Severe child poverty increases to 20% - and that's in London!
Report
Measuring Severe Child Poverty in the UK. January, 2010 Policy Briefing
Summary
Save the Children is outraged that children and families in the UK are living in severe poverty. Our latest report, commissioned from the New Policy Institute, reveals that 1.7 million children across the UK live in severe poverty - around 13% of all UK children'
The report highlights that the number of children living in severe poverty has risen over the period 2004/05-2007/08, from 11% to 13% of all children (we estimate that in 2009 the figure remained at 1.7m). This increase has occurred against a backdrop of rising levels of overall child poverty.
The briefing outlines the key findings of the report, and sets out why the UK government needs to re-focus its efforts on the poorest children in the UK.
Living in severe poverty means living on less than £12,220 a year (for a couple with one child). This amount leaves families around £113 a week short of what they need to cover food, electricity and gas, phones, other bills, clothes, washing, transport and healthcare, not to mention furnishings, activities for children and other essential items.
Children and their parents are missing out on everyday essentials such as food and clothing. They cannot afford things that most families take for granted, such as celebrating a birthday or having a short family holiday.
The report also highlights the main risk factors for severe child poverty. In particular, there remains a relatively high likelihood of severe poverty among children in workless households. Children in workless households are more likely to be living in severe poverty than in non-severe poverty.
This analysis reinforces a clear message – severe child poverty is a major concern and further action is needed to tackle it.
We’re outraged that 4 million children are living in poverty and a staggering 1.7 million children are living in severe and persistent poverty in the UK — one of the richest countries in the world.
Severe child poverty increases to 1.7 million in the UK
The number of children living in severe poverty in the UK has shot up to 1.7 million — 260,000 higher than in 2004, according to our latest briefing Measuring Severe Child Poverty in the UK, commissioned from the New Policy Institute. Shockingly London, one of the world’s richest cities, is home to a fifth of all children living in severe poverty in the UK.
Growing up in severe poverty can have a major impact on children’s health, well-being and success at school. It's an outrage that 1.7 million children’s futures are being put at risk. Take action now.
We need the government to focus its efforts on helping families living in severe poverty.
Save the Children wants the government to:
cover 100% of childcare costs for parents on working tax credit
improve support for parents wanting to take part-time work
provide more training opportunities, especially for lone parents.
Wherever you are in the world, poverty kills childhood and breaks parents’ hearts.
Make sure the next Prime Minister knows you want to end child poverty at home and abroad.
The current recession is threatening to push children further into poverty, as many low-income families are forced to take on debt at high rates of interest.
According to our research, as many as 65% of families earning less than £30,000 a year will struggle to get by this winter. We found that 55% of families earning £12,000 or less a year will have to turn to high interest lenders to get through the winter.
Efforts to eradicate child poverty in the UK have rightly focused on improving low-income families’ lives through tax credits and benefits. Save the Children believes it is unacceptable that families in poverty are forced to turn to high-interest lenders to get them through hard times, diverting money that should be benefiting children into the pockets of catalogue companies, door-step lenders and loan sharks.
We want the government, banks and high-interest lenders to do more for families that are denied access to mainstream credit. Save the Children is asking the government to:
Reform the Social Fund, so that it has enough cash to help families who need grants and affordable loans in times of crisis.
Demand the banks do more for low-income families such as boost the credit union network, so that it has the money to lend to struggling families at reasonable rates of interest
Back a voluntary code of practice for high-interest lenders, to make sure they advertise their products clearly so that customers are fully aware of the financial commitments they are making.
Lobbying for a level playing field
Too many children live in poverty in the UK; with over 1 million children living in severe and persistent poverty. That’s a family of four trying to feed themselves on £20 a week. We believe that children in poverty deserve an opportunity to reach their full potential. We are lobbying the government and key decision makers to ensure that children in the UK have a level playing field.
Save the Children welcomes many of the provisions in the Child Poverty Bill, particularly the fact that the Bill is UK-wide and that children have to be consulted in the preparation of strategies across the UK. However, Save the Children believes that the Bill should be strengthened in a number of ways and we will be lobbying the government during the Bill’s passage. Don’t let children pay the price of debt
Inspiring Change
“I think young people should have the right to get their voices heard and can really make a change.”
Inspiring change is a new project for Save the Children. We are working with children and young people from the most marginalised areas across the UK, to support them campaign and achieve change that benefits their lives and their communities. Children and young people in poverty have a unique perspective on the problems they face. We want to ensure that by working together we bring about lasting change for the 4 million children that currently live in poverty in the UK.
“I think young people are left out and get a bad name.”
Children and young people will be reporting back about the campaigns their working on via blogs and podcasts. Here is the latest example of what children and young people think about child poverty in the UK as they ask the question — are you doing all you can?
Check out what children and young people think about child poverty in the UK.
We're stepping up the campaign to end child poverty in the UK. Following on from the brilliant rally last October, we want to demonstrate to the government that more and more people are adding their support to the call to end child poverty. Join our Facebook cause today, send it to all your friends and check out some more photos.
A growing lack of adult authority has bred a 'spoilt generation' of children who believe grown-ups must earn their respect, a leading psychologist has warned. The rise of the 'little emperor' spans the class divide and is fuelling ills from childhood obesity to teenage pregnancy, Aric Sigman's research shows.
Attempts to 'empower' children and a lack of discipline in the classroom have also fostered rising levels of violence, at home, at school and in the street.
'Little emperors': A lack of discipline has created a generation of spoilt youngsters (Posed by models)
Dr Sigman, a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, said nursery-age children are becoming increasingly violent and disrespectful towards their teachers, 'parent battering' is on the rise and the number of policemen attacked by children is soaring. Dr Sigman said: 'Authority is a basic health requirement in children's lives. 'Children of the spoilt generation are used to having their demands met by their parents and others in authority, and that in turn makes them unprepared for the realities of adult life.
'This has consequences in every area of society, from the classroom to the workplace, the streets to the criminal courts and rehabilitation clinics. Being spoilt is now classless - from aristocracy to underclass, children are now spoilt in ways that go far beyond materialism.
'This is partly the result of an inability to distinguish between being authoritative versus authoritarian, leaving concepts such as authority and boundaries blurred. And the consequences are measurable - Britain now has the highest rates of child depression, child-on-child murder, underage pregnancy, obesity, violent and antisocial behaviour and pre-teen alcoholism since records began.'
For his report, The Spoilt Generation, he drew on 150 studies and reports, including official figures on crime and data on parenting strategies. Taken together, they showed many of the problems blighting 'broken Britain' are linked to lack of discipline. This is being exacerbated by misguided attempts to give children more control over their lives.
Some children thought to have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder might simply have never learned how to behave, he suggests. Calling for 'commonsense policies' to put children in their place, Dr Sigman said: 'There should be an absolute presumption both in law and in policy that adults "know better'' and are in the right unless there are exceptional reasons. Teachers' authority has been vastly weakened legally, professionally and culturally.
There should be a presumption that teachers "know better" and are in the right, unless it is shown otherwise.' He also believes fathers should have more access to children following separation or divorce. 'Separated fathers must be legally recognised as being of paramount importance,' he said. His views were echoed by experts in health and childcare.
Professor Cary Cooper, head of psychology and health at Lancaster University, said long workinghours had taken a terrible toll on families. 'As a result parents cannot invest the time in their kids that they should.
Tim Loughton, Tory children's spokesman, said: 'We believe that parents should be taking a greater responsibility for their children and that teachers and other figures in authority should be able to exercise their powers when the parameters are broken.'
Young thugs need 'help not prison', says Michael Caine at premiere of his new film about 'broken Britain' By Richard Simpson 2009.09.14.
Michael Caine has called on the Government to provide greater help for the disaffected youth of Britain.
Sir Michael, who is starring in a film about a widower who takes revenge on youths who kill his friend, said that young men who turn to crime needed 'help and not prison'. He added: 'They need to be sent to school, not a prison where they will learn to be criminals.'
The actor described his new film, Harry Brown, as a warning about the way British society is heading. He said it depicts the reality of 'broken Britain' while Sir Michael called for greater help for disaffected young men.
Asked on the festival red carpet if Harry Brown was a cautionary tale, Sir Michael said: 'It is a warning, it is a warning. It is not about a vigilante really - a vigilante is someone who does something. 'Our character is a victim, a victim of our society that is forced to do something. He is trying to protect himself because nobody else will. And that is the message of this film and the reason I did it.'
Sir Michael recounted that as part of the process of making the film he returned to the sink estates of the Elephant and Castle, in South London, close to where he grew up. There he met some 'young men that would terrify you'. He said his exchanges with them changed him mind on the way that disaffected youths should be treated.
Sir Michael was born in Rotherhithe, East London. His mother was a charlady (cleaner) and his father a fish market porter.
The director also called for action to halt the country's slide towards violence. Mr Barber said: 'We have a serious situation - that is why we wanted to make the film. We need to have a conversation about what is going on. The country is getting more violent - we need to do something about it.'
Britons arrested, robbed or killed abroad. 2009.08.26.
A breakdown of the 20 countries where British citizens are most likely to need consular help
Samantha Orobator narrowly escaped the death penalty in Laos this month after being convicted of smuggling heroin. Photograph: Sakchai Lalit/AP
One in seven Britons arrested abroad are held over drug allegations, according to Foreign Office statistics released today. Spain was the country with the highest total of Britons arrested, while as a proportion of the number of visitors, British people were most likely to be arrested in the United Arab Emirates.
The table below (also given as a spreadsheet down the page) gives the Foreign Office figures for the 20 countries where British citizens need the most consular assistance, contained in the British Behaviour Abroad report.
British pensioners among the poorest in Europe By Steve Doughty 2009.07.26. (Edited)
The elderly in this country are among the poorest in Europe, according to a breakdown by charities. Only in Estonia, Latvia and Cyprus are the aged more likely to be among the poorest in society. The comparisons, based on EU figures, follow a decade in which pensioners have been slipping down the league table of wealth in Britain.
State benefits for poor pensioners have slipped
Ministers have also acknowledged that elderly people with their own incomes and homes suffer because of the impact of soaring council tax bills.
The figures from Eurostat, the EU’s statistical arm, were compiled by the charities Age Concern and Help the Aged. They reveal the proportion of pensioners in each EU country who live on incomes below 60 per cent of average.
In Britain nearly one in three over-65s, or 30 per cent, are on incomes below the poverty threshold. That is lower only than the 51 per cent in Cyprus, 33 per cent in Latvia, and 33 per cent in Estonia. In comparison, only 19 percent fall below the threshold in Romania and in Poland that figure is just eight per cent.
The elderly also fare considerably better in Germany where the proportion below the poverty line is 17 per cent, in France 13 per cent and Holland 10 per cent. Least likely pensioners to be poor are in the Czech republic, where only one in 20, five per cent, falls below the 60 per cent poverty line.
The study comes ahead of a major Government review of pensioner poverty due to be published this week. The charities said other research has shown that older people are skipping meals to save money and two out of five cannot afford to buy essential items.
The countries where pensioners have the highest chance of poverty (with the proportion of over-65s on below 60 per cent of median income in brackets) are: Cyprus (51), Latvia (33), Estonia (33), Britain (30), Lithuania (30), Ireland (29), Spain (28), Portugal (26), Belgium (23), Greece (23), Romania (19), Bulgaria (18), Germany (17), France (13), Netherlands (10), Poland (8), Czech Republic (5).
Source: Eurostat.
Children of broken Britain among least happy in Europe
High numbers of youngsters in workless families and poor local environments coupled with low numbers in education or training left the UK trailing 24th out of 29 nations. Only Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Malta fared worse. It was well below the performance of countries such as Germany (8th) and France (15th) and a very long way behind the continent's best-off children, the Dutch and Scandin avians.
Among other factors which resulted in a low score for the UK were poor immunisation rates, children more likely to report poor or fair health and a relatively poor ability to communicate with parents.Children in the UK are among the least wealthy and least happy in Europe, research suggests.
An analysis of lifestyle factors that contribute to their well-being puts British youngsters 24th out of 29 nations - below Estonia, Slovenia and Hungary. Underage sex, smoking, drinking and drug abuse all play a part in lowering the quality of life for British children.
Drug abuse is one factor that lowers the well-being of British children
High numbers of NEETS - 16 to 18-year-olds not in employment, education or training - typified the problem, it was found. All the wealthy countries of Europe were placed ahead of Britain by the research that looked at health, family relationships, poverty and joblessness among parents.
Crime levels and pollution also contributed to the low standard of living for youngsters in the UK.
The research carried out at the University of York for the Child Poverty Action Group, echoed a report two years ago from UNICEF that put British children at the wrong end of a list of the 21 most advanced countries. That report cited family breakdown, drink, drugs, teenage sex and fear of violence as the issues confronting teenagers.
The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), which is heavily dependent on financial backing from Government departments, called for more state spending on benefits and tax credits. It dismissed the idea that the rise of single parenthood and the spread of family break-up have harmed children.
But among the factors in the low score for Britain it listed poor family relationships, which is measured on whether children talk to their fathers and mothers. Other key factors such as sex before the age of 15, drug abuse and large numbers of workless parents are also influenced by single parenthood and broken families.
Rates of teenage sex, cannabis use among early teens, and underage smoking and drinking in the UK have long been among the worst in Europe.
CPAG chief Kate Green said: 'The last time a child well-being league table was published, British people were shocked that the UK came last. 'This time we need a frank focus on why other countries are doing so much better for their children. Public resolve and political action to put children first are more important than another round of hand-wringing.'
Drinking alcohol, smoking and underage sex also play a part in lowering the quality of life for children in the UK
She blamed child poverty for many of the difficulties faced by children. Britain was marked down for child health, including infant mortality and low birth weight - both most marked among teenage and single mothers. The UK was also found to be poor at immunisation.
The research revealed that children in Britain believe themselves to be in worse health than others in Europe. Two years ago the UNICEF inquiry found that despite Britain being fourth wealthiest nation in the world, children were better off and better cared-for in less prosperous countries, such as Greece and Hungary.
It put Britain above only three countries for educational standards. And the UK was, according to UNICEF, the country where fewest children found others of the same age 'kind and helpful'.
Childcare failures put thousands at risk, Audit Commission reveals. by Jill Sherman, Whitehall Editor and Chris Smyth
Children’s services deteriorate across country
Children's services was the only area where more councils declined than improved
Tens of thousands of children are at risk of abuse and neglect, with a quarter of councils providing inadequate or minimal services for young people, the Audit Commission reveals today.
Even wealthy authorities are not immune to the widespread deterioration in children’s services. The rating of Surrey, one of the country’s most affluent councils, fell to the bottom of the local government watchdog’s league table after failing its children.
The performance league tables show that the standard of children’s services fell across England last year. Only 13 councils showed improvement; the ratings of 22 fell. Surrey was joined at the bottom of the table by Haringey, which was embroiled in the Baby P scandal last year; Doncaster, where seven children have died in three years through abuse or neglect; and Milton Keynes, which was criticised for its poor education and complacent management.
Forty of the 149 councils assessed by the children’s watchdog Ofsted provided either inadequate or the bare minimum of children’s services, which covers education, social care and child protection. The number achieving the full four stars fell from twelve in 2007 to nine in 2008. Children’s services was the only area where more councils declined than improved.
