boxes, but they were well outside their area. Just what were they doing? There should be an answer to that.

Then there is the nest of vipers—the police station. Let me read from the latest book of Tony Benn’s diaries, “More Time for Politics”. This is from the entry for Tuesday 20 September 2005:

“The news today, and there was a bit about it last night, is this absolutely sensational story of two SAS officers who were sent in to Basra, one dressed as a Muslim cleric, the other as a civilian, and they were arrested by the Iraqi police and put in prison. This news reached the British Government, or the military in Basra, so they sent tanks and a helicopter, and one of the tanks drove straight into the prison wall, broke it open, 150 prisoners escaped, and the Iraqis then handed over these two British prisoners. This led to a huge riot outside the prison. The tanks were set on fire with petrol bombs, and the people inside escaped with their lives. The Government simply said they were glad to rescue people. They didn’t say what they were doing. But it told you that the Iraqi police now hate the British, and they’re supposed to have been set up by the British to deal with the insurgency. So it’s just an example.”

I raised the issue in the House at the time. The then Defence Secretary described those involved as murderous, saying:

“I have not yet heard anybody describe that particular unit as an ‘alleged’ murder squad. I have never seen the adjective ‘alleged’ used about that by anybody,”

so he effectively said that the Iraqi police were murderers. Then he said: “The fact that they”—the British Army—

“physically destroyed that police station was iconic to the people of Basra, many of whom celebrated the fact that that nest of vipers had been removed.”—[Official Report, 22 January 2007; Vol. 455, c. 1138.]

I have asked several questions about that, but let me take a short cut and get to the most recent one. The current Defence Secretary said that it was too difficult

“to be certain of the identity and background of individuals detained,”

that

“there are no reasons to believe that there were outstanding arrest warrants against any of”

them and that

“they were released because of a judgment that they no longer represented an imperative security threat.”—[Official Report, 26 November 2008; Vol. 483, c. 1551W.]

So much for a nest of vipers—those people were actually the police.

I want to turn to Operation Charge of the Knights, because it has been claimed, including by the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Holloway), who spoke before me, that it was a case of UK cowardice—[Interruption]—or rather incompetence. I think that that is a false allegation.

I categorically did not refer to British cowardice in Operation Charge of the Knights—on the contrary, the absolute reverse—on the part of our military transition teams. All I said was that Britain’s involvement, in terms of our command chain, was late. That is all I said.

I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point, but that is an implication.

Let me read what Sir Jock Stirrup, the head of our defence forces, said in a speech on 1 December:

“So I want…to lay to rest some of the myths that have emerged,”

including the myth that we

“failed to support the Iraqis during charge of the knights.”

He continued:

“The UK made repeated attempts to deal with extremist militia violence in the south east. We planned and sought to execute numerous Special Forces operations.”

Presumably that includes the ones where people were dressed in Arab headdresses or dressed as Muslim clerics. He went on:

“We also developed Operation Salamanca—an ambitious, comprehensive and hard-edged plan to confront and subdue the militias. All of these combined powerful offensive action with stabilisation and development activity. But each was, in the event, emasculated. Then, suddenly, Prime Minister Maliki decided that he personally was going to lead the Iraqi army into action in Basra, and that he was going to do it immediately. There was little in the way of planning, limited intelligence, no preparation of the battlespace—just get on with it. I have to say that we felt rather torn by this decision. It was, from a professional perspective, no way to launch an operation. On the other hand, the Iraqi Prime Minister was giving the political lead we’d been seeking all along. In any event, as our American colleagues in Baghdad said, this was an express train that couldn’t be stopped…We were asked to provide air support, but there were no precise targets and huge uncertainty over the location of civilians and the dangers of collateral damage.”

That was Sir Jock’s point, but I want to make the point that our whole role has been an interference in the electoral process. There is an electoral dispute, a political one, between al-Maliki’s forces and al-Sadr’s forces, and we have increasingly been on the side of al-Maliki. We have been interfering, and Operation Charge of the Knights was part of that process to try to deliver the election and to defeat al-Sadr. That is not our role. Our British troops should not be dying as a result of interference in the Iraqi political process. I think that that is atrocious. Another point relates to the special forces. Our troops that are going to remain in Iraq will be special forces, again taking action and interfering, I suspect, in the election.

There has also been massive embezzlement. On “Panorama” in June, Jane Corbin’s programme “Daylight Robbery” talked about the $23 billion intended for the reconstruction of Iraq, which was embezzled, overpaid or which simply vanished in the form of $10,000 bundles. My last major quote comes from “Shock Therapy” by Naomi Klein, which really illustrates the robbery involved. She says:

“The nonstop conveyor belt was part of what was so enraging to Iraqis about the U.S. insistence that they adapt to a strict free market, without state subsidies or trade protections. In one of his many lectures to Iraqi business-people, Michael Fleischer explained that ‘protected businesses never, never become competitive.’ He appeared to be impervious to the irony that Halliburton, Bechtel, Parsons, KPMG, RTI, Blackwater and all the other U.S. corporations that were in Iraq to take advantage of the reconstruction were part of a vast protectionist racket whereby the U.S. government had created their markets with war, barred their competitors from even entering the race, then paid them to do the work, while guaranteeing them a profit to boot—all at taxpayer expense. The Chicago School crusade, which emerged with the core purpose of dismantling the welfare statism of the New Deal, had finally reached its zenith in this corporate New Deal. It was a simpler, more stripped-down form of privatization—the transfer of bulky assets was not even necessary: just straight corporate gorging on state coffers. No investment, no accountability, astronomical profits.”

She went on to say:

“The Bush Cabinet had in fact launched an anti-Marshall Plan, its mirror opposite in nearly every conceivable way. It was a plan guaranteed from the start to further undermine Iraq’s badly weakened industrial sector and to send Iraqi unemployment soaring. Where the post-Second World War plan had barred foreign firms from investing, to avoid the perception that they were taking advantage of countries in a weakened state, this scheme did everything possible to entice corporate America (with a few bones tossed to corporations based in countries that joined the ‘Coalition of the Willing’). It was this theft of Iraq’s reconstruction funds from Iraqis, justified by unquestioned, racist assumptions about U.S. superiority and Iraqi inferiority—and not merely the generic demons of ‘corruption’ and ‘inefficiency’—that doomed the project from the start. None of the money went to Iraqi factories so they could reopen and form the foundation of a sustainable economy, create local jobs and fund a social safety net. Iraqis had virtually no role in this plan at all. Instead, the U.S. federal government contracts, most of them issued by USAID, commissioned a kind of country-in-a-box, designed in Virginia and Texas, to be assembled in Iraq. It was, as the occupation authorities repeatedly said, ‘a gift from the people of the United States to the people of Iraq’—all Iraqis needed to do was unwrap it. Even Iraqis’ low-wage labor wasn’t required for the assembly process because the major U.S. contractors such as Halliburton, Bechtel and the California-based engineering giant Parsons preferred to import foreign workers whom they felt confident they could control. Once again Iraqis were cast in the role of”—

Order. The hon. Member knows that quotes should be much briefer, but I hope that he will now draw his remarks to a conclusion.

