Comment: Voters must see the Iraq inquiry report before the election
by Richard Heller
Throughout the Iraq inquiry, Sir John Chilcot and his colleagues have been especially sensitive to the feelings of victims of the Iraq war, the surviving veterans who bear its scars and the families of those killed or permanently damaged.
They will be well aware of the anger and anguish caused by the delay in publishing their report. The delay has also ensured that our country is engaged in another conflict in Iraq without seeing or debating their assessment of the previous one.
Recently, the House of Commons turned its attention to the delay in an unusually well-attended short debate in Westminister Hall.
It was initiated by the Conservative MP for Broadland, Keith Simpson, who is also a distinguished military historian. Mr Simpson secured his debate with some ingenuity by making its subject the costs of the inquiry, but although he stretched these terms to their uttermost, he was unable to obtain much further light on the reasons for the delay or any fresh hope that it might soon be ended.
However, in his reply the recently-appointed Cabinet Office minister, Rob Wilson MP, did confirm that the inquiry has yet to secure full agreement on declassification of the confidential materials it wishes to quote. At its outset, it agreed a Protocol with the Cabinet Office, which committed it to secure the approval of originating departments for any proposed citation. According to Mr Wilson, it asked for declassification of over 7000 documents. Only a fifth of these will be released in full. All others will be subject to some form of censorship, especially those involving exchanges between George Bush and Tony Blair, which are to be reduced to "gists and quotes".
This process has been going on for over five years, but has yet to be completed. No one has indicated when this might happen, not Mr Wilson, nor the inquiry itself on its website, nor the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood in recent evidence to the House of Commons public administration select committee.
The public are left to imagine a stately game of bureaucratic ping-pong as drafts of "gists and quotes" are batted back and forth.
The first simple step to speed publication of the Iraq inquiry report is to call time on this ping-pong match. Chilcot and his colleagues should abandon any further pursuit of agreement on "gists and quotes", or any other form of reduced citations for any outstanding documents. Where it has reached agreement the inquiry should make use of the resulting formula in its report. Otherwise, it should make a bare citation of a relevant piece of material (as it might be, "the record of the telephone conversation between the president and the prime minister at 1900 BST on 31 April 2003") and tell readers that it has not been able to agree any means of quoting from it.
Such a power is expressly given to the inquiry by the protocol. Its use might disappoint a number of readers, particularly scholars and experts. But the overwhelming majority of the public, especially victims of Iraq, simply want to know what conclusions the inquiry has reached. They will be satisfied by the knowledge of the evidence it considered, even if some of this evidence is withheld from them.
One other step must be completed first. This is the so-called Maxwellisation process (a curious immortality for the old villain), in which intended criticisms in a major report are shown in advance to individuals concerned.
A recent report suggested that the process has already started.
If not, it should start forthwith. Contrary to Wilson's statement in the Commons debate, it does not require completion of the declassification process because "Maxwellees" are to be given full access to any documents cited against them by the inquiry.
The Maxwellisation process should be completed in short order. Tony Blair and others have had years to prepare the defence of their decisions over Iraq. The inquiry need not deliberate long over any of their rebuttals. It should commit itself only to correct any errors of fact established in the Maxwellisation process. It should not amend its conclusions, unless it became unreasonable to maintain them in the light of any factual corrections. Fairness and the public interest would be satisfied if Maxwellees were able to publish their objections to the inquiry's conclusions in an annex to the report (subject to identical restrictions on the citation of documents).
Taken together, these proposals should allow the public to see the inquiry's conclusions in a matter of months.
Then comes a fresh difficulty, mentioned by Mr Simpson in his debate. The final report could be caught by the conventions of so-called 'pre-election purdah', in which no partisan or controversial announcement is made in the run-up to a general election. This view was expressed in July on behalf of the government by the Liberal Democrat minister Lord Wallace (who ironically had been part of the mass protest against the war in March 2003) and repeated last month.
For all manner of reasons, it would be a disgrace to withhold the completed inquiry report from the British people just because of the general election campaign. For one thing, several former ministers in the Blair government are standing for re-election. Their voters are entitled to know what Chilcot and his team thought of them. This is especially important for Harriet Harman, who was solicitor general in the run-up to the Iraq war and should have been closely involved in the crucial discussions over its legality. If re-elected she might become deputy prime minister or hold other high office in an Ed Miliband government. All voters, not only in her constituency, should know what the inquiry thought of her performance (or non-performance) as solicitor general.
Withholding the report in a general election campaign would reflect a profound contempt by Britain's ruling establishment for the democratic process and for the good sense of British voters. It would be a gift to all the anti-establishment parties in the campaign – Ukip, the nationalist parties, the Greens. It might well backfire on those criticised in the report, and on the establishment generally, by allowing the public to imagine that the report is much fiercer than is actually the case.
The report must be presented to parliament and the last possible date for this would be March 30th next year, when parliament will be dissolved.
If David Cameron receives the completed report, he should lay it before parliament and have it published at any time up to the last legal minute. That may well allow him no time to prepare a government response to it or arrange any parliamentary debate. Too bad. The British people have waited too long for this report. Our politicians should trust them to read it.
Richard Heller is an author and journalist. His latest book is a critical study of the forgotten literary genius Luke Upward
The opinions in Politics.co.uk's Comment and Analysis section are those of the author and are no reflection of the views of the website or its owners.