A common weakness was failing to implement legislation requiring all staff working with children to have criminal record checks. Several councils were also slow to put children on the at-risk register, to assign a social worker or to place a young person with an adopted or foster parent, said a spokesman for Ofsted.
In other areas, education results were poor, too few children went on to further education or there were high levels of teenage pregnancy.
Christine Gilbert, the Ofsted Chief Inspector, said that the worst-performing councils were improving services but that she could not guarantee children’s safety until they were reassessed.
Doncaster, where a government review has been ordered, said that the picture had changed significantly since Ofsted finished its review last March. “We’re in a very different place,” said Paul Gray, the director of children’s services, who was recruited last year. “There’s been a substantial increase in the number of social workers and we’ve cleared the backlog of cases.”
Claire Kober, the leader of Haringey, said: “We accept that things went badly wrong with child protection. We are committed to making things right.”
Surrey County Council has taken Ofsted to a judicial review over its rating. It pointed out that many of its other scores were high. “Children are better protected than 12 months ago,” said a spokesman.
Isobel McCall, the leader of Milton Keynes Council, attacked the Audit Commission’s “bizarre” methodology. “If you look at our other scores we have had our other services rated two or three stars,” she said. “Our rank overall is harsh and does not reflect where we are overall.” She was annoyed that the rating blurred the distinction between education and child protection, which was rated adequate.
The comprehensive performance assessment was introduced in 2002 to measure the effectiveness and value for money of local authorities. The areas assessed include housing, culture, the environment, benefits, adult social care, use of resources and corporate management. Use of resources and children’s services are weighted more heavily than the other categories.
Health
Patients died due to 'appalling care' at Staffordshire hospitals - Healthcare Commission. by Rebecca Smith Medical Editor. 2009.03.17.
Appalling standards of care have been exposed at Mid-Staffordshire Hospitals trust, where between 400 and 1,200 more patients died than would be expected in just three years, according to a damning report by the Healthcare Commission.
Sir Bruce Keogh described the failures of 'gross and terrible' breach of trust.
Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of the NHS, described the failures as a 'gross and terrible breach of trust' of patients. Poor standards of care was uncovered by the Healthcare Commission in one of the most critical reports of NHS treatment.
It is not clear how many patients died as a direct result of the failures but the Commission found that mortality rates in emergency care were between 27 per cent and 45 per cent higher than would be expected, equating to between 400 and 1,200 excess deaths.
Health Secretary Alan Johnson offered his apologies to patients and staff who suffered as a result and the trust chief executive Martin Yeates, and chairman, Toni Brisby, both resigned earlier this year.
Sir Ian Kennedy, chairman of the Healthcare Commission, said the report is a 'shocking story' and that there were failures at almost every stage of care of emergency patients. "There is no doubt that patients will have suffered and some of them will have died as a result," he said.
The investigation of the trust now called the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, found overstretched and poorly trained nurses who turned off equipment because they did not know how to work it, newly qualified doctors left to care for patients recovering from surgery at night, patients left for hours in soiled bedclothes, reception staff expected to judge how seriousness of patients arriving at A&E, patients left without food or drink, others who received the wrong medication or none at all, blood and faeces left on lavatories and floors, and doctors diverted away from seriously ill patients in order to treat minor ones who were in danger of breaching the four hour waiting time target.
When high mortality rates triggered questions, the trust board of directors 'fobbed off' investigators by saying the rates were a result of statistical errors but the Healthcare Commission found this was not that case.
The report said there was a 'reluctance to acknowledge or even consider that the care of patients was poor'. The trust was more concerned with hitting targets, gaining Foundation Trust status and marketing and had 'lost sight' of its responsibilities for patient care, the report said.
Sir Ian said: "The resulting report is a shocking story. Our report tells a story of appalling standards of care and chaotic systems for looking after patients.
Other News
Heroes killed by penny pinching: Relatives of Nimrod crash victims call for Gordon Brown (UK Prime Minister) to resign. By Tim Shipman Daily Mail: 29th October 2009
A grieving mother called last night for 'heaads to roll' at the highest levels of government after a devastating report lid bare the 'incompetence, complacency and cynicism' that caused Britains worst military disaster since te Falkland War (1982).
Ministers ad commanders were accused of breaching their 'sacred and unbreakable duty of care' to the Armed Forces after failing to prevent an 'avoidable' Nimrod soy plane explosion in Afghanistan in 2006, which killed 14 servicemen.
Insiders describe the report as the most damning indictment of any government failure in living memory.
The International Balloon Fista - Bristol. Aug 2009. Some amazing pics - ironically from China Daily!
6th June Soldiers from the British and allied forces commemorate an historical landmark. June 6th, 1944 marked the begining of the end of World War ii with the liberation of france from occupation by Nazi forces, with the landing of allied forces on the beaches of normandy in northern France. it is remembered by veterans, now in their 80's and 90's, throughout the region. It is officially the last commemoration of the acts of heroism and suffering they endured.
www.dday.co.uk - 'this site is dedicated to the brave men, heroes one and all, who took part in the D-Day landings - 6th June 1944' on the Normandy Beaches, northern France.
The Second World War: six years that changed this country for ever
On the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, Robert McCrumconsiders the legacy of the greatest conflict the world has ever witnessed
A family takes tea in 1954, the year rationing ended. Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images
When I was born in 1953, just after the coronation of Elizabeth II, I had a ration book. This flimsy, red cardboard log now looks like a passport to another country. Many things about that postwar Britain have become unrecognisable: cod liver oil, steam trains, rag-and-bone men, bobbies and telegram boys on bicycles and standing to attention for the national anthem at the end of cinema programmes.
Looking back, the black-and-white postwar images seem appropriate. Life in peacetime Britain was grey, threadbare, dreary and hopeless. There was a national sense of "Was this what we fought for?" As one American commentator put it, the British certainly believed they had won the war, but they behaved as though they had lost it.
Seventy years have gone by since the Second World War began and 64 since it ended. That dwindling minority of Britons, some 3 million, who lived through those six extraordinary years remember them as the most vivid moment in their lives and still refer to "the last war". So do the 11 million baby boomers and the 20 million over 60. Even some of their grandchildren will articulate this instinctive reflex. Britain has fought in some dozen wars and "emergencies" since 1945, but it's the Second World War that casts the longest shadow. As the D-Day anniversary celebrations indicate, this is one war that has not gone away.
Seventy years on, the experience and memory of wartime boil down to perhaps five myths that continue to condition our responses to everyday life.
First, Dunkirk. This has come to stand for the idea that in any national endeavour, especially sporting or military, Britons are almost certain to pluck defeat from the jaws of victory.
At the same time, for millions of British children, separation and loss became the defining experience of total war – evacuation, a trauma that lies at the heart of a classic like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The evacuation to the countryside links to a third, pastoral element of Britain's wartime inheritance, expressed in the phrase "Dig for Victory". This was the idea that by the sweat of honest brows, the British could somehow survive. Shovels and spades would also be deployed in the cities, to rescue the victims of the Luftwaffe's bombardment.
The Blitz, fourth, is an essential element of Britain's wartime legacy. After the 7/7 bombings in London, the "spirit of the Blitz" was referred to ad nauseam by press and public. In contrast to the near-hysteria of many Americans after 9/11, many Britons from generations born decades after the Blitz proudly advertised the stoical repression of their feelings in a fierce display of national character .
The fifth and final inheritance of war – perhaps the ultimate peace dividend – is the sustained sense of moral superiority derived from standing alone against fascism. Roosevelt's secretary of state, Cordell Hull, wrote in his memoirs: "Never have I admired a people more than I admired the British in the summer and autumn of 1940. Even the children seemed to realise that upon their indomitable spirit depended not only their own fate, but also that of the whole democratic world."
When the war actually ended, these five strands were not yet fully encrypted into the national myth. Britain was on its knees. Wartime, and its immediate aftermath of cold and hunger, was literally a moment of deepest winter. December 1947 was the coldest of the century, another source for the frosty wastes of Narnia. Slowly, a great thaw began. By the mid-50s, green shoots were poking through. Soon there would be an age of plenty, and any amount of Turkish Delight.
The landscape would not heal so fast. I remember seeing London "bomb sites" as a child and hearing the stories of the Blitz from my grandfather, who had been a civil servant with the Ministry of Supply. A range of peculiar British institutions with first and second wartime origins continued to shape the contours of daily life: British summer time, pub closing hours, and poppy day. It was perfectly normal to see veterans in wheelchairs at bus stops or with missing limbs in railway station waiting rooms.
As children, we had a nourishing, but dreary, diet of shepherd's pie, toad in the hole, bangers and mash, fried fish and the occasional roast chicken. Institutional menus inevitably featured Spam, corned beef, lettuce and "salad cream". Powdered eggs were commonplace and so was "bread and dripping". Kia-Ora orange squash was one kind of juvenile luxury that anyone over 50 will remember, but water usually came from the tap.
Anyone who can recall these and other mundane details of everyday life, or who can remember the moment Kennedy was assassinated, is not only a citizen of postwar Britain, but is also likely to have been shaped by the age of austerity and the aftermath of total war. Broadly speaking, it amounts to the contemporary British establishment. It's quite a roll call. Let's see: the Prince of Wales (Charles Philip Arthur George Windsor), born 1948; the prime minister (Gordon Brown), born 1951; the former poet laureate (Andrew Motion), born 1952; the head of the home civil service (Sir Gus O'Donnell), born 1952; the Archbishop of Canterbury (Rowan Williams), born 1950.
Who else? Many senior figures of the British literary establishment are postwar babies: Martin Amis (1949), Julian Barnes (1946), and Ian McEwan (1948). Many vice-chancellors; several business leaders; Adair Turner of the FSA (1955); various thespians and public figures – Patrick Stewart (1940), Ian McKellen (1939), Derek Jacobi (1938); Joanna Lumley (1946), Esther Rantzen (1940), Ann Widdecombe (1947).
These names represent the 20 million for whom "the last war" continues to be an essential psychic landmark, established in everyone's mind by German Stukas screaming out of Polish skies in September 1939.
1939 will not mean much to an American, a Japanese or a Russian. For Britons of that generation, however, it's a date that sets off a cacophony of signals.
Adam Phillips, the writer and child psychotherapist, was born in 1954. How does he assess the psychic cost of war? His father, who died in 1998, fought with tanks in North Africa and apparently "loved the war". Phillips warns against glamorising the conflict, but concludes that anyone over, say, 50 is probably "more haunted than they realise by their parents' experience of war".
This haunting takes many forms, says Phillips. In the immediate aftermath of conflict, there's the extraordinary transition from states of fear and exhilaration to the routines of civilian life. Having a family and raising children in peacetime inevitably took place in "a highly disturbed emotional atmosphere". We must remember, says Phillips, that "for those who survived, the war was incredibly exciting and really unrecoverable from. There's a radical incompatibility between wartime and peacetime existence. Coming home from the war meant adjusting to the fact that the rest of your life is going to be incredibly boring".
At the same time, the wartime generation had learnt to adjust to separation, isolation and loss, and – something they would pass on to their children – to "not feeling hurt when you were hurt". To be equipped for conflict, according to Phillips, requires "self-anaesthesia", which he sees as a dominant motif in postwar British life.
Summarising the traumatic dividends of the Second World War, Phillips concludes that the postwar generations were "either envious of people who had fought in the war; or strongly identified with the dead (and no longer found life worth living); or felt they were living a kind of 'death in life'; or would ask obsessively, 'Where's the excitement?'"
As a result, Phillips contends, post-war Britons are either obsessed by loss and grief, which expresses itself in nostalgia, or obsessively pleasure-seeking, or unbearably triumphalist. When you cast your mind back over Britain's recent national landmarks, events like the Jubilee, the World Cup, royal weddings and funerals, VE Day and Armistice Day parades, you find that the dominant mood is a bittersweet mixture of pride and regret, patriotism and embarrassment, a longing to escape the curse of war mixed with the thrill of its memory, tangled up with an anxiety about the legacy of imperialism.
The shadow of "the last war" looms over the wider English-speaking world. William Cran, an award-winning documentary film-maker, was born in Australia in 1946 and came to this country as a small boy on the SS Otranto. He makes the point that not only was he growing up among adults whose conversations about the recent war were intensely vivid and influential, but also that, from the beginning of the Depression and throughout the war, more than a decade, there had been very little progress. Britain was not just in thrall to the cost of its victory, but it seemed somehow frozen in time.
Everywhere, there was bomb damage, abandoned houses and the hangovers of wartime: old newsreel footage on the BBC, ration cards and the routine disciplines of the home front. "We were incredibly thrifty," says Cran. "To this day, I can never leave food uneaten on my plate. When my mother died, I found drawers stuffed full of old envelopes she'd saved for reuse."
Cran admits that the wartime mentality lingered in other strange ways. "I used to say, 'I'm not going to go on holiday to Germany.' Italy and France, yes, but Germany, no. My big thing was not buying a German car. When I finally bought an Audi a few years ago, I had to think about it very hard." He laughs in mild self-amazement. "So you could say my war ended in 2002."
Looking back, Cran remembers the early 50s as "a happy time, but rather dull. Then there was this flashbulb moment – rock'n'roll. I remember Bill Haley and the Comets… " This was 1956; he was 10. "In my school, we used to have playground fights about the relative merits of Bill Haley and Elvis Presley versus Tommy Steele. I remember the Archbishop of Canterbury preaching a sermon against rock'n'roll. So then you knew that good things were happening."
Sometimes, history, usually so deliberate and incremental, seems to speed up in a torrent of convulsive change. The 50s were like that. Once the war was over, the aftershocks just kept on coming: Korea, Suez, the Bay of Pigs, the war in Vietnam and the death of JFK, all within 20 years of VE Day. (That, in the context of our own times, is as recent as the fall of the Berlin Wall.)
The 50s also saw perhaps the first pay-off from the war, the changing shape of women's lives. Mary Beard, a Cambridge classics professor, was born in Shropshire in 1955. For her, the significance of the Second World War was that it began the liberation of British women, paving the way for the feminist movement of the 1970s.
The Beard family's war was probably not untypical. Mary's father had "a cushy number in Cairo", but her schoolteacher mother was evacuated from the Blitz in Liverpool, first to Cheshire and then to north Wales. "For me," Beard says, "the war was all about the home front. Now, when I think about it, the experience of the war was always part of the family conversation." She says her mother found the war a liberating and politicising experience.
Moving from Toxteth to a "frightfully posh" part of Cheshire, her mother came "face to face with the British class structure". All her stories of the war were of female empowerment.
"So if, as a child, I thought of the war," Beard goes on, "it was as something that was quite fun. In our family, there were no walking wounded and absolutely no losses, none. The war was a life-changing experience, certainly, but it was a positive and liberating event. My parents even had a phrase for it that I always found a bit strange. They used to say they'd had 'a good war'." She recognises now that she internalised her mother's experience.
"My mother's liberation made all the difference. She and her friends were young women in their twenties who were given unique opportunities, thanks to the war. Feminism and the feminist movement comes from these opportunities – it's Rosie the Riveter who inspired the opportunities that came to postwar women. Of course, in war women get killed, raped, etc, but it is a driver of social change. In some ways, I think that women benefited more than the working-class men from the Second World War."