I shall do that; the point is made. The oil robbery is another part of it, with UK-US companies having a monopoly, conferring massively advantageous deals to export profits from Iraq for years to come.

I will conclude. There is exhaustion at the killing in Iraq; that is why it has slowed down, but the occupation continues. I think that many of the mercenaries will stay, US forces will certainly stay and even some of our special forces will stay, although most will move on to the next war in Afghanistan or possibly Iran. The opposition in Iraq will, however, continue. People will want their country and their own resources back. It has not been a victory in the sense of getting a decent job done. It has been a defeat and a failure—a country devastated and a people made much poorer, the infrastructure destroyed and resources stolen. Our opponents everywhere have been strengthened by that failure. Iran certainly has. The risk to us has been increased enormously. We need to get out totally.

I come to my final point. Yesterday saw the final press conference of President Bush, who said that

“even in the darkest days of Iraq… we had fun”.

What a swine!

I rise briefly and with some trepidation because all this afternoon’s speakers, at least until recently, have been extremely well informed, extremely balanced and extremely intelligent in their approach to what is, after all, a hugely controversial episode in our history and the history of the middle east. The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen) had some sensible things to say although, sadly, he wrapped them around with some things that were demonstrably incorrect. I particularly regretted the way he allowed his dislike of what happened in Iraq somehow to be transferred to our troops.

The first thing I would say, speaking partly as chairman of the all-party group for the Army, is that no matter what we think of what happened in Iraq—I was one who did not support the invasion in the first place—all in the House should be absolutely resolute in saluting our armed services. They do a job that we would not do under any circumstances; and they do it in circumstances that we cannot even imagine. They are among the most professional in the world. I do not believe that what they do should be called “grandstanding”, to use the hon. Gentleman’s expression; the fact of the matter is that our troops are simply superb. It is right to pay tribute to their efforts in the most horrendous circumstances over the last five years.

Before I forget, I should say that on 23 February this year we will see the return from Iraq of the 7th Armoured Brigade. They will come to the House of Commons under the aegis of the all-party group for the Army, and I hope very much that they will march in to the north door of Westminster Hall, as they did last time round, and that all hon. Members will be there to welcome them back from their duties in Iraq. I hope to continue that movement with other armed services in the future.

In that context, let me pay tribute to the people of Wootton Bassett in my own constituency who—week in, week out, and often two or three times a week—turn out in their hundreds along the High street to pay tribute to the coffins that are flown back through RAF Lyneham in my constituency. What a superb job the people of Wootton Bassett do. I wish that more people across this nation and across the world paid that sort of tribute to the services that our armed forces give to all of us.

I was not supportive of the original invasion of Iraq. At the time, I was serving as junior shadow Defence Minister under my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin), who spoke so well a few moments ago. He knows that we differed on that issue and that I moved on—partly as a result of that difference of opinion—to become the shadow Minister with responsibility for rural affairs.

Speaking as someone who voted against the Iraq war, I am familiar with the Conservative Members who did so, and there were not many of them. Is my hon. Friend saying that he voted against the war?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. That is, of course, a matter for the record. I did not say that I voted against the war, but it was clever of him to pick it up. It was a three-line Whip, and the Whips persuaded me that unless I was going to resign from the Front Bench, it would not be possible for me to vote against the war. A number of my colleagues who were strongly opposed to it resigned their posts, but I accepted the Queen’s shilling and continued on the Front Bench. However, I did abstain and wrote, as I think my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex will confirm, an extremely strongly worded internal memo within the Conservative party seeking to persuade it not to support the Government. My record on that is fairly clear.

However, that is ancient history. I mentioned it to make the point that despite that fundamental opposition to the war, I am one of those who would agree with most hon. Members who have spoken in saying that getting rid of the vile dictator Saddam Hussein is of course greatly to the benefit both of the people of Iraq and of the people of the world. There is no question about it: the Iraq that we have today is vastly better than the Iraq we had 10 years ago. I am still not convinced that what we did was justifiable under international law, but the end result is much better than the situation we had then. I hope that people will not think that that is a case of winning both sides of the argument. I do not think we had the justification to go in, but none the less my suspicion is that the end result is better than the end result we would have had had we not gone in, if that is not too Irish.

The debate is not about why we went into Iraq; it is about the future strategic relationship with Iraq. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) asked an interesting question of the Secretary of State—namely, are we talking about our military connection with Iraq in the future? If that is the case, it is fairly obvious that we do not have one, with the exception of 300 or 400 advisers, naval and military personnel and so on. I suspect that the purpose of the debate is to consider where we see Iraq coming into our strategy with regard to the rest of the world, and I shall return to that matter.

There are three pitfalls into which we should not allow ourselves to fall, although a number of hon. Members did fall into them. The first pitfall, which the Secretary of State fell into to a degree, is to stand up and say, “Didn’t we do a fine job in Iraq? Job done. Now we must leave.” One of the finest speeches that I have heard, certainly in this debate and for quite a long time in the Chamber, was by my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Holloway), who exploded that easy conclusion. His chronology of the conflict in Iraq over the past five years exploded the notion that what we did was right, that it was a brilliant campaign for five years, and that we can now pat ourselves on the back and say, “Job well done. Now we can leave Iraq. Thank goodness for that.” That notion is entirely wrong. It is not a job well done. An awful lot of fundamental mistakes have been made, and some of the things that we are leaving behind in Iraq are significantly worse than they would have been had we handled events differently. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend and hope that if people read nothing else from this debate, they read his speech, which is worthy of a wider audience. It summed up the problems going forward in Iraq.

I share my hon. Friend’s admiration for the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Holloway). My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) said he thought that things were undoubtedly better in Iraq as a result of the military intervention. Does he think that they are better for women, or worse? Does he think that they are better for Christians, or worse?

I know that my hon. Friend has had important engagements elsewhere and has unfortunately not had the opportunity to be in the Chamber for the whole debate. I am glad that I have given him the chance to intervene on me twice even though he has not been here.

The situation of women and Christians has been extensively covered in the debate. My answer to my hon. Friend is yes, the lot of women and Christians in Iraq is vastly better than it was for dozens of years under that vile dictator Saddam Hussein. If my hon. Friend is implying that the lot of women and Christians is worse today, I challenge him to support his allegation. It is simply not true. Of course the lot of women and Christians, and that of most Iraqis, is vastly better under the present regime than it was under Saddam Hussein.

