Richard Ottaway MP: Press releasses

PRESS RELEASE

4 February 2004

Richard Ottaway's speech on the Hutton Report
(the full debate can be found on parliament's website Hansard for 4th February )

House of Commons Hansard column 852

Richard Ottaway (Croydon, South) (Con): There is a conspiracy in British public life. Politics needs the media as much as the media needs politics. They feed each other in an alliance that shapes the governance of this country, and has done so for decades. Occasionally, the innocent, such as Dr. Kelly, get caught in the crossfire. Nothing prepared us for the drama that stole the summer of 2003. Stories that Britain had gone to war on a false prospectus had been circulating for months. None had produced any response from the Government, until the Gilligan piece of 29 May.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) that the main thrust of Gilligan's story has to a large extent been found to be true. It was a scoop in true journalistic style, marred by a single sentence that could not be corroborated. But the suggestion that lit the fuse was the assertion that Campbell had sexed up the September dossier. It produced a nuclear reaction. As the Prime Minister's press officer bulldozed his way through the Committee Corridors and television studios, Dr. David Kelly watched and owned up. Three weeks later, he was dead. Seven months later, the chairman and director general of the BBC have resigned. Messrs. Campbell, Powell, Hoon and Blair are found to be humble servants of the people, just doing their every day job. The scale of the Government's triumph was compounded by the smugness of Mr. Campbell giving a press conference of vindication. His aim to have a "win, not a messy draw" was fulfilled.

I have read the same evidence as Lord Hutton, and how he reached the conclusions he did, only he knows. To remove phrases from the September dossier that suggested that Saddam would only use WMD if attacked looks like sexing it up to me, whichever of Lord Hutton's definitions is used. The unanswered questions remain, but they are all outside the new inquiry's brief. The premise on which this Parliament voted for war was flawed, exaggerated and deceptive.

We went to war because the Government argued that Saddam posed a "current and serious" threat to the middle east and the stability of the world. The Government said that uranium had been sought from Africa, implying development of nuclear weapons. Not even the CIA thinks that that is true. The Prime Minister said that weapons of mass destruction would be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them. We now find that that referred to "battlefield mortar shells or small calibre weaponry".

Those are not weapons that threatened the region or the stability of the world. The four 45 minute assertions were downright inaccurate and rash statements that mislead everyone who read the September 2002 dossier. In his diaries, the right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), who was a member of the Cabinet at the time, said that not even the Prime Minister believed the assertion by the time of the debate and vote on 18 March. After my intervention in the Prime Minister's speech today, we know that he did not even know what weapons that claim referred to. Interestingly, the right hon. Member for Livingston suggested that the Prime Minister should check his records.

Mr. Joyce: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that battlefield weapons with chemical, nuclear or biological capability would represent some scope for instability in the region?

Richard Ottaway: I do not accept that. I do not accept that mortar shells or small calibre weaponry would pose a threat to the region, the middle east or the stability of the world.

So why did the Government push their false prospectus? The reason is manifest. Had they come to this House and said that the United States had every intention of invading Iraq and finishing off the business of the 1991 Gulf war, the real question to consider would have been whether we were with or against them. The issue would have been clear, with the lessons of Suez learned and Britain's interests being seen to lie with the United States. The Government would not, or could not, deploy that argument for the simple reason that they knew that they could not carry their own Back Benchers with them. That is why they had to exaggerate and spin to get their arguments through the House. They would have got away with that, had it not been for a conversation between Dr. Kelly and Mr. Gilligan of the BBC.

The damage has been immense. Never before has this country gone to war on the strength of intelligence reports alone, and I suspect that it never will again. It was critical that the intelligence services got it right. The subconscious pressures on them were immense, but the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee accepted responsibility for the September dossier, and he must explain what went wrong and justify it to the Butler committee. What on earth was Mr. Scarlett doing drafting the famous press release at No. 10 on the day that Dr. Kelly was named? The intelligence services were subverted for political purposes.

Then there is the dodgy dossier, the cut-and-paste job. It was presented to Parliament as further intelligence underpinned by the integrity of our intelligence services. What breathtaking hypocrisy. It turned out to be nothing more than Government propaganda. Why is it that the Prime Minister gets away with that story with a casual "sorry" from his press office, when the carnage caused to the BBC by one sentence from a reporter—which, ironically, may yet prove to have more than a grain of truth—brings Britain's most popular public institution to its knees? But what else would one expect from a Government who act as if they were in an episode of "The West Wing", making instant decisions in corridors without any minutes being taken?

Whatever side of the political spectrum we are on, we know that the public must have trust in the Government as an institution. The alternative is cynicism and anarchy. This affair boils down to integrity and honesty. In the dark days of the second world war, when Britain faced a genuine "current and serious threat", the country turned to Churchill. He knew that if the people of Britain were to trust him, he had to be nothing but honest with them. He stood at that Dispatch Box and said:

"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."—[Official Report, 13 May 1940; Vol. 360, c. 1502.]

All we have had from this Government during the past six months has been nervous perspiration, crocodile tears and someone else's blood. Yet when the Leader of the Opposition rose to speak here in the mother of Parliaments—famed for its defence of freedom and free speech—they booed, hissed and shouted him down. I do not think they realised what an ugly sight that was, with their laughing, braying faces flushed with seven years of an overwhelming majority. They might think that this affair does not matter, but it is the people of Britain who will pass judgment, not Lord Hutton.