Beard acknowledges the impact on her own life. "Yes, I was a low-level beneficiary," she admits. "You could say that women's careers have been assisted by the death of men."
Britain's schools have begun to change our understanding of the past, but they still reflect the experiences and values of a generation for whom "the last war" remains vivid, present, and real. Shirley Boffey is the head teacher of Coleridge primary school in Crouch End, north London. The war is real enough to her, definitely less so to the children under her care.
Shirley Boffey's father, now dead, fought at Arnhem and was always happy to reminisce about his experiences, mainly a self-deprecating account of arriving on the battlefield too late to be a hero. Her mother's war was all to do with the family's evacuation from the Channel Islands, where she had grown up.
Like Mary Beard, Boffey remembers that it was the First World War, in which her grandfather had been gassed, that made the biggest impression on her young life. "I suppose both wars fascinated me," she says, "because of my dad and my grandad."
In her own life, the legacy of war has been the ingrained habit of prudence and frugality. "War makes you cautious about the immediate future," she says. "For years, my mum kept a stock of tinned food in the cupboard. Tinned fruit, tinned soup, Spam." She laughs. "My mum still has a cupboard full of tins. I suppose it gives her a sense of security."
But when "the last war" comes up in school, it's taught in quite a theoretical way, as in: "Is war against another country a good thing?" and: "What are the justifications of war?" Or there will be an element of "living history" – cooking wartime food and making ration books. Yes, her primary school children do know who Hitler was. "We talk about the Holocaust," she says, "and we read The Diary of Anne Frank. I suppose the emphasis would be on the emotions of war, and the lesson, for the pupils, that wars come with a cost."
Schools no longer belt out "Onward, Christian Soldiers", but the Women's Institute still rallies to the singing of "Jerusalem". Britain's sense of moral superiority is not supported by churchgoing, but it persists none the less. This is the final legacy of "the last war", one that persists into the 21st century, and it seems to flow directly from the events of 1940-41, between Poland and Pearl Harbor, when the "world war" was still essentially a European conflict in which the British Isles "stood alone" against the Axis powers.
The shadow of "the last war" falls across Europe, too. I spoke to writer and documentary film-maker Nick Fraser (born 1948), who is half-French – his father, a major in D-Day invasion army, met his future wife during the Normandy campaign of 1944 – about the moral dividend Britain extracted from this period.
"Look," he says, "in Britain it always seemed simpler. We had 'a good war'. The French had 'a bad war'." Fraser is shocked to recall that he didn't really know about the Holocaust until he was about 17, but thinks this collective amnesia was deliberate.
Fraser contrasts the fall of France with Churchill's finest hour. "The defeat of the Third Republic was a horrible and humiliating experience. I never remember a single conversation about this; it was simply not spoken about. My family had a great admiration for the Brits. Anglophobia came from Paris. In Normandy, they were pleased to get rid of the Germans."
George Orwell once wrote that France in the 30s was a cross between a museum and a brothel. Fraser believes that, in the long run, France has benefited from its defeat. "Britain should get out of the habit of grandstanding on the world stage," he suggests. "We should learn to behave like the Scandinavians. The Iraq war is an example of how the memory of the Second World War makes us think in the wrong way."
Britain's apparently arrogant detachment from the European experiment comes from a mixture of geography, history and the last war. The experience of being an island that has successfully resisted invasion has become crucial to our self-image. Who can forget the Sun headline after the England football team lost an away match to Germany? "OK. You beat us at our national game, but we beat you at yours 2-0!"
British nationalism ebbs and flows in its intensity. In the early 1960s, after the years of renewal (1945-63), there was a youthful rejection of the parental message. Suddenly it was "make love, not war" and "the Summer of Love", with men and boys dressing, as Martin Amis puts it, "like clowns, not conscripts". For women, there was the lesson of their mothers' war. After the 1960s, women took charge of their lives in more and more assertive ways.
Inevitably, there would be a revolt against the backlash. The Thatcher revolution reasserted the wartime values of belligerence, stoicism, chauvinism and repression. At the same time, the closing decades of the last century saw the erosion of the social and industrial base that had sustained the war effort.
By the turn of the century, the Orwell Prize-winning historian Tony Judt writes in Reappraisals: "We have become stridently insistent – in our economic calculations, our political practices, our international strategies, even our educational priorities – that the past has nothing of interest to teach us. Ours, we insist, is a new world."
Almost, but not quite. Those for whom "the last war" has a resonance cannot escape it, even if they might want to. And in the minds of many Britons of the older generation, the fleet is still steaming up the Channel in battle grey, the RAF stands by ready to "scramble", the pound is a national symbol and the monarch is on her throne.
When adversity strikes, there is a well-rehearsed repertoire of responses on which we can fall back, with relief. As one of the Observer's interviewees (William Cran) observed, when we spoke about the impact of the credit crunch: "It feels as though I am getting back to normal. I'm saving money. I'm wearing out my shoes. If I have to, I'll dig up the garden and plant potatoes."
MPs' expenses: Richard Branson calls for cut in number of MPs. 2009.05.26. PHOTO: GETTY The number of MPs should be halved and their salaries doubled, claims Sir Richard Branson.
The Virgin founder and entrepreneur also said MPs should be paid by performance, with those that underperformed removed at any stage during a Parliament. Sir Richard, whose company announced a pre-tax profit of £68 million yesterday, told the Telegraph that America successfully manages with far fewer legislators than Britain.
He said more high calibre business people needed to be attracted into politics. “What I and many others feel strongly is that MPs around the world are generally underpaid. This means in many countries we are not getting the quality of MPs from a broad enough cross-section to carry out these crucially important jobs.
“In Britain, for historical reasons, we have 646 MPs in our House of Commons and 737 members of the Lords. This may have made sense in the days of horse drawn carriages, when it was difficult to cover large areas and talk to the masses. “But today communication and travel is much easier and I believe we could reduce the number and not impact the effectiveness of our democracy.’’
I will do all that's needed to fix mess. By PRIME MINISTER GORDON BROWN, 17/05/2009
From an Interview with 'The News of the World' (London)
APPALLED: Gordon Brown
I AM appalled and angered by this week's revelations.
Appalled because at all times people should expect the highest standards from people in public life. Angered because I was brought up to believe you did the right thing - and that trust, integrity and honesty are the most precious assets of all.
And for all those striving hard in these difficult times to do the best for their families, working long hours to give a better life for their children and to improve our public services and communities I apologise - on behalf of all parties - that the political system has let you and the public down.
I want to assure every citizen of my commitment to a complete clean-up of the system. Wherever and whenever immediate disciplinary action is required I will take it.
Scrutiny
The bottom line is that any MP who is found to have defied the rules will not be serving in my government.
The action must be swift and comprehensive. On the whole politicians do work hard for people but MPs who have abused the expenses system will have to make reparations for the past. I have called for independent scrutiny for every claim made over the last four years and an independent means of deciding how much should be paid back.
Westminster cannot operate like a gentleman's club where MPs or parties alone decide themselves whether your money should be paid back. It is absolutely right that each MP will need to justify to the public, not just the authorities or their party, the money they have spent on allowances. Transparency to the public is the foundation of properly policing this system.
I am under no illusions that repayment will not necessarily be sufficient sanction. Unacceptable behaviour will be investigated and disciplined. I do not rule out any sanction.
But for the future we need even more fundamental change. Already I have asked Parliament to ensure - and MPs have agreed - that outer London MPs cannot claim a second home allowance.
MPs should not themselves come up with the future system that should govern their allowances. Therefore we are agreed that the Committee of Standards in Public Life should come forward with much needed reforms.
It is clear that the revelations of the past week will have a lasting impact on our politics.
As well as righting wrongs and cleaning up the system, there is now a clear need to go much further, as we start the process of rebuilding trust in our political system.
We must all now come together to make that happen.
A new dawn for democracy? 2009.05.20. Michael Brown, an MP for 18 years, reflects on a historic day at Westminster
Every so often, parliamentary history is made that subsequently shapes the centuries ahead. The signing of Magna Carta still has implications for our democracy. The events surrounding Charles I and the Civil War live on today as the monarchy bows to the will of the House of Commons when, at the State Opening, the doors of the Commons are slammed shut as Black Rod approaches. The next speaker may have such a chance to lead a historic reform of our tarnished democracy.
The developments of the past two weeks, culminating in yesterday's announcement by the Speaker, will have repercussions down the centuries. Future A-level history students will be answering questions not only about the Long Parliament and the Rump Parliament, but also about the "Moat" Parliament (otherwise perhaps known as the "Manure" Parliament) presided over by Speaker Martin – the first Speaker to be forcibly removed from office in 300 years. His name will be as familiar to future historians - for the wrong reasons - as Speaker Lenthall was in the 17th century.
That Mr Martin had to go became inevitable. He has been identified as the commander-in-chief and defender of the culture of Commons secrecy and corruption. His resistance to the Freedom of Information Act made matters worse. But the scenes witnessed in the last few days made me weep. I have no brief for Mr Martin but the manner of his demise is tragic. Never, ever, in my 18 years under Speaker Thomas, Speaker Weatherill or Speaker Betty Boothroyd did I see such scenes of open rebellion. The mere swish of Betty's gown as she admonished a recalcitrant MP was enough to bring order. All three commanded instant respect, in and out of Parliament, and it is a crying shame that Mr Martin - a personally decent and kindly cove - should have been so badly advised.
Of course Mr Martin was not up to the job - that was precisely why he was chosen in 2000 - when Labour had over 400 MPs. This was the time when Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell were neutering the Commons and when Betty Boothroyd was trying, heroically, to defend the Commons from the New Labour reign of terror. But they wanted a pliant stooge. So instead of following convention and allowing a Tory to be nominated, the Labour whips' organised for Mr Martin.
But all that is over. Mr Martin is over, Mr Blair is over and Gordon Brown is nearly over. A new era may be upon us. While Mr Brown belatedly recognised this new era with his hasty announcement of a system of independent adjudication of MPs pay and rations (which he put before other party leaders at the Speaker's meeting yesterday afternoon) he still fails to recognise that the people want retribution. At his press conference He made much of disciplining wayward Labour MPs, yet Elliot Morley and David Chaytor merely remain suspended. (Incredibly, Mr Morley continues to chair a select committee for which he receives an additional £20,000 on top of his salary.) But Mr Brown could have announced their expulsion.
The Prime Minister was at his worst as he promised that any Labour MP who had broken the rules would be de-selected, yet he made the lawyerly distinction that Hazel Blears was within the rules – even though he disapproved of her actions. Instead of promising reviews, committees, inquiries and commissions a few sackings would carry more conviction.
But the people want revenge against the MPs who have defrauded them out of their taxes to pay for the outrageous expenses claims. Voters want prosecution, de-selection, dismissal, defeat and defenestration. (Already Douglas Hogg is to stand down.) But they also want rejuvenation - a new Speaker, a new Parliament - and a new electoral system based on open democracy.
After the farce of Mr Martin's original election there are new rules - involving a secret ballot for the election of the new Speaker. There is still a majority of Labour MPs - some of whom might be tempted to follow"party" line. Similarly Tories might coalesce around a single candidate. Runners and riders will probably include Sir Alan Haselhurst, Mr Martin's deputy. But he is in trouble over gardening expenses. Sir George Young, an Old Etonian Tory, will have another try but he is simply too establishment. Sir Menzies Campbell might have had a chance before his £10,000 flat renovation became public.
But if constitutional reform is the voters' clarion cry - including electoral reform - then MPs should consider candidates regardless of party labels and regardless of the previous convention that "it's our party's turn". Given the need for the public - as well as the Commons - to have confidence in Parliament restored, I would vote for Frank Field or Vince Cable. They would certainly be the peoples' choice.
MPs' expenses: This crisis has revealed what is really wrong with Britain. By Iain Martin 2009.05.16. Dark clouds over Westminster. PHOTO: AP.
A culture of rules and regulations has stifled morality in modern public life and wider society. It is now time to try a different approach, says Iain Martin.
Amidst the horrors, there have been a few moments of unintentional comedy. Of all the myriad excuses from MPs in the last week, I have a favourite.
Stewart Jackson is the Conservative MP for Peterborough. He made an expenses claim in relation to his swimming pool and attempted to explain it as follows: "The pool came with the house and I needed to know how to run it. Once I was shown that one time, there were no more claims. I take care of the pool myself. I believe this represents 'value for money' for the taxpayer."
How, precisely, does one operate a swimming pool? Surely it's not difficult. You fill it full of water and, when it's sunny, you jump in.
Note also that Jackson says "the pool came with the house", as though his estate agent had neglected to mention the fact: "There's something we forgot to tell you, sir. Your new house. It has a swimming pool." I imagine Jackson with his head in hands: "Good God, man, why on earth didn't you warn me? That's simply awful." Estate agent: "Shall we have it removed, sir?" Jackson (wearily): "No, don't bother. I'll just have to live with it."
In contrast, the country is not in a mood to live with politicians who claim for moats or who make manifestly dodgy mortgage claims. A feeling abounds that there must be punishment. But then what?
Traditionally, the British have preferred to avoid too much introspection, regarding an excess of self-examination as embarrassing. But, from time to time, it becomes unavoidable and a crisis prompts the country to ask itself whether it is content with the direction in which it is headed. If the answer is no, the consequences for those who rule or govern can be highly unpredictable.
Think of the abdication crisis in the Thirties, the calamity of Suez in the Fifties or the winter of discontent in the late Seventies. The most recent event with which the MPs' expenses scandal compares in terms of public feeling is the tumult around the death of Diana, the Princess of Wales, in 1997. At the time – before and during that mad September – a large body of opinion had formed in favour of much greater informality in public life. We got it, including the election to power of New Labour in May.
And what was the result? In politics, there was the disaster of sofa-government and a growing contempt on the part of Number 10 for "stuffy" traditional institutions such as the Cabinet, the intelligence service, the Commons and the Lords. Of course, these developments are not to blame for the decay of Parliament and the crisis presently consuming British democracy, but they hardly helped.
What is clear this weekend is that there is now a revolution of sorts coming. The question for existing MPs is whether they attempt to participate or are swept away by forces and candidates yet unknown.
This means the pro-reform camp within Parliament has very little time to act. The cross-party campaign to remove the Speaker – which will table a motion tomorrow – must succeed this week. A new occupant of the office – Vince Cable or Frank Field, perhaps – should then lead the demoralised institution through immediate and radical reforms. MPs who reject this approach fail to realise that narrow party-politicking has never been a more inadequate response. Sure, deposing the Speaker will not be enough when the country wants the long arm of the law extended. But it would demonstrate that public pressure can produce results.
Next, bring on a grassroots rebellion: a wave of deselections ahead of the next general election; the emergence of strong independent candidates to defeat the most tarnished incumbents; for the election after that, primaries to choose candidates.
It should not be forgotten that before these events there were good MPs who understood that the relationship between the electors and the elected was changing, and who ordered their affairs accordingly. But they were outnumbered by those trapped on Planet Politics, who refused to believe that their world was ending. They know now. Heading back to their constituencies, after modern Parliament's worst week, a good number looked absolutely terrified.