The second pitfall into which we should avoid falling, and one or two hon. Members moved gently in this direction, is to say that all these things are fog of war—that why we went into Iraq in the first place is ancient history; and that some of the things mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham just happen, that we should not spend too much time on them and that we must move on. I do not believe that that is correct.

I believe that the five or six years of the run-up to the conflict in Iraq and the conflict itself are an enormously significant part of our civilisation and history. I think it important for us to analyse what we did and especially what we did not do, partly because we risk doing something similar in Afghanistan and elsewhere—possibly in Pakistan. Who knows? We should analyse extremely carefully what we did not do, paying particular attention to the lack of a reconstruction plan when we went into Iraq in 2003, and we should do so in public. There should be a full public inquiry as soon as possible.

The Government seem to be hiding behind the notion that it is not possible to hold an inquiry while the troops are still in Iraq. They did not adopt that stance in relation to the hugely expensive and detailed inquiry into Bloody Sunday: although our troops were still very much deployed in Northern Ireland, they decided to proceed with it. We are now committed to removing our troops from Iraq by the summer, and I hope that the Government will move extremely speedily to ensure that a detailed analysis takes place—before the House rises for the summer recess, at the very least—of exactly what happened in Iraq, and how we have handled the situation since then.

As for the third pitfall, we should avoid the temptation to breathe a sigh of relief, something I have detected in some of the Government’s public pronouncements in particular. People have been saying, in a vague way, “Whew! Thank goodness that is all over. Now we can move forward. We may have to deal with Afghanistan, of course, but Iraq is under control. We are worried about Gaza and the Palestinians, but, although we had an awful time in Iraq, that is now dealt with. It’s over and finished.” That strikes me as a fundamental mistake. There are still huge elements of terrorism in Iraq: at this moment, terrorist networks of all kinds are developing and growing there. The country remains one of the conduits through which a large part of the drugs trade enters the west, and where there are drugs there is an enormous amount of money and criminal activity.

The notion that Iraq represents a job done and we can now take it easy is extremely foolish. It is some 80 or 100 years since Churchill concluded that the Mesopotamian question was unanswerable, and it is as unanswerable today as it was then. If we ignore the place—if we turn our back on it and say, “That’s that; let’s move on to something else”—we shall be asking for trouble, and Iraq could become the kind of place that it was before and under Saddam.

Iraq is enormously important to us strategically. On one side is Iran, with Afghanistan beyond it; Pakistan and India are currently looking at each other across their nuclear buttons; there is currently Iranian support for Hamas in Gaza; and Iraq stands in the middle of all that. We hope that it is beginning to look like a reasonably stable, reasonably sensible nation, for we desperately need a stable Iraqi regime in the middle of the huge inferno which may erupt across the middle east, but we can achieve that only if from now on we provide in spades the diplomatic, political, economic and commercial support that we have been discussing.

We must support Iraq in ways we support almost no other nation in the world for many years to come. Only if we do that can we hope to allow the professional classes to run their country again. After all, Iraq has always been a very professional nation, containing a group of competent, professional, intelligent people who have not been allowed to do their jobs for many years. If we provide the commercial, diplomatic and political support that they need, Iraq will stand some chance of becoming a stable, sensible, liberal democracy in the middle of a troubled region.

I believe that at this moment, as we withdraw militarily from Iraq, we have an opportunity to hand the place over to the Iraqis in a sensible, democratic and supportive way. It is a superb opportunity, and we must not let it slip through our grasp.

It is a pleasure to participate in this important debate, and may I echo the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) on our concerns about the absence of an inquiry? I agree with him that the reasons for an inquiry were illustrated with great enthusiasm and in great detail by my hon.—and gallant—Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Holloway). If anyone reads the Hansard record of this debate, they will find that his contribution provides a fantastically good chronology of all the key issues—which, incidentally, were not covered by the Prime Minister in his statement in December, and which certainly were not touched upon in the Secretary of State’s opening remarks. My hon. Friend explained precisely why we need to go into detail and understand a little more about what has been happening in respect of our military and various Whitehall Departments in Iraq over the past five or six years.

This debate is a poor substitute for a full inquiry into the Iraq war—a war that has cost us £7 billion and almost 200 British lives. I agree with those Members who said that we were very pleased with the situation in Iraq now, but the big question is why has it taken us so long to get to this position where we can almost pause and take stock and say, “We are pleased with where Iraq has got to”? We could have been in this position much earlier if we had gone into Iraq with more of a plan than we had in March 2003. It is hard for me to say this, as I am one of the service personnel who has served in a number of operational environments and was part of the regiment that retreated from Basra palace to the airport, but in my view Britain has been humiliated by operations in Iraq. Not since Suez should we hang our heads in such shame, and scratch our heads and ask what went wrong. This is a political failure, not a military one, however. We cut our troop numbers too fast, we reconstructed too slowly and we eventually lost control completely.

As we have heard, we had responsibility for Basra and the surrounding regions in southern Iraq: Operation Telic and the Multi-National Division (South-East). Basra should have been an easy area for us to take control of and to start to develop once the initial level of security was maintained. The area was no friend of Saddam because of its isolation after the uprisings following Operation Desert Storm. There was euphoria when Saddam was toppled, but that was short-lived and security became very fragile until it eventually disappeared completely and was replaced by a vacuum. That is why I was astonished to hear the Secretary of State say in his opening remarks how pleased he was that we had extinguished al-Qaeda in Iraq. It was not there in the first place; for us to pat ourselves on the back and say, “Well done,” is completely wrong, because we allowed it to step in and take advantage of the absence of any security in the first place.

Of course, when there is no plan, individuals take it upon themselves to rule themselves. Looting began, petty crime increased, gangs formed and eventually the enemy, including al-Qaeda, was able to reorganise and move into Iraq as a whole. Eventually, these gangs formed into militias, mostly according to ethnic groupings, and that led to the formation of the great Mahdi army.

We should listen to some of the voices on such matters. General Sir Michael Jackson has been quoted many times in this House. He made it very clear that

“the taking of Basra city by 7 Armoured Brigade was a brilliant operation”.

All of us should pay tribute to that operation and the skill and brilliance of our troops. However, he then goes on to say that there was a fundamental

“lack of a coherent reconstruction plan”.

When I spoke to some Department for International Development civil servants, I was astonished to hear that in the days leading up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, a message went round from the then Secretary of State for International Development telling all directors not to do any planning whatever because they were not even sure whether the war was legal. This was at the same time as the Ministry of Defence was moving in up to 40,000 troops—many of whom were already in the theatre of operations in any case—so clearly there was not any thought about what to do once our military had moved into position.

The Ministry of Defence has recently produced a thick glossy document “UK Defence”, which goes through all aspects of our military campaigns. Page 70, which refers to Operation Telic five years on, states:

“The campaign since March 2003 has proved to be one of the most complex and challenging ever undertaken by the British armed forces.”

