Iraq: Weapons

To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster pursuant to the 2008 ruling by the Information Tribunal on publication of the John Williams draft of the 2002 Iraq dossier, (1) whether on 9 September 2002 Mr. Williams was (a) present at a meeting and (b) a member of a group tasked with drafting a preliminary document described by that meeting as a 'draft assessment' to be used in the production of a draft dossier; and which other meetings he attended for the purpose of producing a draft dossier; (259731)

(2) whether (a) Mr. Williams and (b) any other communications official subsequently drafted any part of the dossier (i) on and (ii) after 9 September 2002;

(3) whether his Department holds a record of the identities of those officials who drafted any element of the 2002 Iraq dossier on 9 and 10 September 2002 prior to the despatch of a draft by John Scarlett to Alastair Campbell on the evening of 10 September 2002;

(4) who the authors were of the documents submitted by his Department to Lord Hutton's Inquiry and catalogued CAB/23/0005 to CAB/23/0014; which officials added handwritten notes to the documents; and (a) for what purpose and (b) on what date those documents were produced;

(5) whether the inclusion in the 2002 Iraq dossier of reference to intelligence suggesting that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes resulted from the discussion of the Joint Intelligence Committee's assessment of 9 September 2002 at a meeting of the dossier drafting group on the afternoon of 9 September 2002.

[holding answer 27 February 2009]: Matters relating to the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) dossier were examined in great detail by the inquiry led by Lord Hutton, Lord Butler's ‘Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction’ and the Intelligence and Security Committee's report ‘Iraqi WMD—Intelligence and Assessments’.

Volume 489: debated on Wednesday 11 March 2009