Why is the country quite so angry? Well, it has become clear that, as the economy headed for the rocks, those paid to pay attention were otherwise occupied filling out expense claim forms. Voters, forced to adjust to an age of austerity, want the pain shared.
But I would argue that it is about much more than that. There has been an inchoate sense for some time that Britain no longer functions effectively, despite the vast sums spent maintaining it. Virtually every activity the law-abiding undertake seems to have become entangled in a web of energy-sapping orders from officialdom.
What ails Britain – beyond our economic problems – is that we have allowed a bossy Commons (the same body which has ripped us off) to legislate our society piece by piece, to the point where modern life is excessively rules-based.
This obsessive culture of compliance was there in the Baby P case: everyone involved could point to boxes that had been ticked, to show they had followed the rules. The City was hardly under-regulated when the 2,500 staff of the Financial Services Authority spent their time forcing banks to fill out forms.
In both cases, the problem was not an absence of rules. It was that there were so many rules that they crowded out any space for judgment or the exercise of individual morality. Free individuals encouraged to act ethically are more likely to arrive at the right answers than an over-mighty bureaucracy.
Such impulses are instinctively conservative and anti-socialist, and they have formed the basis of David Cameron's best speeches in the last three years. "Labour trusts the state, we trust society," he said on Friday. His response last week was judged by many to be first class, particularly when compared to the moral and strategic collapse of Gordon Brown. Cameron got to the moral heart of the matter: what matters is what is right and what is wrong. He will be good at the business of being prime minister.
In the circumstances, isn't it highly instructive that the first response of many of our elected representatives on being exposed by the Telegraph has been to say that they were acting within the rules? It illustrates Britain's problem perfectly.
We need more individuals in Parliament who are prepared to exercise judgment and to know the difference between right and wrong. We must all ensure we get them. But a new spirit of personal responsibility is needed outwith the walls of the Palace of Westminster too. It must flood into every corner of our national life.
MPs' expenses: Our politicians could learn a lesson from congressmen. By Janet Daley. 2009.05.16.
American politicians see their time in Washington as a period of public service, not an alternative lifestyle.
Maybe it's time we gave up on the honour code for Parliament altogether. By which, I do not mean that we should abandon any hope that MPs will behave honourably. What may have to go is the unwritten, tacit nature of the understanding: the lack of explicitness in the contract between the governing and the governed which has traditionally been seen as a natural fit for our historical character. (No written constitutions please, we're British.)
It has sometimes been said – as a form of praise – that Parliament is like the right sort of club, in which pride of belonging brings out the best in its members. Well, I think we can kiss goodbye to the second part.
But the similarities between Parliament and what was called a "gentleman's club" are very much to the point. In pre-feminist days, the word "gentleman's" was not meant to signify gender, so much as class. It was a certain type of man who was considered suitable for membership: one who knew how to obey the unspoken rules of civilised behaviour.
The House of Commons has relied heavily on what might be called aristocratic assumptions about the proper way to behave: of instinctive honour and integrity rather than precise, legalistic, accountable mechanisms for judging Members' conduct. Of course, there are rules, but they were designed to rest on something more intangible: something which can only be called a sense of service or duty, and which in Britain was a direct descendant of noblesse oblige.
The social composition of the Commons is now, of course, hugely diverse but it has somehow managed to maintain those self-regarding, ruling-class attitudes: we know best how to govern our own affairs; the public has no business peering into the details of our conduct; we are the highest authority in the land and must therefore be exempted from scrutiny.
You can hear this patrician message resonating as clearly in the Glaswegian pronouncements of Speaker Martin as in the disdain of Douglas Hogg for anyone who questions his need to maintain a moat. It is not without significance that one of the most courageous modern political reformers – Margaret Thatcher – was an outsider to the club on two counts, being both female and petit bourgeois. Many of her enemies in Parliament and Whitehall hated her refusal to accept the establishment rites of mutual exoneration and conspiracy against the ordinary man, and they despised the middle-class virtues of self-improvement, thrift and personal ambition which she promoted.
Being "bourgeois" is, of course, far more objectionable in the pseudo-aristocratic terms of modern snobbery than being proletarian. There is an odd alliance of Left and Right on this: in the Eighties, Right-wing Thatcher-haters used to decry the rise of "bourgeois triumphalism" while Left-wing ones despised her for being a "grocer's daughter".
Stephen Fry, in his own bizarre intervention in the MPs' expenses row last week, was at it, too: all this fuss was nothing more than "a tedious bourgeois obsession" with what MPs "charged for wisteria". You see what he did there? "Wisteria", in Mr Fry's view, summons up an inherently absurd vision of suburban aspiration. And it boils down to this: who are you to question us? (Or, in Mr Fry's case, "Who are we to question them?") Parliament – like virtually every British institution – has evolved through a series of accretions and compromises. It was not consciously invented at a precise historical moment to serve a clearly determined function, as was the Congress of the United States.
So the differences, and the attitudes that underpin those differences, may be irrevocable. No one is more aware than I, as a lifelong expatriate, that you cannot simply appropriate the logic of another country's political culture, or bolt on to your own institutions an alien tradition.
But it's still worth having a look at the way things are done over there. Members of Congress, you might think, would have at least as justifiable a case for a "second home allowance" as British MPs. After all, many congressmen and senators have constituencies thousands of miles from Washington. The practical problems of their domestic arrangements – of maintaining their family lives and contact with the communities that elected them – are much more geographically daunting than those of parliamentarians.
It may therefore interest you to hear that members of Congress get no housing allowance at all. True, they are paid rather more than our MPs: $174,000 a year which is roughly £116,000 at the current exchange rate. Nonetheless, they are allowed to claim from the taxpayer the cost of a constituency office, the personnel to run it, and the postal charges for their official business, all of which are patently accessible to those who voted them into office.
But their living arrangements are their own responsibility. It is always assumed that their real (not just "main") home is in the community which elected them: when in Washington, they often have fairly makeshift accommodation (congressmen sometimes share apartments). Of course, if they are grand enough, they may maintain a permanent Washington home as well, but it is not considered a function of government to fund the purchase, much less the equipping, of either.
There is, I think, a pleasing clarity and professionalism about this. Politically, it makes a statement: congressmen are encouraged to feel that their true loyalty and proper identity lies in Idaho or Oregon or wherever, and that their time in Washington should be seen as a period of service, not as an alternative lifestyle.
I do not need to be reminded that the practice falls short of the ideal. The expression "inside the Beltway" for that incestuous world of insider Washington makes a mockery of the idea that all congressmen are provincial innocents who resist the seductions of Capitol Hill's own clubbable circles. But there is no presumption of secret, answerable-to-no-one inviolability which Members of Parliament seem to have inherited from the feudal lords.
The separation of private matters (where you and your loved ones live) from public duty (your office and staff) is unambiguous and dignified. And above all, there is an expectation of transparency: an openness to examination which is taken for granted not simply as the price for one's tax-funded salary but as a fundamental requirement of democracy. We could do worse than borrow a little of that.
Warning of food price hike crisis
The price of pork sausages has gone up 51% in the past year
A crisis is unfolding in the UK as people in poverty struggle with rising food prices and the recession, the Save the Children charity has warned.
It comes as new figures from 'TheGrocer' magazine show food prices rose by more than 18% over the last year.
On Monday, 'Save the Children' the charity will launch a crisis grant scheme to help families in the UK - fo the first time.
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The governmnent says it believes food prices have peaked and it is tackling child poverty through increased child benefits and child tax credits.
'More unequal'
Colette Marshall, of Save the Children, said: "We are facing a crisis. Benefits simply haven't been enough and with rising food costs it means that families cannot afford to give children proper decent food. "We think we are heading towards malnutrition here in the UK."
Penny Greenhough, a single mother of two young children, said the family was struggling on a food budget of £3 per head per day. "I am having to compromise on a daily basis on quality and quantity. I used to manage, but it's getting harder and harder," she told BBC News.
Pensioner Rita Young said, "We have to go for the cheapest of everything and it's just not doing us any good. Too much salt, too much fat, too much sugar - cheap, cheap, cheap, just isn't good enough."
Kate Green, of the Child Poverty Action Group, said that many families were buying less fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and fish, and consuming more affordable tinned and packet food that was often higher in sugar, salt and fat.
Government efforts had lifted 600,000 children out of poverty in the last 10 years, but one in three still lived below the poverty line, she said.
"Part of the problem is... many people have seen their prosperity improve over the last 10 years, so we have become a much more unequal country," she said. "That is very damaging for the people who just haven't kept up, and it really is quite wrong morally, and it's economically very stupid actually, not to make sure that we share the resources more equally and protect those who have least."
According to The Grocer, a typical basket of 33 items of food cost £48 a year ago. That has now risen to £57.50. Seasonal produce has caused a small drop in monthly figures, but the cost of basic essentials remains high.
Extra benefits
James Ball, from the magazine, reported : "It is the staples that have really gone up and that's tough for people who buy the cheapest food. "Rice costs double what it did last year, baked beans are up more than a third. Lots of everyday items cost a lot more than they used to."
As the UK imports about 40% of its food, the weak pound has driven up prices. Unpredictable world harvests and a spike in oil prices last year have also played a part.
However, as British produce comes into season, prices are expected to drop.
The full extent of the Westminster gravy train was laid bare yesterday as MPs received an inflation-busting pay rise and it was revealed that they claimed £93million in annual expenses. Members are effectively trebling their pay by pocketing on average £144,176 on top of their back-bench salaries. Critics said that too many of the the 646 members were living 'high on the hog' while the rest of the country suffered in the teeth of a recession.
As details of the MPs' lavish allowances were disclosed, it was revealed that:
One in four members claimed every single penny of the £23,083 second homes allowance last year;
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, mired in controversy for using her Commons expenses to pay for pornographic films, claimed £157,631 including nearly £23,000 on her so-called second home;
MPs will be given a month to clean up receipts submitted for expenses before a further two million bills are published in the summer.
Annual details of how much individual MPs cost the taxpayer were published by House of Commons authorities yesterday. The £92.9million of public money allowed members to fund second homes, staff salaries - including members of their own families earning up to £40,000 a year - travel, office costs, computers and stationery.
Grim-faced: Home Secretary Jacqui Smith leaves her sister's house rthis morning
The most expensive MP excluding travel was Health Minister Ann Keen, who claimed a staggering £167,306. Mrs Keen and her MP husband Alan, who both have West London seats, have been nicknamed Mr and Mrs Expenses. Last year it emerged that they had used £175,000 of taxpayers' money to help buy a flat near Parliament while they already have a constituency home nine miles away.
Tony Blair, still Prime Minister for part of 2007/08, clawed back £64,064 for his role as a constituency MP. The cheapest MP was Tory Philip Hollobone, member for Kettering, who claimed just £47,737 under all categories of expenses and allowances. He spent only £400 on staff costs, preferring to take his own phone calls and answer correspondence.
Yesterday's figures also provided details of travel for MPs' families for the first time. Spouses and children under 18 are entitled to 30 single trips or 15 return journeys every year between the constituency and London. As is the case with MPs, there is no restriction on the class of travel so they can make first-class journeys by train or fly business class.
Matthew Elliott of the TaxPayers' Alliance pressure group said: 'Too many MPs are still living high on the hog, despite growing public concern at how our money is being spent. 'People are sick of the cost of Parliament rising relentlessly year on year, accompanied by mounting evidence that much of the money is being misspent.
Heather Brooke, who has waged a five-year battle to open up MPs' expenses, said: 'The astonishing amounts of public money claimed by MPs show exactly why it is important to get a receipt-by-receipt breakdown of what they spend it on.
'As we have seen with Jacqui Smith and other MPs, it is the detail that highlights the extent of any abuse and corruption.'
MPs can edit their receipts. MPs will be able to withhold the full truth about their generous expenses, despite moves to bring about greater transparency.
The Commons authorities will for the first time this summer release details of up to two million receipts submitted by MPs, covering claims for home improvements, furnishings and office costs. But members will be given a month to edit receipts submitted as part of claims for their bumper taxpayer-funded allowances.
The aim is to allow them to black out anything which gives full travel details, identifies suppliers or any items on bills not paid for by the taxpayer. It raises concerns, however, that they will be able to delete information to save them from potential embarrassment.
Critics are concerned that under the censorship scheme it would have been possible for Jacqui Smith to black out parts of the bill that showed she had 'mistakenly' paid for pornography using her Commons expenses.
Ten applicants for every job as unemployment set to smash through 2million barrier By Benedict Brogan 2009.03.16.
Gordon Brown claims there are 500,000 unfilled vacancies in Britain
Soaring unemployment has left an average of ten people chasing every vacancy, figures revealed yesterday. Ministers were on the defensive over claims that unemployment was climbing sharply in areas where Jobcentres were closing and will exceed two million this week.
The Government is diverting hundreds of officials from other posts to serve as welfare advisers. Nearly 1,000 civil servants working on child maintenance and disability claims have been drafted in to reinforce job centres.
A survey by the TUC found that in some parts of the country, the number of jobseekers far exceeds the number of vacancies. The study found extensive job shortages. The TUC says 60 workers are available for each vacancy in the South East of England.
The Conservatives have released figures showing that in 2008, the number of benefit claimants more than doubled in some areas where job centres had closed since 2002. The Tory study identified the South West as hardest hit, with 12 constituencies where unemployment has more than doubled.
In areas of central southern England, for example, a Jobcentre Plus office was closed last year but the number of claimants has risen by 163.4 per cent. The South East saw 11 local regions affected, while the remainder were spread across England.
The Office for National Statistics is expected to announce on Wednesday that there are now two million people unemployed. Between October and December the jobless figure rose by 146,000 to 1.97 million - the highest level since 1997. The British Chambers of Commerce has warned it could reach 3.2million in the second half of 2010. Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell stopped a programme of Jobcentre closures in November, but only after 54 offices had shut.
Unemployment reaches 12-year high of nearly 2 million. by Jon Swaine
The figure now stands at 1.971 million, an increase of 146,000 in the three months to December. The unemployment rate hit 6.3 per cent, up 0.4 per centage points during the quarter. The unemployment total is now at its highest since June 1997, having risen by 369,000 in the past year, an increase of 23 per cent.
The number of people who claimed Jobseekers' Allowance in January was 1.23 million, the Office for National Statistics said. The figure means there was a 73,800 rise in the claimant count, which gives a more up-to-date insight into the damage being done to the jobs market by the recession. The total stood at 1.16 million in December.
Wednesday's figures were not as bad as had been feared by some analysts, who forecast that the two-million unemployment mark would be breached for the first time since Labour came to power in May 1997.
Between September and November 2008, the unemployment total - which includes those who don't claim Jobseekers' Allowance - had risen to 1.92 million, up 131,000 on the previous three months.
Since then, huge numbers of staff have been laid off by major employers, including 27,000 at Woolworths and a further 2,300 by the Royal Bank of Scotland on Tuesday.
The figures came as an analysis by the TUC showed that Britain's unemployment rate is now rising twice as fast as the European average.
While Britain's jobless rate is lower than the European average of 7.7 per cent, it rose sharper than in all other European states apart from Spain and Ireland between December 2007 and October 2008.