The former Defence Secretary and the Foreign Secretary have both said that mistakes were made in British conduct in the aftermath of the initial fighting. That shows how important it is to have an inquiry. Five years on, we can see what our armed forces have been doing. Until recently, they were involved in intense fire fights, benign patrolling and low-key reconstruction projects, funded mostly by the United States, not the British.

There have been important successes. There has been a referendum on the new constitution and there have been subsequent elections. Most importantly, we have avoided civil war, which I was concerned about. I say that with caution, because, as I said earlier in an intervention, regional elections have been deliberately delayed by the central Iraqi Government because of worry about where they might lead if people vote for ethnic alliances, with polarisation of the electorate, perhaps leading to more instability and then conflict. That is a concern, and we must monitor the situation very carefully.

Those huge failures all point to Great Britain’s inability to conduct post-conflict operations, and Whitehall’s lack of organisational ability to deal with the cross-over between political and military situations. It was sad to hear the Defence Secretary paint such a rosy and positive picture of our retreat from Iraq. It is not positive, and there is huge frustration in the military that the job could have been done so much better had there been more support from Whitehall. The euphoria of 7th Armoured Brigade when it went into Basra back in March 2003 disappeared after the summer of 2007 with the withdrawal from Basra palace to the airport by my regiment, the 4th Battalion The Rifles. That has been discussed again and again in this debate.

Prime Minister al-Maliki said of the withdrawal from Basra palace to the airport that

“Basra has been left to the mercy of Militia men.”

Whose decision was it to make that retreat? It was probably a wise decision at the time because, by then, we had become part of the problem. If it was the right call, as the Government say, why was it necessary to have the huge operation—the Charge of the Knights—in March 2008, to which reference has been made repeatedly during the debate?

Basra is controlled not by Britain, but by the Iranian-backed militia. Without sufficient forces and political will, the UK was sidelined. Three thousand US marines took part in the operation, and Britain played catch-up. I am sorry that we have been almost misled in the House and that our role in that operation has been built up. We did not do ourselves justice. We were late in becoming involved in the battle, and it was the US—with, I believe, the 14th Iraqi Division—who supported the Iraqi 10th Division. Prime Minister al-Maliki referred to that in his statement. It was misleading for the House to be given the impression that things were going so well, and it is sad that the Defence Secretary has not provided a more accurate picture.

Given that we try so hard to sit at the world’s top table and given all our nuclear weapons, a place on the Security Council and a century of war-fighting experience, it is amazing that we could not even hold a medium-sized conurbation. Right now, we are huddled in Basra airport in an overwatch role. During my long time in the armed forces, I never heard what an overwatch role is. I am afraid that our prestige has been damaged, and we have been replaced not by Iraqi soldiers, but by US soldiers. They are now training the police, mentoring the border guards and teaming up with the Iraqi army. We cannot say that our job is complete when we are not handing over to the people we went to Iraq to help in the first place.

That prompts the question of what our objective is. Is it to deploy troops to southern Iraq and spend £7 billion only to hand over to the US forces? That cannot be right. How can the Prime Minister dare to say that our task in Iraq has been achieved? As I have said, how can we congratulate ourselves on removing al-Qaeda from Iraq when it was not there in the first place?

I have made the case for a full inquiry and I believe that that case has never been more convincing. Serious questions remain, in my view, about the interpretation of the intelligence that justified the invasion in the first place. My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham talked about how plans were being considered before and during 2002 before troops went anywhere near Kuwait or the surrounding countries. In fact, I can tell him that General Franks, who was in charge of US Central Command at the time, received a call from President Bush, through Rumsfeld, in November 2001, just after the invasion of Afghanistan, to say, “Please can you look at your invasion plans for Iraq?” That was in November 2001. It was the first call I saw in which the invasion of that country was being considered.

The UK’s clear failure to manage the peace is very worrying, as is the absence of a UK plan for reconstruction and of coherent leadership from Whitehall. In 2003, following the invasion, we had no plan, no strategy and no idea. We did not know how to harness the euphoria after the fall of Saddam and to sow the seeds of governance. Without a plan, nothing really happens, and we went from being liberators to being occupiers. Where was the army of civil servants, linguists, engineers, planners, trainers and local governance experts? Where were the people who could come in behind the British military, start dealing with all those issues and start nation building?

We have heard about the importance of Umm Qasr, the deep water port. Why was not energy put into getting that port working? We are talking about it now, but it should have happened in the important first 100 days, when hostilities had ceased. Likewise, the bridge that is now being planned over the Shatt al-Arab waterway should have been built straight away. Those high-profile events would have shown the locals that we meant business and wanted to help them, and we would have been seen not as occupiers but as liberators.

We did not harness local talents. The fundamental difference between Iraq and Afghanistan was the wealth of experience and talent in the country in the first place, which was completely ignored. It goes back to the most fundamental schoolboy error of the war, made by either Jerry Bremer or Bush, which was the dissolution of the Iraqi army on 23 May 2003 and, just a week before, the outlawing of membership of the Ba’ath party. That immediately alienated 40,000 teachers and as many nurses and doctors who had no choice but to participate in the party, because it was the only way in which they could move forward. Why did not Britain oppose that decision? Why did Britain not question the logic of getting rid of the basic army and having to start all over again?

There are many lessons to be learned from Iraq that could prevent the mistakes from being repeated in Afghanistan. Our failure to take advantage of the fragile umbrella of security, to win over hearts and minds and to push forward development has resulted in Afghanistan in a second surge taking place in Helmand province, involving 20,000 troops in an area for which we are supposed to have responsibility.

There are many lessons to be learned about the entire process of what has been called the “awakening”, involving the funding of militias in Anbar province. That has not really been done in modern warfare and modern development and the jury is out about whether it works. Yet again, there are lessons to be learned. The same sort of initiatives are being considered by General Petraeus for Afghanistan, but all those opportunities are being lost because we have not learned from the discussion resulting from a proper inquiry.

We do not have proper stabilisation capability—such a thing is absent from the British mindset. We need to take a thorough look at the relationship between the MOD and DFID. At present, DFID spending, over all operations, is just 1 per cent. of military spending. That is completely wrong if we are to win over hearts and minds in the crucial 100-day period to which my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) referred. As I think he said, DFID does not do danger, but it does some things very well indeed, such as tackling poverty. There has been a revolution in military warfare—from a cold war to a counter-insurgency stance—but we have not seen the same revolution in reconstruction and development. Britain is behind in that area, which is why I propose that we move a slice of money from DFID’s £5.6 billion budget to the MOD and create a new stabilisation force of brigade capability that is able to start doing important reconstruction tasks in that initial two or three-month period. When things have been seen to move forward, the force could hand over to contractors, non-governmental organisations and the DFIDs and USAIDs of this world. Until that happens, there will be vacuums in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We regularly pay tribute to the commitment and professionalism of our armed forces and the sacrifice they make for our country, but in the long history of our military engagements Iraq was far from our finest hour. That was no fault of our armed forces; blame is firmly on the shoulders of Whitehall, which failed to plan for peace. Consequently, the UK’s reputation as a reliable and competent country, willing to step forward when others are unable or unwilling to do so, has suffered. An inquiry into the war in Iraq will show that the fault was not in the way our military fought the war, but the incompetence of the Government in managing the peace. For that reason, the Government continue to find excuses to delay that important review of what went wrong. It is no wonder that we are repeating many of the same mistakes in Afghanistan. It is shameful that the Government do not take responsibility for their actions and acknowledge the shortfall in Britain’s post-conflict capability.