Over the same period, unemployment in France went up by just 0.1 per cent and fell 0.8 per cent in Germany.
James Purnell, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said: "We know times are tough and we need to continue doing all we can to support people who lose their jobs find another as quickly as possible, preventing the long-term unemployment which has so scarred communities in the past from taking root.
Tony McNulty, the employment minister, said: "Today's figures are disappointing but we will not stop giving people help and support to get back into work as quickly as we can."
Gordon Brown met business leaders shortly before the figures were announced to discuss giving more assistance to people losing their jobs.
Climate change activists target the City. By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent. Daily Telegraph 2009.08.27.
Climate camp activists have staged their first demonstration outside the European Climate Exchange in the heart of the City of London.
Activists from the Camp for Climate Action setting up an impromptu casino within the front gates of the European Climate Exchange, LondonPhoto: PA
Around 25 protesters dressed as "filthy rich gamblers" played games with a roulette wheel and unfurled a banner complaining that dealing with carbon credits was gambling with people's lives.
The demonstrators were part of a 1,000-strong group staying at Blackheath in south east London as part of a week-long climate camp, which aims to highlight environmental issues.
One of those involved in today's action said: "We regard what goes on inside this building as gambling with our planet. "Carbon trading merely allows big business to get richer and supports the charade that the Government is doing something about climate change. "It also allows developments such as the third runway at Heathrow."
The environmentalists said they had received a few "confused looks" from staff at the offices in Bishopsgate. More than 20 offices in London, including Government buildings, are expected to be targeted for action in the coming week.
Meanwhile back at the Climate Camp on Blackheath, workshops on everything from singing to protest and how to save four tonnes of carbon were going on.
Activists met with Metropolitan Police officers, but outside the gates of the site.
One of the activists said they were willing to talk to the police but not inside the camp, adding: "The reason for this is very simple, many people at the camp have suffered violence, harassment and intimidation at the hands of the police at events such as the Kingsnorth Camp and the G20 protests.
"Although the police have not used these tactics as this camp so far, that doesn't mean we are suddenly going to start trusting them."
Activists said the police had mounted surveillance cameras and microphones on cranes so could see everything that was going on at the camp, claiming that officers were threatening to cut off contact with the camp's police liaison team.
Secret investigation will be seen as cover-up, warn Army and intelligence chiefs
By Kim Sengupta, Defence Correspondent and Michael Savage 17.11.2009 Senior military and intelligence officers have condemned Gordon Brown's decision to hold the Iraq war inquiry in secret, warning that it looks like a cover-up.
Military leaders, who have lost 179 personnel in Iraq, want their actions judged by the public, and intelligence officials say that politicians' manipulation of intelligence should be thoroughly examined.
The pressure on No 10 mounted yesterday as the shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague, tabled a Commons debate for next week demanding that inquiry evidence be heard in public. The Conservatives will be supported by rebelling Labour backbenchers and by Liberal Democrats, who could force another embarrassing parliamentary defeat on Mr Brown.
General Sir Mike Jackson, head of the Army during the Iraq invasion, said: "I would have no problem at all in giving my evidence in public." He said Mr Brown's decision that the proceedings be held in private fed "the climate of suspicion and scepticism about government", adding that the Prime Minister ought to consider requiring witnesses to give evidence on oath.
"I do not see why it could not have gone for a halfway house with sessions in public and then having private hearings when it comes to intelligence," said General Jackson. "And they do have to look at the intelligence that Blair used in the run-up to the war... which at the end turned out to be fool's gold.
"They say they are modelling this on the Franks inquiry into the Falklands War. Well that was 30 years ago in a very different world. The main problem with a secret inquiry in the current climate of suspicion and scepticism about government is that people would think there is something to hide. And public perception at the moment is terribly important."
He added: "We are told that having a private inquiry will make people more candid. But none of the evidence will be given under oath and also the inquiry has no power of subpoena. These are things that should be looked at."
Air Marshal Sir John Walker, the former head of Defence Intelligence, said: "There is only one reason that the inquiry is being heard in private and that is to protect past and present members of this Government. There are 179 reasons why the military want the truth to be out on what happened over Iraq."
As a former deputy chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Sir John was asked for advice by members of the Defence Intelligence Service unhappy at the way the "dodgy dossier" on weapons of mass destruction was being put together. "We have worrying questions about how intelligence was ramped up to suit Tony Blair and his cronies and their reasoning for invasion," he said. "There is no reason why intelligence officials alone should have to carry the can for this. If there is anything particularly secret – and God knows there is precious little left secret over Iraq – then that can be heard in camera."
Major General Julian Thompson, who was highly decorated for his command of the Royal Marines in the Falklands, said: "I do not see why this has been based on the Franks inquiry into the Falklands. At that time the Cold War was on and protecting Western secrets in things like communication was used as the reason to hold the inquiry in secret. That is certainly not the case now. Also, the Falklands was essentially a failure of intelligence.
"Here we are looking at something much more serious: the allegation that a British government manipulated intelligence to take part in an illegal war.
"There is no reason why the public should not be able to hear the witnesses and judge what they say for themselves. We should not have to depend on a group of people handpicked by the current Government. A report from a secret inquiry will look like a whitewash."
One serving senior officer who was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan said: "It was a political decision to go to war and we followed orders, although a lot of us had private reservations.
"One thing I do remember is how urgent procurement orders were delayed and delayed because the Government wanted to pretend it was still following diplomatic channels. This was one of the main reason for the shortages we faced and this resulted in lives being lost. We won't mind details of that coming out to the public."
The Tories hope to defeat the Government next Wednesday by holding an opposition day debate demanding that "the proceedings of the Committee of Inquiry should whenever possible be held in public". Labour rebels are drumming up support among colleagues to back the motion, with one saying he would do "everything in my power" to force Mr Brown into a U-turn. Defeat six weeks ago in a Liberal Democrat opposition day debate about Gurkhas' rights to live in the UK made the Prime Minister change government policy.
Mr Hague said there was "clearly a widespread dissatisfaction across all parties and throughout the country" over the format. "There is still time for them to put this right. To have real credibility, the inquiry needs to be open to the public whenever possible and to have a wider and more diverse membership."
Even senior Labour loyalists have been angered by the inquiry's parameters. The chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Mike Gapes, openly criticised the Prime Minister last night. It was "a missed opportunity", he said. "A major reason for holding this inquiry was to reassure the public that nothing was being held back because it has been such a controversial topic. This will not help," he added.
US And UK Desperately Wanted 'Smoking Gun' Ruth Barnett, Sky News Online 26,11.2009
British and American officials were desperately looking for a "smoking gun" that would justify their imminent invasion of Iraq, an official inquiry has heard.
Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador to the US, said the Bush administration's stringent timetable for military action was too tight.
He said it did not allow enough time for UN inspectors to properly carry out their searches for Saddam Hussein's elusive weapons of mass destruction.
The relationship between Tony Blair and Mr Bush has been under examination as the official inquiry into the war heard its third day of evidence.
The two leaders may have agreed Saddam should be overthrown in private discussions at the US President's Texas ranch in April 2002 - 11 months before the war, Sir Christopher said.
Blair and Bush in Texas in April 2002
"By the time the President and the Prime Minister met at Crawford (Mr Bush's ranch) they weren't there to talk about containment or sharpening sanctions," Sir Christopher added.
He said the change in stance was illustrated in a speech given by the Prime Minister a day after the talks.
Sir Christopher went on: "To the best of my knowledge, I might be wrong, this was the first time that Tony Blair had said in public 'regime change'.
"When I heard that speech, I thought that this represents a tightening of the UK/US alliance and a degree of convergence on the danger Saddam Hussein presented."
Sir Christopher, the UK's representative in Washington DC between 1997 and 2003, described how US policy changed when Mr Bush became leader in 2001 and focused more on "regime change" in Iraq.
He added that on the day of the World Trade Centre attacks, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she was looking into whether Saddam was involved.
Although Mr Blair was "a true believer about the wickedness of Saddam Hussein," Britain's priority was to convince the US it could be in their interests to go through the UN, which Bush aide Paul Wolfowitz "viscerally" opposed.
Sky News' reporter Mark Stone blogs from the Chilcot inquiry
"I had to put it in those cynical terms to persuade him that this was not a limp-wristed, pitiful, European lack of will, pathetic type thing of which Europeans are frequently accused by the Americans," he said.
Sky News' Mark Stone said Sir Christopher has hinted key documents have disappeared, despite the inquiry panel insisting they have received "mountains" of official papers.
"He alluded to documents that were missing, telegrams he sent," the reporter added.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Described invasion of Iraq as being of 'questionable legitimacy'. Photograph: Shaun Curry/AFP/Getty Images
The invasion of Iraq was legal but of "questionable legitimacy" because the US and UK had failed to persuade other countries of the need for war, the then-British ambassador to the UN told the Chilcot inquiry today.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock said: "I regard our participation in the military action in Iraq in March 2003 as legal but of questionable legitimacy in that it did not have the democratically observable backing of the great majority of [UN] member states, or even perhaps of the majority of people inside the UK."
Earlier, Greenstock told the inquiry that he had threatened to resign if the UN security council failed to pass a resolution on Iraq in the lead-up to the invasion.
He and others in the British delegation to the UN believed a resolution was "essential if any military action was to be regarded as internationally legitimate".
The diplomat also said he had put pressure on the government to give greater consideration to delaying the invasion until October 2003, but that the "momentum for earlier action in the United States was much too strong for us to counter".
The UN security council approved resolution 1441 on 8 November 2002, paving the way for the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq.
But Britain and the US were unable to get a second resolution directly authorising war after they had argued that Saddam Hussein was not cooperating with inspectors and was playing for time.
The lack of a second resolution led critics of military action to argue that the invasion was illegal under international law – a claim the British government has always denied.
Before the first resolution, there were differences between Washington and its team of diplomats at the UN assembly in New York.
That resulted in a complex set of negotiations between the British and American delegations at the UN, George Bush's administration in Washington, and the British government over what the resolution might say and how to ensure that it was passed.
Greenstock said he would have been "most uncomfortable" with UK military participation in the invasion of Iraq happening without a resolution.
"I myself warned the Foreign Office in October [2002] that I might have to consider my own position if that was the way things went," he said.
In a written statement to the inquiry and responses to questions at the hearing in London today, he also criticised Washington's belligerence.
"The UK's attempt to reconstitute a consensus had only a slim prospect of success, made slimmer by the recognition by anyone else following events closely that the United States was not proactively supportive of the UK's efforts and seemed to be preparing for conflict whatever the UK decided to do," he said.
"These noises off were decidedly unhelpful to what I was trying to do [at the UN] in New York."
He said the US push towards war hampered efforts to achieve a second resolution.
"It seemed to me that the option of invading Iraq in, say, October 2003 deserved much greater consideration," he added.
"But the momentum for earlier action in the United States was much too strong for us to counter.
"The prime minister's arguments for more time, as I observed them from New York, appeared to win two weeks or so of delay, but no more.
"The second resolution as we designed it for March 2003 might have taken on a different shape and character on a different timing."
Questioned by the inquiry panel, Greenstock said he had been kept in the dark about private discussions taking place between Tony Blair and Bush.
He said he realised there had been a shift in thinking following the two leaders' meeting at Bush's ranch in Texas in April 2002.
"It wasn't until the Crawford meeting of 2002 that I realised the UK was being drawn into quite a different discussion. That discussion was not totally visible to me," he said.
"I was not being politically naive, but I was not being politically informed either."
MORE ON THIS STORY: Iraq War Inquiry
Ministers kept Iraq war plan secret, Chilcot inquiry told
• Hoon held up logistic plans to avoid going public • Boyce reveals frustration at 'dysfunctional' US
Geoff Hoon and Admiral Lord Boyce leaving Downing Street in March 2003, days after the beginning of the invasion of Iraq. Photograph: Reuters
The head of the armed forces at the time of the Iraq invasion said today he had been unable to prepare British troops properly for war because the government did not want the plans to become public knowledge.
Admiral Lord Boyce told the Iraq inquiry that Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, banned him from talking to a senior logistics official, and that the timetable was so tight that one unit, the Desert Rats of 7th Armoured brigade, was not operational until the day before the invasion.
The former chief of defence staff also described how, after expressing concern about the legality of the invasion, he finally received a "one-liner" from Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, giving him the go-ahead.
Boyce said the defence chiefs "ramped up" planning for possible war after a key meeting between Tony Blair and George Bush at the US president's ranch in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002, 11 months before the invasion.
A small group of officials began to draw up contingency plans, he said. More detailed planning was under way that autumn, Boyce explained. He added: "But I was not allowed to speak, for example, to the chief of defence logistics. "I was prevented from doing that by the defence secretary [Hoon] because of the concern of it becoming public knowledge that we were planning for a military contribution, which might be unhelpful in the activity in the UN to secure a security council resolution."
The inquiry heard that even as the "pace was quickening" in Washington in favour of invasion, Boyce was not allowed to start implementing any military plan. "It was very frustrating," he said. It was only in November, after a UN resolution was unanimously agreed to raise the pressure on Saddam Hussein, that he was able "to be totally overt and start implementing the [military] planning", Boyce said.
He said he "expressed his view on a number of occasions" to Blair about the delays ministers had imposed on him, for example about the problems of "holding up a decision to get reserves mobilised. The late stage at which I was finally given authority to start mobilising the logistics organisation to get the equipment that we needed left us with some very short timelines," Boyce said.
Sir Roderic Lyne, former British ambassador to Russia and one of the inquiry's five-member panel, asked whether troops were properly prepared for the war. Boyce replied: "I was pretty confident that they were ready in terms of understanding what they had to do … those units that were going to the front of the frontline on 20 March, I'm confident were properly equipped."
He said he had told Blair and the cabinet that the country needed a strong legal basis to go to war, "which obviously a second [UN] resolution would have completely nailed".
The Butler inquiry into the use of intelligence to back an invasion heard that Boyce demanded an "unequivocal" view from the attorney general that an invasion would be lawful. Boyce said today he finally got it in a "one-liner" note from Goldsmith.
Describing the night of the Commons vote in favour of invasion, Boyce said: "I was absolutely prepared to unhook ourselves [from the invasion]." "Would that have been humiliating for us?" he was asked. "We are living in a democracy," he replied.
Boyce said there was a "complete reluctance" on the part of influential members of a "dysfunctional" Bush administration, notably defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to believe that Britain would not commit troops unless the diplomatic process had been exhausted and parliament approved.
No matter how many times British officials said to senior American commanders, and to Rumsfeld in particular, that the UK would not commit itself to military force without going through the UN route, "'we know you say that, but come the day you will be there' was the attitude," Boyce said.
The Iraq inquiry has heard how the Blair government succeeded in September 2002, six months before the invasion, in persuading the Bush administration to seek UN approval for military action.
It has also heard that British influence over US policy evaporated as Bush, and his neocon advisers in particular, lost patience with the UN policy of "containing" Saddam Hussein.
Sir Kevin Tebbit, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence from 1998 to 2005, told the inquiry that Britain could not join the US-led invasion without parliamentary approval. However, he said if the UK did not participate "there would in certain circumstances be serious damage to the bilateral relationship [between the UK and the US]". He was not asked to spell out what they might be. "The US wanted us on board," Boyce added.
Boyce said Rumsfeld's unwillingness to commit more troops to Iraq contributed to the breakdown of order – particularly around Baghdad – following the invasion. "I was always extremely concerned about the anorexic nature of the American contribution. The Americans at that particular stage were very much, 'we're going to do the war fighting, not the peacekeeping,'" said Boyce.
He added: "Combine that with the obsession that Mr Rumsfeld had with his network-centric warfare and therefore to prove that you can minimise your number of troops because you had clever methods other than using boots on the ground, meant that, in my view, we were desperately under-resourced so far as those forces going towards Baghdad were concerned."
Boyce said "dysfunctionalism" in Washington led to poor communications between the Pentagon, the state department, and the White House. "I often found myself briefing my American counterpart on what was going on in state rather than him actually finding out directly," he told the inquiry.
However, Boyce's testimony suggested relations between departments in Whitehall were also defective. Boyce said British troops ended up having to carry out much reconstruction work without the support of Department for International Development [DfID] experts . "I thought DfID were particularly uncooperative, particularly as led by Clare Short," Boyce said.
"We had people on the ground who were excellent operators from DfID who were told to sit in a tent and not do anything." The problem arose because DfID had regarded getting a second UN security council resolution on military action in Iraq – which did not happen – as essential.
Tebbit said: "Their focus on poverty relief rather than backing a strategic objective for the British government meant that they were not sure at first that the Iraqi people were not poor enough to deserve major DfID aid," he said.
He said: "I remember saying to them at one stage, 'Well, if you wait a bit they certainly will be if you do not come forward.'"
Key moments
Key fact
Admiral Lord Boyce, the chief of the defence staff at the start of the Iraq war, said Geoff Hoon stopped him involving the chief of defence logistics when he originally started planning for the Iraq war in 2002. Hoon, the defence secretary, was worried that if it became public knowledge that the MoD was preparing for war, it would be harder to get a UN resolution.
Key quote
Sir Kevin Tebbit on the Department for International Development: "They were not sure at first that the Iraqi people were not poor enough to deserve major DfID aid. I remember saying to them at one stage: 'Well, if you wait a bit they certainly will be ... ' "
Key jargon
The "pol-mil community". Tebbit said this referred to policy makers who had to combine military and political considerations.
Damage rating
Donald Rumsfeld, the former US defence secretary, was a key target. Boyce criticised him for the "anorexic" nature of the American troop deployment and he said US generals were also trying – and failing – to persuade Rumsfeld to put more troops on the ground. But Boyce also took a swipe at Clare Short, saying that under her leadership DfID was "particularly uncooperative".
Britain misled into Iraq war by Blair's 'sycophancy to U.S. and alarming subterfuge with Bush', says former DPP By Kate Loveys Daily Mail 14.12.2009.
One of Tony Blair's most senior public servants has this morning launched a scathing attack on the former prime minister over the Iraq war, accusing him of 'sycophancy' towards Washington.
Sir Ken Macdonald, who was director of public prosecutions for much of Mr Blair's premiership, accused him of using 'alarming subterfuge' to mislead the British people into the conflict.
Sycophant: Former prime minister Tony Blair was accused of using 'alarming subtrefuge' to mislead the British people into war in Iraq by the former Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Ken MacDonald
Referring to Mr Blair's weekend interview with former This Morning host Fern Britton in which he defended his role, the former prosecution chief wrote in The Times: 'This was a foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions and playing footsie on Sunday morning television does nothing to repair the damage.'
Sir Ken said the U.S. seat of power 'turned his head and he couldn't resist the stage or the glamour that it gave him'.
He added: 'It is now very difficult to avoid the conclusion that Tony Blair engaged in an alarming subterfuge with his partner George Bush and went on to mislead and cajole the British people into a deadly war they had made perfectly clear they didn't want, and on a basis that it's increasingly hard to believe even he found truly credible.'
Sir Ken - who works at the same law chambers as Mr Blair's wife - went on: 'Since those sorry days we have frequently heard him repeating the self-regarding mantra that "hand on heart, I only did what I thought was right".
Tony Blair and Fern Britton ahead of their interview for the BBC
'But this is a narcissist's defence and self-belief is no answer to misjudgment: it is certainly no answer to death.'
Mr Blair told Ms Britton that it still would have been right to have invaded Iraq even if it was known then that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. The threat posed by Saddam to the wider region meant it was right to remove him from power, he added.
He is due to give evidence in the New Year to the Chilcot inquiry into the war.
Sir Ken said the questioning so far of the panel had been 'unchallenging', adding: 'If Chilcot fails to reveal the truth without fear in this Middle Eastern story of violence and destruction, the inquiry will be held in deserved and withering contempt.'
Meanwhile, Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth yesterday suggested he would not have backed the invasion of Iraq if he had known Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.
Decision makers: Mr Blair and George Bush invaded Iraq in 2003
Mr Ainsworth, who was Labour's deputy chief whip at the time of the Iraq war vote in March 2003, said the issue of chemical and biological weapons had been the central factor in persuading him to back the invasion.
The Defence Secretary suggested the Government would have struggled to win the Commons vote on the issue without the WMD argument, which Mr Blair claimed was based on intelligence material.
Asked directly whether the vote would have been lost he replied: 'I don't know what the situation would have been.'
Mr Ainsworth refused to say whether he would still have backed the war but said he was 'surprised' by Mr Blair's admission, adding: 'I supported the war in Iraq based on the arguments that were put at the time, and a big part of those arguments was - and I firmly believed that they existed - was the existence of WMD at that time.'
The Iraq Inquiry has already heard evidence that Mr Blair was told days before the invasion that Saddam Hussein might no longer have access to WMD.
The issue of what the former prime minister knew about Iraq's WMD arsenal was expected to form a key part of the inquiry.
Sir Ken accused the Iraq Inquiry, headed by Sir John Chilcot, of 'unchallenging' questioning
But now it has emerged that Mr Blair is likely to be questioned on these and other key issues in secret under the guise of 'national security' concerns.
A spokesman for the inquiry has denied that the provision will be used as a cover-up.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg launched a scathing assault on Mr Blair for saying that he would simply have used different arguments to justify the 2003 invasion.
The former PM's statement triggered accusations that he was embarking on a damage-limitation exercise ahead of his appearance at the Chilcot inquiry in the new year.
Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth travels in a Chinook helicopter en route to Lashkar Gah in Helmand Province yesterday
Mr Clegg said: ‘For Tony Blair to declare that he would have come up with any old reason to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq shows quite how far he was prepared to twist the facts to suit his determination to invade Iraq alongside George Bush.
‘It is both troubling and offensive that Blair felt able simply to pull the wool over people’s eyes to suit his own ends.
'This revelation underlines that the Liberal Democrats were right to stand alone against the drive by both Labour and Conservative parties to go to war in Iraq.’
Reg Keys, the anti-war campaigner whose son Lance Corporal Tom Keys was one of six Royal Military Police killed by an Iraqi mob in Majar al-Kabir in June 2003, accused Mr Blair of being ‘a hypocrite’ and of treating Sir John’s inquiry ‘with contempt’.
He said: ‘Now that the excuse of finding WMDs has been blown apart, Blair is desperately trying to find another justification. He is trying to get this out early before he appears before Sir John Chilcot.’
Mr Keys said that Mr Blair’s remarks had ‘all the hallmarks’ of a spin operation involving his former spin doctor Alastair Campbell. He added: ‘This would be absolutely laughable if Mr Blair was trying to push some minor piece of legislation through the Commons. ‘But this is war, this is where people are going to die and be maimed on a great scale.’
Mr Keys also recalled that Mr Blair addressed the Commons in February 2003, saying that Saddam could stay in power if he gave up these weapons of mass destruction. He added: 'The man is just telling lie after lie. It’s inconceivable that a former Prime Minister can be doing this.’
In the interview, Mr Blair was challenged to accept that the parents of some servicemen killed in the conflict thought he had blood on his hands. He said that he was prepared to accept that responsibility. ‘There’s no point going into a situation of conflict and not understanding there is going to be a price paid,’ he said.
He also denied that his religious faith played a direct part in his decision to go to war.
But Mr Blair conceded his belief had given him the strength to hold to that decision and supported him during the ‘loneliness’ of having made that decision.
Mr Blair insisted he did not ‘pray specifically’ about the decision to go to war, implying that he put his faith to one side before making that decision. But he added: ‘What your faith does ... is it sustains you through what is then a very difficult time as you try to implement what you think is right.’
Sycophancy, narcissism, lies - and why letting Blair off the hook would be the greatest betrayal of all. By Max Hastings Daily Mail. 15.12.2009.
Sir John Chilcot arriving at the Iraq inquiry last month
Sir John Chilcot, the veteran former civil servant presiding over the Iraq war inquiry, opened its proceedings last month with the bland assertion that 'no one is on trial. We cannot determine guilt or innocence'.
These words caused widespread dismay. They seemed to set familiar parameters for a government-sponsored tribunal.
Its members proposed to hear evidence, nod wisely, conclude that no one could reasonably be held blameworthy for disaster and collect honours from a grateful government.
Yet less than a month into the hearings, Chilcot's hopes of a smooth passage seem confounded.
Even if he wishes to acquit the principal defendants, as it were, on all but minor charges - careless driving, perhaps, or overstaying a parking meter - his proceedings are raising a whirlwind.
Yesterday, Sir Ken Macdonald QC, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, delivered a broadside against both Chilcot and the architects of the war. Macdonald recoils from the docility of the panel's questioning of witnesses and flags his fear that the inquiry might by wilful negligence allow the guilty to escape. 'It is precisely this privately arranged nature of British Establishment power, stubborn beyond sympathy for years in the face of the modern world, that has brought our politics so low,' he wrote in The Times.
'If Chilcot fails to reveal the truth without fear in this Middle Eastern story of violence and destruction, the inquiry will be held in deserved and withering contempt.'
Macdonald's display of anger might have been triggered by last week's appearance of Sir John Scarlett, 2003 chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and a major contributor to the 'dodgy dossier' on weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Blair rewarded Scarlett for his deplorable role by making him director of the Secret Intelligence Service, a post from which he has just retired.
Yet at the inquiry, this seminal figure in the deceits used to justify the war was not even questioned about his dealings with Alastair Campbell, Blair's then communications director who once described Scarlett as 'a mate'. Scarlett's evidence was smooth as silk, explicit as Channel fog. The panel never sought to lay a glove on him.
Sir Ken Macdonald remarks of the 'unchallenging' questioning of witnesses: 'If this is born of a belief that it creates an atmosphere more conducive to truth, it seems naive.
The truth doesn't always glide out so compliantly; sometimes it struggles to be heard.'
His trenchant remarks, his direct challenge to Chilcot and his colleagues on the inquiry panel to show some flash of steel, should serve as a wake-up call before the central witness gives evidence next year.
On Sunday, Tony Blair, the man at the heart of the story, showed the hand he will play. In a BBC1 interview with Fern Britton, he was asked: 'If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?' The former prime minister replied serenely: 'I would still have thought it right to remove [Saddam Hussein].'
This was a stunning admission. Imagine the reaction, had Blair told Parliament back in 2003: 'Maybe Saddam has WMDs. But even if he does not, we should help George Bush impose regime change.'
The resignations of Robin Cook and Clare Short from Cabinet would have been only the first of a stampede. The nation would have been appalled.
Yet as it was, a great many people - me included - believed that the Government could not possibly deceive us about something as serious as its assurance that Iraq possessed weapons threatening global security.
Had Blair raised even the possibility that the war was merely intended to help George Bush topple the Iraqi dictator who had made a fool of his father, he could not have mustered a Commons majority.
Yet now he wishes us to accept that because he, good old Tony, acted in good faith and squared the deal with God, he did right by his office and by the British people, WMD or no WMD.
Sir Ken Macdonald writes: 'This is a narcissist's defence, and self-belief is no answer to misjudgment. The degree of deceit involved in our decision to go to war on Iraq becomes steadily clearer.'
John Scarlett gives evidence at the Iraq inquiry: 'Scarlett's evidence was smooth as silk, explicit as Channel fog. The panel never sought to lay a glove on him'
Sir John Chilcot and his panel might better fulfil their duty to the British people if they question witnesses - and especially Blair - toughly and directly about the story as most journalists, historians and diplomats - and Sir Ken Macdonald - have long believed it to be.
Blair went to visit Bush at his Crawford ranch in Texas in April 2002 and gave him assurances about Britain's participation in a U.S. invasion of Iraq, though for many months afterwards he continued publicly to deny any commitment.
In Washington, late that summer, I was told by a string of influential Americans that British participation in an invasion was a done deal. I wrote as much in the Daily Mail.
Chilcot faces some difficulties in proving the facts about the Crawford meeting: no advisers were present during the most sensitive conversations between Bush and Blair. But there is a mass of circumstantial evidence from U.S. administration figures who clearly understood the British to have climbed on board at a time when Blair was still assuring Parliament and the nation otherwise.
The Iraq inquiry should present Blair with verbatim quotes from authoritative Americans on this point and challenge him to deny them. Some critics throw Blair an easy ball, by asserting that he lied about WMDs. I have never thought this likely. I believe he sincerely supposed Saddam to have such weapons.
But that is not the point. The deceit lay in the fact that the prime minister committed himself to Bush's war with or without WMDs. He went big on the WMD issue when he addressed the British public because he knew he could never secure endorsement for an invasion merely to help Bush depose Saddam.
The truth is that he pushed the WMD case far further than evidence justified, with the complicity of the deplorable Sir John Scarlett and tacit acquiescence of the intelligence community.
This was a shocking betrayal of responsibility not only by the prime minister, but also by the diplomats and civil servants who stood by and said nothing while it happened. The Whitehall doctrine of 'omerta' - silence in the face of wrongdoing - is even stronger than that of the Sicilian Mafia with whom the use of the word originated.
If Sir John Chilcot and his colleagues are even half-serious about their duty, they must break open the Whitehall 'honour code' and expose the deceits that caused Britain to go to war under false pretences.
If they cannot bring themselves to do this, they will betray their country as much as Blair did when he succumbed to what Ken Macdonald calls 'the sycophancy of power' towards an American president.
Today, Blair walks free, earning millions, denied the presidency of Europe only by a hair's breadth. It is too much to hope that he will ever stand in the dock of a court of law for serving as Bush's jackal in Iraq, at the cost of so many lives. But he was guilty of deceits and blunders which have done more lasting damage to the interests of the West than the 1956 Suez invasion.
Only if the Iraq war inquiry exposes the truth can we hope to deter a future British prime minister from r
Alastair Campbell rejects claim WMD dossier was 'sexed up'
Tony Blair's former director of communications tells Chilcot inquiry any allegation that he distorted intelligence was 'simply untrue'
Alastair Campbell today rejected any suggestion that the government had "sexed up" the 2002 dossier that claimed Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.
In almost five hours of evidence – two more than scheduled – to the Iraq inquiry, Tony Blair's former director of communications mounted a typically robust defence of his own role and that of the ex-prime minister in a war that he insisted Britain ought to be "proud" of.