Whatever our discussions about how affairs in Iraq have progressed, it is important—as the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) has said—that the message is sent that we give our heartfelt thanks to the Army and the families for all their sacrifices serving our country and for trying their best to serve the people of Iraq. I was struck by the hon. Gentleman’s speech and by those of the hon. Members for Gravesham (Mr. Holloway) and for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) in terms of their frank and direct analysis of the unfortunate debacle that has been Iraq.

It is important for us to look forward, however, at how the strategic interests of the UK and our strategic relationship with Iraq can progress in the interests of all. It is certainly a pleasure for me to speak after so many Members who have real expertise on the ground in Iraq. My particular interest is that there is a large Kurdish community in my constituency and recently, unfortunately, Christian refugees from Iraq have come to Croydon.

Our current departure from Iraq is not the first time we have left the region with many issues unresolved and with difficult choices facing the Government as to how such issues can be pursued in the interests of all. We all know that there is continuing unhappiness about the promises made by our Government, and indeed by the League of Nations, to Assyrians and Kurds, as a result of the settlements after the first world war.

Perhaps we can take some confidence from the fact that our country’s involvement in both the first Iraqi conflict in the 1990s, and the more recent Iraqi conflict, has left Kurdish areas with a strong sense of autonomy. It was perhaps the sensible and wise decision of John Major and our allies to impose a no-fly zone over Kurdish areas that has allowed that area relative prosperity and autonomy. I have, over the years, enjoyed meeting members of the Kurdish Parliament who have visited the UK. It will be interesting to hear what expectations the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the hon. Member for Harlow (Bill Rammell), has for the continuing relative autonomy of that area when we and the Americans have left.

I know that the Minister is concerned about the issue of Christian minorities in Iraq, and that he met a number of representatives from Christian communities just before Lord Alton held a meeting in the House of Lords on the subject. I attended Lord Alton’s meeting. It is interesting, historically, that Aramaic, the language of Jesus, is still spoken in northern Iraq. Disturbingly, 150,000 Christian refugees find themselves outside Iraq after the many murders and pogroms that took place last autumn. In the context of the strategic progression of our relationship with Iraq, I would be interested to hear what possible solutions the Minister sees to that continuing problem.

It is not fashionable to express concern about the persecution of Christian minorities, but this is a real, serious concern, and I know that the Government take it seriously. It strikes me that there are three options to pursue, all of which may be difficult for the Government to face. The first is to take the approach that was taken towards the Ugandan Asians—that is, to take the view that we should be far more liberal in allowing Christian refugees to leave the middle east and come to the United Kingdom. Another approach is to be realistic and take the view that the Kurdistan regional government has a role in protecting any Christians who might choose to return. In reality, probably half the Christian population of northern Iraq has now left the country. There are also those Christian communities that left northern Iraq in the 1980s. The situation depends on our ability to influence the Iraqi Government, either by ourselves or through the Americans, to give proper reassurance that land that was taken from those groups in the 1980s will be returned.

There are a number of other minorities. One group in particular, in northern Iraq, also needs consideration—the Mandaeans, 80 per cent. of whom have already left Iraq. Clearly, consideration needs to be given to them. Another minority that has suffered greatly in Iraq for a number of decades is the Faili Kurds, who come from south and central Iraq. They were forced by Saddam Hussein to march in front of the front line during the conflict with Iran, even though they were enemies of the state. They were slaughtered by Iranian fire—it is a very sad story. Perhaps, as we depart from Iraq, we can find a solution that allows their return to Kurdistan.

Important issues have been raised in this debate, and I know that the Minister will find it hard to answer the many questions that have been posed. It would be interesting to know what the Government think will happen when our American allies also leave. What is the risk of civil war? What can we do in the short and medium term to influence the American Government to influence the Government in Baghdad to deal with the concerns raised in the debate by the shadow Secretary of State for Defence? The shadow Secretary of State expressed his concern that the upcoming local elections could be abused and freedom could be restricted by direction from central Government.

We have an interest in continuing stability in northern Iraq and in Kurdistan. I know that it is not appropriate ever to give consideration to the creation of Kurdistan, even though that was an undertaking given by UK Governments at the beginning of the 20th century. It would be interesting to hear the Government’s approach to continuing Turkish incursions into northern Iraq after the withdrawal of our troops and those of our allies from Iraq.

Compared with all those concerns, business issues do not seem so important, but trade and prosperity ensure that peace can be more easily maintained in an area that will continue to suffer great instability. It is important to note that because of the relative autonomy of Kurdistan or Kurdish Iraq, despite all the recent troubles in Mosul and Kirkuk, there is greater prosperity there. Because the Kurds have had to live under many different regimes, countries and empires over the years, they are very good as a trading nation. I hope that the Government will continue to support the interests there.

As the right hon. Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot) said, Iraq could and should be one of the richest countries in the world. It is, after all, the very cradle of modern civilisation. Let us hope that despite the debacles, the Government’s good efforts to tackle the difficult issues that remain will deal effectively with the concerns raised by many hon. Members in the debate today.

The debate has been mostly thoughtful and, on occasions, passionate. I would draw out from it three themes which have been expressed by most contributors in all parts of the House. First, there has been pride in the courage and professionalism of our armed forces. Secondly, there has been regret at the enormous cost of the Iraq war and the subsequent violence, the deaths, the physical and mental scars, the refugees who have gone to neighbouring countries and the many displaced families within Iraq. Thirdly, throughout the debate there has been an expression of hope that Iraq can at last, after turmoil and suffering, look to a more stable and prosperous future. That hope has been coupled with a determination across party political boundaries in the House to help the people of Iraq meet the challenge of reconstructing their economy and society.

There have been a number of noteworthy speeches. Everyone in the House enjoyed the contribution from the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells) relishing his new-won freedom, and the words of the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd), who spoke with an acknowledged history of commitment and dedication to the welfare and rights of the ordinary people of Iraq that is unmatched in any part of the House.