But faced by some sceptical questioning from the panel, Campbell struggled at times to explain the unequivocal nature of claims made about Saddam Hussein's weapons arsenal in the run-up to the war.
Campbell told the inquiry that he would defend "every single word" of the dossier, which he described as "conservative". He furthermore said that the intelligence was presented to parliament by the then-prime minister in a "cautious" manner, but the media had jumped on the "45 minutes" claim.
"At no point did anyone from the prime minister down say to the intelligence services: 'You have got to tailor it to fit that argument,'" said Campbell.
Of the "45 minutes" claim, Campbell, who described his role as offering "presentational advice", said: "I don't think we were ever saying: 'Saddam's got these weapons and he can whack them over to Cyprus in 45 minutes.'"
But he was less assured when panel member Sir Roderic Lyne asked him about the claim in the foreword to the dossier by Blair that the intelligence on WMDs was "beyond doubt" and suggested that the claim seemed difficult to justify in the light of all the evidence.
Campbell said the phrase was accurate before seeking to play down its importance, arguing that two words did not materially affect the strength of the dossier.
Lyne also pressed Campbell on the basis on which Blair had said Iraq's WMD programme was "growing" when presenting the dossier to parliament despite the description "growing" not being used in the report. Asked a number of times about the evidence for the claim, Campbell repeatedly said it reflected the intelligence given to the then-prime minister and was implied in the report, if not explicit.
The former director of communications revealed that Blair wrote a series of private letters to George Bush in 2002, which have not been published, assuring the US "we are absolutely with you" in making sure Iraq disarmed and raising the prospect of British military backing. But Campbell said that the then-prime minister was hopeful of a peaceful resolution until the eve of the 2003 invasion.
He denied that Sir John Scarlett, the chief of the security services, would have felt under pressure, consciously or subconsciously, to unduly strengthen the dossier and rejected the idea that the joint intelligence committee (JIC) "would have overstated the case to any degree ... that would hit its credibility".
He also said he felt it was "never in doubt" that WMDs would be found in Iraq within a "relatively short timescale" of the invasion and when he was told by Scarlett on 28 April 2003 that there might not be any it was a shock.
Referring to the row with the BBC – which reported the initial claims – that resulted in the suicide of the government weapons scientist David Kelly, who was revealed as the BBC's source, Campbell said the controversy surrounding the dossier "was in large part caused by a piece of dishonest journalism". He acknowledged that the London Evening Standard had published a misleading headline with respect to the "45 minutes" claim but said it was not his job to correct the story.
While he said he would defend the September dossier "till the end of my days", Campbell held his hands up with respect to the "dodgy dossier" published in February 2003, which included large chunks lifted wholesale from an academic paper, blaming it on a "mistake" by a member of the Coalition Information Committee.
Campbell also said today that there had been no "significant shift" in Blair's attitude towards regime change in Iraq during his April 2002 meeting with George Bush in Crawford, despite earlier evidence to the contrary.
The inquiry, led by Sir John Chilcot, was previously told by Sir Christopher Meyer, the then-British ambassador to the US, that Blair shifted his position at Crawford. A leaked memo that Meyer sent to London about a lunch he had with Paul Wolfowitz, then the deputy US defence secretary, in March 2002, said: "We backed regime change, but the plan had to be clever and failure was not an option."
But Campbell described Meyer's evidence to the inquiry as "overstated" and said that the former ambassador to the US had been "churlish" in refusing to accept that Blair had subsequently persuaded Bush to involve the UN.
Alistaire Campbell: Blair's communications chief chaired the meetings of British intelligence officers that produced the dossier in September 2002.
Tony Blair wrote a series of private letters to George Bush in 2002 assuring him "we are absolutely with you" in making sure Iraq disarmed and raising the prospect of British military backing, Alastair Campbell said today.
But the former Downing Street director of communications, giving evidence to the Chilcot inquiry into the war, said that the then-prime minister was hopeful of a peaceful resolution until the eve of the 2003 invasion.
The Blair-Bush letters have not been published.
Campbell also rejected any suggestion that the government had "sexed up" the 2002 dossier that claimed Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.
In almost five hours of evidence – two more than scheduled – to the Iraq inquiry, Tony Blair's former director of communications mounted a typically robust defence of his own role and that of the ex-prime minister in a war that he insisted Britain ought to be "proud" of.
But faced by some sceptical questioning from the panel, Campbell struggled at times to explain the unequivocal nature of claims made about Saddam Hussein's weapons arsenal in the run-up to the war.
Campbell told the inquiry that he would defend "every single word" of the dossier, which he described as "conservative". He furthermore said that the intelligence was presented to parliament by the then-prime minister in a "cautious" manner, but the media had jumped on the "45 minutes" claim.
"At no point did anyone from the prime minister down say to the intelligence services: 'You have got to tailor it to fit that argument,'" said Campbell.
Of the "45 minutes" claim, Campbell, who described his role as offering "presentational advice", said: "I don't think we were ever saying: 'Saddam's got these weapons and he can whack them over to Cyprus in 45 minutes.'"
But he was less assured when panel member Sir Roderic Lyne asked him about the claim in the foreword to the dossier by Blair that the intelligence on WMDs was "beyond doubt" and suggested that the claim seemed difficult to justify in the light of all the evidence.
Campbell said the phrase was accurate before seeking to play down its importance, arguing that two words did not materially affect the strength of the dossier.
Lyne also pressed Campbell on the basis on which Blair had said Iraq's WMD programme was "growing" when presenting the dossier to parliament despite the description "growing" not being used in the report. Asked a number of times about the evidence for the claim, Campbell repeatedly said it reflected the intelligence given to the then-prime minister and was implied in the report, if not explicit.
He denied that Sir John Scarlett, the chief of the security services, would have felt under pressure, consciously or subconsciously, to unduly strengthen the dossier and rejected the idea that the joint intelligence committee (JIC) "would have overstated the case to any degree ... that would hit its credibility".
He also said he felt it was "never in doubt" that WMDs would be found in Iraq within a "relatively short timescale" of the invasion and when he was told by Scarlett on 28 April 2003 that there might not be any it was a shock.
Referring to the row with the BBC – which reported the initial claims – that resulted in the suicide of the government weapons scientist David Kelly, who was revealed as the BBC's source, Campbell said the controversy surrounding the dossier "was in large part caused by a piece of dishonest journalism". He acknowledged that the London Evening Standard had published a misleading headline with respect to the "45 minutes" claim but said it was not his job to correct the story
While he said he would defend the September dossier "till the end of my days", Campbell held his hands up with respect to the "dodgy dossier" published in February 2003, which included large chunks lifted wholesale from an academic paper, blaming it on a "mistake" by a member of the Coalition Information Committee.
Campbell also said today that there had been no "significant shift" in Blair's attitude towards regime change in Iraq during his April 2002 meeting with George Bush in Crawford, despite earlier evidence to the contrary.
The inquiry, led by Sir John Chilcot, was previously told by Sir Christopher Meyer, the then-British ambassador to the US, that Blair shifted his position at Crawford. A leaked memo that Meyer sent to London about a lunch he had with Paul Wolfowitz, then the deputy US defence secretary, in March 2002, said: "We backed regime change, but the plan had to be clever and failure was not an option."
But Campbell described Meyer's evidence to the inquiry as "overstated" and said that the former ambassador to the US had been "churlish" in refusing to accept that Blair had subsequently persuaded Bush to involve the UN.
Investigation into the Netherlands' support for 2003 war finds military action was not justified under UN resolutions
The Dutch government's decision to support George Bush and Tony Blair's attack on Iraq had no basis in international law, the Davids report found. Photograph: Mario Tama/AFP
The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a violation of international law, an independent inquiry in the Netherlands has found.
In a damning series of findings on the decision of the Dutch government to support Tony Blair and George Bush in the strategy of regime change in Iraq, the inquiry found the action had "no basis in international law".
The 551-page report, published today and chaired by former Dutch supreme court judge Willibrord Davids, said UN resolutions in the 1990s prior to the outbreak of war gave no authority to the invasion. "The Dutch government lent its political support to a war whose purpose was not consistent with Dutch government policy. The military action had no sound mandate in international law," it said.
Comparisons between the Davids report, which looked at the decision-making process surrounding the Dutch decision to back the war, and Chilcot's have led to criticism that the UK was not conducting a similar analysis of the legal implications in the run-up to the war.
The findings of the Davids report has serious implications for the UK, experts say, as it raises questions about the use of intelligence about weapons of mass destruction (WMD), an issue addressed by Campbell in his evidence before the Chilcot panel this morning.
"In its depiction of Iraq's WMD programme, the [Dutch] government was to a considerable extent led by public and other information from the US and the UK," the Davids report says.
It found that when the Dutch government decided in August 2002 to support the attack on Iraq it treated intelligence about WMD and the legality of an invasion as "subservient". The Dutch cabinet's policy was laid out in a 45-minute meeting, and came at a time when the newly elected prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, was preoccupied with domestic concerns, it said.
The Dutch intelligence agencies were "more reserved" in their assessments than the government when discussing the initiative in parliament, the report found.
During the build-up to the war, in 2003, the US abandoned an attempt to get a UN security council resolution approving the invasion when it became apparent it would not be granted. In 2004, the UN secretary general at the time, Kofi Annan, said the invasion was illegal.
Iraq inquiry: Tony Blair got it wrong, says top aide
Tony Blair's case for going to war in Iraq was dealt a body blow when Jonathan Powell, his closest advisor, admitted "we were wrong". By Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter Telegraph 19.01.2010
Jonathan PowellPhoto: PA
Mr Blair went to war on a long-standing "assumption" that Saddam Hussein still possessed weapons of mass destruction because he had used them in the past, Mr Powell said.
Intelligence on Saddam's WMD was not the pivotal factor in the decision to go to war in Iraq, Mr Blair's former chief of staff told the Chilcot Inquiry.
Without any concrete evidence that Saddam had destroyed his stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons the Government remained "confident" that he still had them in 2003, the inquiry heard.
Mr Powell said: "Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction. We were wrong. The intelligence was wrong. "When our forces went in, we were absolutely amazed to discover there weren't any weapons of mass destruction."
Mr Powell, who was the former Prime Minister's closest aide throughout his premiership, was asked by panel member Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman at the London hearing whether he had been "concerned" that intelligence on Saddam's weapons stocks might not be up to date.
Mr Powell said: "We had an assumption, and we had that assumption because Saddam Hussein had lied about using WMD and he had lied about getting rid of them. We had bombed Iraq in 1998 on that basis and it would have taken some quite strong evidence to suggest he had got rid of them. "We didn't really have any doubts about it and I don't think other people had any doubts about it.
"In September 2002 Hans Blix (the chief UN weapons inspector) told the Prime Minister Saddam Hussein hadn't met his obligations and 10,000 litres of anthrax were still unaccounted for. "We were confident that he had weapons of mass destruction."
Mr Powell also insisted that Mr Blair had not given any undertaking to President Bush that Britain would go to war with the US when the two men met at the President's ranch in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002.
Last year the former ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, has questioned whether the Mr Blair had "signed in blood" an agreement to go to war during a private meeting with Mr Bush.
But Mr Powell said: "I was at Crawford. Sir Christopher wasn't. He was at Waco, 30 miles away. "There was no undertaking in blood to go to war in Iraq. There was no firm discussion to go to war, in fact the record which was sent to Sir Christopher said the president acknowledged that weapons inspectors should go in and we had to give Saddam the chance to comply."
The hearing continues...
At last, we know the truth. The Iraq debacle was dreamt up by two crazy men on a sofa
Stephen Glover. 13.01.2010.
Over the years, I have written a fair number of pieces about Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's spin doctor. I'm not his greatest fan. I believe he was a malign influence on British public life, particularly in relation to the Iraq war. But until now I had assumed that Mr Campbell was essentially a rough-and-tumble former red-top tabloid journalist and bully who had a loose relationship with the truth.
Former spin doctor Alastair Campbell, left, refuses to accept any blame for himself or then Prime Minister Tony Blair for Britain's entry into the Iraq War.
How often I have quoted the words of Mr Justice Drake, who in a 1996 court case questioned the veracity of the future Torquemada of No 10. What happened on Tuesday altered my perception.
I don't doubt that, as in previous inquiries into the war, he twisted the truth a good deal in his 'evidence'.
But it dawned on me that he is no mere casual liar who calculatingly and cynically tells fibs.
He passionately believes in one cause - Tony Blair and the Iraq war - and, just as he was prepared to refashion reality when he and his master made the case for war, so he is happy to do so again nearly seven years later.
Anyone who disagrees with him is vilified: previous witnesses at the Chilcot Inquiry, such as Sir Christopher Meyer, former Ambassador to Washington, described as 'not accurate,' 'churlish' and 'glib'; the French, attacked several times because they had 'pulled the plug' on a UN resolution authorising force; the BBC, which had the temerity to allege he had 'sexed up' the case for war; and, of course, nearly all journalists, a group he thinks are mendacious, superficial or both.
Wanted: Tony Blair for war crimes. Arrest him and claim your reward
Chilcot and the courts won't do it, so it is up to us to show that we won't let an illegal act of mass murder go unpunished
The only question that counts is the one that the Chilcot inquiry won't address: was the war with Iraq illegal? If the answer is yes, everything changes. The war is no longer a political matter, but a criminal one, and those who commissioned it should be committed for trial for what the Nuremberg tribunal called "the supreme international crime": the crime of aggression.
But there's a problem with official inquiries in the United Kingdom: the government appoints their members and sets their terms of reference. It's the equivalent of a criminal suspect being allowed to choose what the charges should be, who should judge his case and who should sit on the jury. As a senior judge told the Guardian in November: "Looking into the legality of the war is the last thing the government wants. And actually, it's the last thing the opposition wants either because they voted for the war. There simply is not the political pressure to explore the question of legality – they have not asked because they don't want the answer."
Under the United Nations charter, two conditions must be met before a war can legally be waged. The parties to a dispute must first "seek a solution by negotiation" (article 33). They can take up arms without an explicit mandate from the UN security council only "if an armed attack occurs against [them]" (article 51). Neither of these conditions applied. The US and UK governments rejected Iraq's attempts to negotiate. At one point the US state department even announced that it would "go into thwart mode" to prevent the Iraqis from resuming talks on weapons inspection (all references are on my website). Iraq had launched no armed attack against either nation.
We also know that the UK government was aware that the war it intended to launch was illegal. In March 2002, the Cabinet Office explained that "a legal justification for invasion would be needed. Subject to law officers' advice, none currently exists." In July 2002, Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, told the prime minister that there were only "three possible legal bases" for launching a war – "self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC [security council] authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case." Bush and Blair later failed to obtain security council authorisation.
As the resignation letter on the eve of the war from Elizabeth Wilmshurst, then deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Office, revealed, her office had "consistently" advised that an invasion would be unlawful without a new UN resolution. She explained that "an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression". Both Wilmshurst and her former boss, Sir Michael Wood, will testify before the Chilcot inquiry tomorrow. Expect fireworks.
Without legal justification, the war with Iraq was an act of mass murder: those who died were unlawfully killed by the people who commissioned it.