The hon. Member for Stockton, South (Ms Taylor) and my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot) made telling contrasts between the violent society that they had observed in Iraq just a couple of years ago and the more peaceful state of affairs that prevails today. As we all know, our troops will, in large part, be coming home in about six months. In that context, I want to raise one point that has not been alluded to so far. I ask the Minister to give a clear pledge that when the troops return we will not abandon any of the Iraqis who put at risk their lives and the safety of their families by working for the British armed forces or the British administrative authorities in Iraq. Those people deserve more than our thanks—if their lives are at risk on account of what they did on behalf of our forces or civilian staff, they deserve our sanctuary as well. I hope that the Minister will be able to guarantee that the cases still being considered will have been properly and fairly decided by the time the troops pull out and that the Government will have arrangements in place to deal properly, fairly and sympathetically with any new cases that come to light after July this year.

The main point of disagreement in what has been a considerably consensual debate has been about the case for an inquiry into the decision to go to war and into the subsequent conduct of the war. Various speeches, notably that of my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Holloway), but also that of my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood), have highlighted particular examples of when things went wrong and where it would be sensible, and good government, to learn and apply the lessons. We heard about the lack of a proper reconstruction plan and about the last-minute switch in the plans, when British forces deployed not in northern Iraq but in the southern provinces. We heard about the lack of adequate planning to ensure that reconstruction and development work was brought in swiftly in support of the Army. I cannot help adding that with hindsight it would have been helpful had there been at the time a Secretary of State for International Development who was interested in planning to work in support of the armed services. The Prime Minister of the time carries a responsibility for not ensuring that his Ministers were acting in a properly co-ordinated fashion.

We need an inquiry for two reasons. First, we must learn the lessons. Secondly, we must establish what, as is evident from this debate, is still lacking—a degree of consensus about the facts. As I contrast what my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire said with what the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen) said, I find not only disagreement about how to interpret particular events, but profound disagreement about what actually happened. A serious inquiry by Privy Counsellors, with access to all the people and documents relevant to the decision to go to war and its subsequent conduct, would establish what happened with greater clarity.

I was disappointed by the Secretary of State’s comments on that point. For the most part, I agreed with his speech and thought it a high-quality contribution. However, he seemed to be saying that the time was not yet ripe for an inquiry and that the Prime Minister would take a decision in due course. The Government gave no hint about the criteria that they would use to decide when the time was finally right to hold such an inquiry. Will it be the end of July, when the bulk of the troops come home? Will it be after the 400 troops left to train Iraqis are withdrawn? Will there be a delay until the very last military adviser of any kind is finally brought home from Iraq? I have to say to the Secretary of State, in sorrow rather than in a spirit of outrage, that his response on this point did not do him justice. We heard the voice of the Secretary of State, but we got the words of the Prime Minister. We got secrecy, not openness, and in place of accountability, we got evasion. I reiterate to the House that if a Conservative Government are elected at the next general election, that inquiry will be held without any further delay.

There is such a contrast between how the British Government have behaved and the conduct of the United States, where both the Executive and the legislature have commissioned successive inquiries to examine what went right and what went wrong and have then published and discussed their findings openly—and they have not been afraid of trenchant criticism coming out of those inquiries. Any Member of this House can go to the internet and read the draft report of the inspector general on Iraq. Let me quote a couple of examples of the sort of criticism in that report. The inspector general talks about the

“poor integration of inter-agency efforts bred by weak unity of command and inconsistent unity of effort”

and

“the blinkered and disjointed pre-war planning for Iraqi reconstruction”.

Those are charges that have been levelled this afternoon, and during other debates in this House, about the United Kingdom’s planning and preparation. Whether or not they are true, they should be examined by people who have access to all the relevant records.

Rightly, however, the focus of the debate has been more on the future of Iraq than on its past. The future strategic relationship of this country and Iraq is important not only in terms of bilateral relations but in terms of our policy towards the region as a whole. For the most part, what has been said in the debate has been couched in terms of hope and optimism for the future. However, my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) gave us a cogent word of warning when he spoke of how in the past we sometimes promised things that, in the event, we were unable to deliver. We need to temper optimism with a hard-headed appraisal of the problems that face Iraq today and that will continue to face it in the foreseeable future.

While the speech by the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead was largely over the top, he was right when he reminded us of the daily violence and intimidation that still take place in Iraq. This week, the Pentagon submitted its latest quarterly progress report to the United States Congress. The report said that security incidents had reached their lowest level since systematic counting began in 2004. That is welcome, without any qualification. It said that inadequate supplies of food, water, electricity and health care had replaced security as the chief concern of Iraqi citizens. But it went on to say that

“the underlying sources of instability in Iraq have yet to be resolved. Iraq remains fragile because its major power brokers do not share a unified national vision”.

In the run-up to the imminent regional elections, we see political tensions not only between the main ethnic and religious groups in Iraq, but within those groups as well. Once those elections are out of the way, there will be further political jostling ahead of the referendum planned for the summer on the United States stationing of forces agreement, ahead of the national elections at the end of the 2009 and ahead of the decision on the future of Kirkuk.

Political tension and rivalry in Iraq can lead to the abuse of human rights. I join the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley in urging the Government—I think that the Government will be happy to agree—to keep our attention on the human rights record in Iraq. We must maintain a dialogue with the Iraqi authorities in all parts of Iraq about human rights, and we need to ensure that the record of Iraq is examined, as those of other countries are, through the appropriate international bodies.

The hon. Member for Croydon, Central (Mr. Pelling) and others were right to discuss the continuing persecution of some religious minorities. In recent weeks, I have met delegations from some of the Christian communities in Iraq, who have told me about the pressure that they have been under not just, as is commonly known, in Baghdad and Basra, but in areas of the Nineveh plain that are the traditional centres of Christian culture in that country. The smaller minorities, such as the Yazidis and the Sabbateans, have probably suffered even worse, with large proportions of those communities having given up and fled into exile.

I turn to the challenge of Iraq’s economy. As my hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) urged, the Government should give a higher priority to helping British business take advantage of the opportunities opening up in Iraq. I am getting rather tired of the fact that in every country that I visit in the middle east, I hear from the host Government something along the lines of, “Well, we’d like to work more with you British, but you’ve rather let the French, the Germans and the Italians steal a march on you in recent years.” I hope that the Government will not let those economic opportunities for our country slip, given that our country has sacrificed a great deal in soldiers’ lives and taxpayers’ money to support the policy being pursued in Iraq.

The extent to which Iraq makes a success of economic development is bound up with political stability in getting a proper rule of law introduced and observed throughout the country. Significantly, there has to be agreement on the sharing of petroleum revenues. It is dismaying to see that such an agreement has still not been reached, despite the fact that for several years the political parties in Baghdad have said that they had done a deal and were on the verge of introducing legislation. We still seem to have a stand-off between the Kurdish regional government and the central Government in Baghdad. Given that a number of oil industry experts believe that Iraq’s reserves may even match those of Saudi Arabia, it is urgent that agreement is reached, and I hope that whatever diplomatic work Britain can do to facilitate that will be pursued.

Finally, there is the question of Iraq’s regional role. My hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring touched on its relationships with Iran, Syria, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. I hope that the Government will continue to encourage those of our friends in the Arab world who have not yet done so to station ambassadors permanently in Baghdad. Given Iraq’s close links with the Iranian Government, it might be possible for her to help to provide Britain and the United States with a conduit for contact with the Iranian regime at a very senior level. I would be interested to hear the Government’s view on that.

In the longer term, it seems to me that if we are to get a stable arrangement for collective security in the middle east—something along the lines of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe has often been discussed—Iraq should play a key role in the effort. It is both proudly Arab and now friendly with Iran, and it could play an important part in creating a stable, more prosperous future. The hope and objective of our policy must be not just for Iraq to be sovereign, politically stable and prosperous, but for it to play a leading and constructive part in shaping a better future for the whole of that very troubled region.

We have had a genuinely good debate, and there has been a fairly large degree of consensus in the contributions. Our focus is shifting from a military relationship with Iraq to a whole-Iraq approach that centres on close co-operation with its Government and people, across the spectrum of politics, economics, human rights, culture, education and trade.

As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence said at the beginning of the debate, Iraq has genuinely made huge progress since 2003. After years of suffering under a tyrannical regime in which its citizens had no say in how the country was governed, it is emerging as a democracy in which all Iraqis now participate, have a voice and can enjoy the right to choose their local and national leaders and, importantly, hold them to account.

Sometimes when we debate the situation in Iraq and its future, there is still far too much amnesia in some quarters about Iraq under Saddam Hussein. I say that not because I want to go back over the debates that preceded the intervention in 2003, but to help to explain how difficult it is for Iraqis to escape the long shadows of decades of what can be described as fascism, and therefore how far they have travelled in such a short period.

It is a reality that Saddam’s brutal dictatorship defined society in almost every imaginable way. Pupils and students had to toe the party line and were unable to express themselves, and civil servants had to doff their cap to the Ba’ath party and never allow their imagination or concern for ordinary people to override their obligations to Saddam Hussein. People were tortured and slaughtered in their hundreds of thousands. I recall my first awareness of what Saddam was doing, when I was a student at Cardiff university in the early 1980s and Saddam sent his hit men out to assassinate students in south Wales. I will need an awful lot of persuading to be convinced that Iraq is not a much better place for the passing of Saddam Hussein.

My right hon. Friend rightly started by paying tribute to the 178 troops killed in Iraq. I have had the opportunity and privilege of visiting our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I have developed nothing but profound respect for the role that they play. All of us in the House, and our fellow citizens across the country, owe them an enormous debt of gratitude for what they do on our behalf.

The hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox), the Opposition spokesman, made a speech with which I agreed in large part. He started by highlighting the price that we have paid for our intervention—and there has been a price—but he then said that he did not believe that Iraq would have been better off without that invasion. I endorse that view, and it is welcome coming from an Opposition Front Bencher. Over the past couple of years, it has not always been clear that the force of conviction with which the Opposition agreed that we should tackle Saddam Hussein in 2003 is as strong now. I therefore welcome that statement.

The hon. Gentleman asked me about the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform’s representation in Baghdad. I could respond with a cheap shot and say that representation would be much less if there were a 1 per cent. cut in every Department’s budget. However, I will respond to the point seriously. In 2006, when the security environment was at its most difficult, representation was withdrawn because, given the security concerns, there was not the interest from British business. Nevertheless, the huge improvement in security has rekindled that interest. UK Trade and Investment has reviewed the position and three new UKTI positions will be filled in Iraq in the next few weeks to help British businesses identify trade and investment opportunities. We will continue to review the required resourcing.

I am pleased to hear that. I, too, could reply with a cheap shot and say that you cannot have less than zero. However, it is important to know from which budgets the posts will be funded.

My understanding is that the funding comes from the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, but if that is not the case, I will write to the hon. Gentleman.

The hon. Gentleman asked me specifically what the Government and the country are doing to support economic development in Basra. We have done and are doing a huge amount. The Basra Investment Commission attracts investment and offers advice about commercial opportunities. The Basra Development Commission, which Michael Wareing co-chairs, genuinely brings international and regional private sector expertise to the area. A youth unemployment taskforce aims to provide training placements for unemployed youths to work with local businesses. With our support, the National Investment Commission facilitates visits to Iraq for the most interested investors, and 19 have taken place so far. That demonstrates our continuing commitment.

Why are British companies faring so much worse than French, Italian and German companies in Basra?

I do not believe that evidence exists to support that claim. After the debate, we will undertake an analysis and I will write to the hon. Gentleman. Such claims are made in the Chamber but the evidence does not bear them out.

The hon. Member for Woodspring also asked about the legal position of our troops. It is clear, following the agreement that was reached before Christmas and the exchange of memorandums of understanding, that our troops have the necessary reassurance about their legal position. He asked about the difference between the legal arrangements for our troops and those for the forces of the United States. The honest, genuine answer is that they perform different missions. Our troops focus on naval training, and training and mentoring the 14th division in Basra rather than combat operations.

My hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells), who is a genuine friend, made an excellent speech, which brought his experience, understanding and knowledge to bear. I gave him a note, which said that I had passed on his request for diplomatic immunity in Paris, which he may need following his speech. Nevertheless, he spoke powerfully and rightly highlighted the suffering of Christians in parts of Iraq. The Government of Iraq have made the right response, with increased security and a commitment to investigate. As a result of those measures, Christians are returning.

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend’s refutation of one of the weakest arguments against the war with Iraq—that it was all about oil. As he said, if it was about oil, we could have gone about things more easily and effectively through cutting a deal with the Iraqis, as several other nations did.

It is all very well to say that, but it is disingenuous of the Minister to suggest that all is rosy and wonderful, and that we dealt with Saddam, which was a greater good—of course, it probably was—when we would happily have kept him in power if he had dealt with weapons of mass destruction.

We made it clear that the reason for going to war—rightly, in my view—was Saddam Hussein’s failure to comply with resolution 1441 and to provide reassurances about weapons of mass destruction. He did not give the reassurances, and that is why we went to war. Nevertheless, I believe that our entering into that conflict means that Iraq is a better place for his passing.

The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey), who leads for the Liberal Democrats, said that he and his party were so concerned about the invasion of Iraq that they voted against it. That is correct. I believed that the Liberal Democrats were wrong at the time and I still hold that view today. He was then intervened on by the hon. Member for Woodspring, who leads for the Opposition, who asked an interesting question, which the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton ducked. The hon. Gentleman who leads for the Opposition asked him whether he felt that Iraq and Iraqis were better off now that Saddam Hussein was gone. His response was to quote an opinion poll giving the feelings of Iraqis about coalition forces. He knows—and the House knows—that that is a very different issue. The reality is that the vast majority of Iraqis feel that they are better off.

Hansard will show that that was not the full answer that I gave to the hon. Member for Woodspring. I gave a much fuller answer than the one that the Minister quoted. Let him answer this question. He admitted to the hon. Member for Gravesham that the reason for going to war was weapons of mass destruction. Will he confirm to the House that no weapons of mass weapons were found and that the reason for going to war put to the House was never proven? The Government were wrong and the Conservative party was wrong, too.

There is a huge amount of selective amnesia in some parts of the House.

Answer the question.

I will answer it, but let me quote for the hon. Gentleman from a contribution by one right hon. and learned Gentleman in the run-up to war. He said:

“We can also agree that”

Saddam Hussein

“most certainly has chemical and biological weapons and is working towards a nuclear capability. The dossier contains confirmation of information that we either knew or most certainly should have been willing to assume.”—[Official Report, 24 September 2002; Vol. 390, c. 43.]

Those were the words of the previous leader of the Liberal Democrats, who has a strong track record on such issues. The reality is that Saddam was presented with a justifiable challenge, in resolution 1441, to comply with the international community and the weapons inspectors and demonstrate that he did not have that capacity. He chose not to do that, which was why we went to war.

It is a reality, which I acknowledge, that those weapons of mass destruction were not found. In that sense our intelligence was not accurate, but we were not the only country in the world where that was the case. Even the intelligence agencies of those countries in the international community that took a different decision from the one that we took were telling them the same thing about what they believed to be the case about weapons of mass destruction.

To assist the Minister, does he recall that the Iraq survey group report, which was produced after the invasion, showed that there were strong indications that Saddam Hussein had every intention of resuming his weapons of mass destruction programmes. He had shells with traces of chemical weapons in them and aircraft that were capable of spraying chemical weapons. Those weapons systems existed and were in direct breach of all the Security Council resolutions that had been passed against him.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. One factor that is never taken into account in the balance sheet is this: what would the situation be had we not intervened and were Saddam Hussein still in power today? I believe that Iraq, the region and the whole world would be in a much worse condition.

Let us return to the reason given to the House for war, which was weapons of mass destruction. We argued at the time that we should listen to Hans Blix and Dr. el-Baradei—the weapons inspectors themselves, who were not arguing for war. They were arguing for more inspections and for looking at the situation properly, because they had not found the evidence that the Government and others tried to present in their dossiers.

If the hon. Gentleman goes back and reads the words of Dr. Hans Blix very carefully, he will see that Dr. Blix made it clear that there were unanswered questions as a result of his investigations which Saddam Hussein was unwilling to answer. I was a junior Minister at the Foreign Office in the run-up to the Iraq war and I was looking at the raw intelligence, not at a dossier. My biggest fear was that chemical weapons would be used against our troops going into combat. I would not have had that genuine fear had I not believed the intelligence in front of me. There is a myth, which has been going round for years, that we misled people and deliberately manipulated the evidence. That is simply not the case.

The Minister repeats again and again that life is obviously much better now that Saddam has gone. I do not think that anyone in the House disputes that—at least, not on the Conservative Benches. By repeating that, however, he is avoiding telling us why it has taken so long to get to where we are today. Why, when we went into Iraq in the first place with the 7th Armoured Brigade at a time of relative peace, did things deteriorate to a point at which the 4th Battalion The Rifles had to leave with their tails between their legs? The Minister has not answered those questions, and those are the answers that we want to hear.

When the hon. Gentleman described our contribution as a humiliation, I do not think that he was describing the reality, and he did himself no credit. He asked why we did not get to the position we are in today sooner. It is because this has been an extraordinarily difficult situation—

There was no plan.

I acknowledge, as does our former Prime Minister, that there should have been better post-conflict planning and preparation. One of the issues that is constantly flagged up in relation to that planning and preparation is that of de-Ba’athification. In hindsight, we got it wrong on de-Ba’athification, but we did not get it wrong on our own. All the decisions that we took as a coalition were taken in consultation with the Iraqis and the Iraqi Government. Because of their experience under Saddam Hussein, they were the strongest proponents of de-Ba’athification.

I do not doubt that, but I have to stress the point, which came out in the debate, that while the MOD prepared for an invasion in March 2003, the Department for International Development received an instruction to do absolutely nothing. There was no plan. Yes, we can blame things to do with de-Ba’athification on the coalition, but we went in there without any capability for post-conflict reconstruction. That is why we are debating this today, rather than three years ago.

I heard the claim that the hon. Gentleman made earlier about what the former Secretary of State for International Development allegedly wrote in that memo. I have to say that she is a Member of the House with whom I do not often see eye to eye, and she is no longer a member of my political party, but I am struggling to believe the veracity of that claim. It is a claim that I have never heard anywhere in the House or in our media in all the course of the past six years, and I ask the hon. Gentleman to reflect on that fact.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd), who has a huge track record of being absolutely right on Iraq over a long period of time, made an excellent contribution. She rightly highlighted the role of our troops, but she also mentioned the bit that is often forgotten: the role of officials who have gone back to Iraq time and again in very difficult circumstances and given enormous service. She also rightly welcomed the constitutional arrangements that have been set up in Iraq to enable 25 per cent. female representation in the Iraqi Parliament. Like her, I am aware of reports that the published version of the provincial elections law is different from the one that was agreed by the Iraqi Parliament, and that it might reduce the female quota. This is a matter for the Iraqis, but I very much welcome the fact that the Iraqi Parliament, led by its women’s committee, is trying to resolve that issue to ensure that the agreed quota of at least 25 per cent. remains in place.

The contribution by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South (Ms Taylor) demonstrated her experience, knowledge and understanding of military matters. She brought home something that I think we have all experienced over the past few years—namely, the conflicting emotions as Iraq has gone through this change of fortunes. Like her, I very much welcome the fact that we are at the top end of those fortunes at the moment.

Perhaps there will be great benefits for the Iraqi people, but, rather than giving vague assurances about the effects on global security, will the Minister tell us how Britain has been made safer by the debacle of the past five or six years, and what benefits have accrued to the British people from it?

Let us look at the situation in Iraq today. The fact that we have a much more stable Iraq that is not actively seeking to develop and export weapons of mass destruction puts us in a much more secure place. That is a very positive development.

I will conclude by directly picking up on a point made by the hon. Gentleman during his speech. He said that the decision to support the United States had been made by Tony Blair alone at Crawford. Whether people agreed with the war or not, we had the most huge debate in this country on it. It was one of the most contentious debates in the House and, rightly or wrongly, people voted for us to go to war. I believe that it was the right decision. Iraq is a much better place. It is now a force for good in the international community, and we should build on that fact as we build our relationship with Iraq in the future.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of Iraq: future strategic relationship.