Crimes of aggression (also known as crimes against peace) are defined by the Nuremberg principles as "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties". They have been recognised in international law since 1945. The Rome statute, which established the international criminal court (ICC) and which was ratified by Blair's government in 2001, provides for the court to "exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression", once it has decided how the crime should be defined and prosecuted.
There are two problems. The first is that neither the government nor the opposition has any interest in pursuing these crimes, for the obvious reason that in doing so they would expose themselves to prosecution. The second is that the required legal mechanisms don't yet exist. The governments that ratified the Rome statute have been filibustering furiously to delay the point at which the crime can be prosecuted by the ICC: after eight years of discussions, the necessary provision still has not been adopted.
Some countries, mostly in eastern Europe and central Asia, have incorporated the crime of aggression into their own laws, though it is not yet clear which of them would be willing to try a foreign national for acts committed abroad. In the UK, where it remains illegal to wear an offensive T-shirt, you cannot yet be prosecuted for mass murder commissioned overseas.
All those who believe in justice should campaign for their governments to stop messing about and allow the international criminal court to start prosecuting the crime of aggression. We should also press for its adoption into national law. But I believe that the people of this nation, who re-elected a government that had launched an illegal war, have a duty to do more than that. We must show that we have not, as Blair requested, "moved on" from Iraq, that we are not prepared to allow his crime to remain unpunished, or to allow future leaders to believe that they can safely repeat it.
But how? As I found when I tried to apprehend John Bolton, one of the architects of the war in George Bush's government, at the Hay festival in 2008, and as Peter Tatchell found when he tried to detain Robert Mugabe, nothing focuses attention on these issues more than an attempted citizen's arrest.
In October I mooted the idea of a bounty to which the public could contribute, payable to anyone who tried to arrest Tony Blair if he became president of the European Union. He didn't of course, but I asked those who had pledged money whether we should go ahead anyway. The response was overwhelmingly positive.
So today I am launching a website – www.arrestblair.org – whose purpose is to raise money as a reward for people attempting a peaceful citizen's arrest of the former prime minister. I have put up the first £100, and I encourage you to match it. Anyone meeting the rules I've laid down will be entitled to one quarter of the total pot: the bounties will remain available until Blair faces a court of law. The higher the reward, the greater the number of people who are likely to try.
At this stage the arrests will be largely symbolic, though they are likely to have great political resonance. But I hope that as pressure builds up and the crime of aggression is adopted by the courts, these attempts will help to press governments to prosecute. There must be no hiding place for those who have committed crimes against peace. No civilised country can allow mass murderers to move on.
Iraq inquiry: Lord Goldsmith looked at legality of attacks a year before invasion
Lord Goldsmith looked at the legality of launching attacks on Iraq nearly a year before the 2003 US-led invasion, the inquiry into the conflict heard. Published: 27.01.2010
Former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith gives evidence to the Chilcot InquiryPhoto: PA
The former attorney general said he was asked in June 2002 to advise on whether it would be lawful for Britain to carry out air strikes on Iraqi targets if a coalition aircraft was shot down.
He reviewed the legal basis for the no-fly zones maintained over Iraq on humanitarian grounds and concluded that there was a ''reasonable case'' for them.
Lord Goldsmith told the inquiry: ''The context was a proposal for what would be done in the event a coalition aircraft was shot down. There was a proposal in that event that certain targets would be attacked by coalition aircraft and I was being asked to advise on the lawfulness of attacking those targets.''
He said after looking ''very carefully'' at the legal basis for the no-fly zones he agreed with his predecessor as attorney general, Lord Williams, that they were lawful. The inquiry panel will go on to ask Lord Goldsmith detailed questions about how he came to advise Tony Blair that the Iraq war was legal.
As the Government's top lawyer at the time of the 2003 invasion, he was responsible for providing the advice that confirmed Mr Blair's decision to launch military action against Iraq.
He will be asked whether Ministers put pressure on him to agree the conflict was lawful.
Witnesses have already told the inquiry Lord Goldsmith expressed doubts about whether the war would be legal without another United Nations Security Council resolution.
A newly declassified document released yesterday showed he was initially ''pessimistic'' that there was sufficient legal basis for military action.
Iraq war was a crime of aggression: The damning verdict of top Whitehall lawyers which No.10 refused to accept By James Chapman 27.01.2010
Evidence: Sir Michael Wood arrives at the inquiry yesterday
Tony Blair and Jack Straw brushed aside repeated warnings from Government lawyers that they would not have a 'leg to stand on' if Britain invaded Iraq.
Devastating evidence at the Iraq inquiry yesterday revealed that every senior legal adviser at the Foreign Office believed the conflict was in breach of international law.
Astonishingly, Downing Street asked lawyers to assess what the consequences would be if Britain toppled Saddam Hussein without legal authority. When they received the lawyers' memo, No.10 demanded: 'Why has this been put in writing?'
Sir Michael Wood, then the Foreign Office's senior legal adviser, warned ministers again and again that to go to war without approval from a UN Security Council resolution would constitute a 'crime of aggression' in international law. He told them it risked turning into a foreign policy disaster on the scale of Britain's ill-fated invasion of Suez in 1956.
Less than two months before the Iraq War began in 2003, Sir Michael told ministers there was 'no doubt' that Britain could not lawfully use force against Iraq because it could not claim it was acting in self-defence, that it was trying to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe or that it had the authorisation of the UN.
A series of secret documents released to the Chilcot inquiry revealed that the lawyer's stance led to an extraordinary stand-off with Jack Straw, then Foreign Secretary.
Mr Straw, now Labour's Justice Secretary, insisted that while at the Home Office he had often been advised policy proposals were unlawful but gone ahead anyway.
Yesterday's revelations leave Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, who is due to appear today, and Mr Blair, who will give evidence on Friday, facing massive pressure.
Newly-declassified Government documents show Lord Goldsmith was initially clear that there was no sufficient legal basis for military action.
He even expressed concern about 'Chinese whispers' being put around Westminster that he took an ' optimistic view' of the legal position, when the opposite was true.
But after being summoned for last-minute talks with Mr Blair and Mr Straw - who warned against overly 'dogmatic' legal advice - he eventually ruled the conflict was lawful.
The secret documents show that Sir Michael, who has never spoken publicly before about the advice he gave the Government, first recorded his concerns in March 2002 as the drumbeat for an invasion grew louder.
Jack Straw (L): Rebuked the Foreign Office law chief for being 'dogmatic' Lord Goldsmith (R): Yielded to pressure to change his mind about legality of war
Dick Cheney (L): Told by Straw that UK would go to war even with no resolution Tony Blair (R): PM's staff demanded to know why legal advice was in writing
In one devastating memo in August of that year, he warned the idea of 'pre-emptive' military action had 'no basis in international law' and said to flagrantly disregard it would 'do lasting damage to the UK's international reputation (cf Suez)'.
Mr Straw's office went on to make an extraordinary request - apparently at Downing Street's behest - for an 'urgent' assessment of what might happen if Britain went to war without legal authority.
Sir Michael told ministers such a step would be 'inconceivable' and would break the duty of ministers to comply with the law, risk offences under the International Criminal Court Act and could leave ministers open to prosecutions for 'misfeasance in public office'.
He told the inquiry the request for advice on the consequences of an illegal war was 'curious', adding: 'I am still not entirely sure what the purpose was. I think it was to send off to Number Ten and it did go to Number Ten who said, "Why has this been put in writing?" is my recollection.'
As late as January 2003 - less than two months before military action was launched - Sir Michael protested at Mr Straw's assertion that it would still be possible to take action, even if the Government failed to get a second resolution authorising war.
'To use force without Security Council authority would amount to a crime of aggression,' he wrote in a memo to Mr Straw. Mr Straw replied: 'I note your advice but I do not accept it.'
Sir Michael told the inquiry: 'He took the view that I was being very dogmatic and that international law was pretty vague and that he wasn't used to people taking such a firm position.
'When he had been at the Home Office, he had often been advised things were unlawful but he had gone ahead anyway and won in the courts.'
Sir Michael told the inquiry that all the lawyers who had looked at the possibility of using UN resolutions from years before to justify military action believed Britain 'wouldn't have a leg to stand on'.
His deputy Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who resigned in protest on the eve of the invasion in March 2003, described the Government's treatment of the legal advice as 'lamentable'.
The prospect of launching an invasion without a second resolution was regarded as a 'nightmare scenario' within the Foreign Office, she told the inquiry. 'All the lawyers dealing with the matter in the Foreign Office were entirely of one view,' she said.
'We were talking about a massive invasion of another country, a change in the government of that country, and in those circumstances it did seem to me that we ought to follow the safest route. But it was clear that the Attorney General was not going to stand in the way of the Government.'
She was scathing about the Government's decision to put off asking Lord Goldsmith for his formal legal opinion on the war until as late as possible.
'For the attorney to have advised that the conflict would have been unlawful without a second resolution would have been very difficult at that stage, I would have thought handing Saddam Hussein a massive public relations advantage,' she said.
'I think the process that was followed in this case was lamentable.'
As well as leaving Mr Blair and Lord Goldsmith facing tough questions, the evidence is hugely damaging for Mr Straw, who is due to appear for a second time at the inquiry next month.
Earlier this month Mr Straw, making his first appearance, suggested that he clashed with Mr Blair over his belief that it was 'self-evidently unlawful' for Britain to oust Saddam Hussein without a UN mandate.
Margaret Beckett, who also gave evidence to the inquiry yesterday, insisted that even dead weapons expert Dr David Kelly believed Saddam was aiming to build up chemical and nuclear weapons stockpiles.
Labour's former foreign secretary risked causing offence by citing Dr Kelly in her argument that military action had been launched in good faith.
'I know that many people, of whom if I recall correctly Dr David Kelly was one, were of the view that while Saddam remained in power he would take any opportunity to rebuild his stockpiles, and indeed to go on to develop the nuclear weapons to which at that point he did not have access,' she told the inquiry.
Dr Kelly, a Government weapons adviser, was found dead after being exposed as the source of BBC claims that Downing Street 'sexed up' the case for war.
Mrs Beckett told the inquiry: 'I recognise with considerable regret that somehow the dialogue has moved in a direction where there are a lot of people who think nobody was acting in any kind of good faith. Well, I can say to you it never felt like that to me. We may have been wrong, but we were trying to do what was right.'
Labour MP John McDonnell said: 'The net is clearly closing in on those who took us in to the illegal and immoral war. The time is coming when the Crown Prosecution Service will be forced to consider the prosecution of those who perpetrated this act of unjust aggression.'
Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Ed Davey said: 'Michael Wood's statement is the final nail in the coffin of the case for a legal war.'
THE DAMNING DOCUMENTS
Dramatic evidence - including a series of classified documents --emerged at the inquiry, showing how ministers brushed aside warnings from chief Foreign Office lawyer Sir Michael Wood and Attorney General Lord Goldsmith. Here Political Editor JAMES CHAPMAN tells how Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw pushed ahead despite being told they risked a calamity on the scale of the Suez invasion in 1956.
MARCH 26, 2002
As the drumbeat for an invasion of Iraq grows louder, Mr Straw tells U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell he feels 'entirely comfortable' making the case for war to deal with Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Sir Michael gives the first of many warnings against such glib assurances. In a confidential memo to Mr Straw's senior aides he says: 'In order for military action to be justifiable under international law, there must be an acceptable legal basis. In the case of military action in relation to Iraq's WMD, this must be either selfdefence or [United Nations] Security Council authorisation.'
The aftermath of Iraq: People gather in front of a police crime lab after a car bomb exploded in central Baghdad yesterday where dozens were killed or injured
Continual unrest: Iraqis inspect the damage after a co-ordinated bomb blast near the Hamra Hotel in Jadriyah. Three huge minibus bombs targeted hotels used by foreigners in Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 36 people
AUGUST 15, 2002
In a devastating communique, Sir Michael warns categorically that an invasion would be illegal and risks turning into a Suez-style disaster.
The idea of 'pre-emptive' military action 'has no basis in international law' and regime change is not a 'lawful objective', he says.
Sir Michael writes to senior officials at the Foreign Office: 'The rule of law is as important internationally as it is at home. To act in flagrant disregard of the law would do lasting damage to the United Kingdom's international reputation (cf Suez). . .
'To advocate the use of force without a proper legal basis is to advocate the commission of the crime of aggression, one of the most serious offences under international law.'
OCTOBER 4, 2002
Mr Straw tells MPs that while it is 'desirable' to get a clear new UN resolution authorising war, there is 'ample power' through previous resolutions.
In a memo to ministers and officials, Sir Michael protests: 'If force is to be used, then some new finding from the Security Council will be needed, unless the facts are such as to justify action in selfdefence. As I have said before, I am aware of no such facts at present. . .
'The law and practice of the UN is quite clear . . . the use of force requires express authorisation.'
OCTOBER 15, 2002
Mr Straw responds to Sir Michael's warnings not by toning down the rhetoric but by making an extraordinary request for an assessment of the potential consequences of going to war illegally.
Simon McDonald, then the Foreign Secretary's private secretary, writes a confidential note to Foreign Office lawyers.
'The Foreign Secretary would be grateful for an urgent note about the practical consequences of the UK's acting without international legal authority in using force against Iraq,' it says.
'Could HMG (Her Majesty's Government) or individual service personnel be vulnerable in the UK or other courts to charges relating to unlawful use of force? Could the ICJ (International Court of Justice) have any role?'
OCTOBER 15, 2002
Sir Michael warns of a potentially dire outcome: 'It would be inconceivable that a Government which has on numerous occasions made clear its intention to comply with international law would order troops into a conflict without justification in international law.'
He goes on: 'The ministerial code notes the duty of ministers to comply with the law, including international law. There are requirements
both on ministers and civil servants to be honest in their dealings with Parliament; to act knowingly against international law could not be hidden from Parliament.'
He says there must 'at least be uncertainty' about whether troops involved in an illegal conflict would themselves be committing criminal offences.
'A further area of vulnerability may involve possible offences under the International Criminal Court Act
2002. A further point relates to the crime of aggression. Under international law, use of force of the kind envisaged, if not legally justified by Security Council resolution or as self-defence, would constitute an act of aggression.'
Individual ministers might also be vulnerable to a prosecution for ' misfeasance in public office', he adds.
NOVEMBER 8, 2002
The UN passes resolution 1441, which authorises the resumption of
weapons inspections and promises serious consequences for noncompliance. The Attorney General is not asked for his legal advice in the negotiations. Without specific Security Council authority, Sir Michael still believes this is not enough to form a legal basis for invasion.
NOVEMBER 11, 2002
Lord Goldsmith phones Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair's chief of staff, to complain about 'Chinese whispers' being put around Westminster that he has an 'optimistic view' of the legality of war without a second UN resolution.
He stresses that he is in fact ' pessimistic as to whether there would be a sound legal basis in such a situation for the use of force'.
NOVEMBER 12, 2002
Mr Straw talks to Lord Goldsmith and tells him Iraq has effectively been told 'comply or else'. A note of their conversation reveals the Attorney 'noted this, but again said the question was who was to decide the "or else" . . . the position remained that only the Security Council could decide on whether there had been a material breach (of previous UN resolutions) and/or whether all necessary means were authorised'.
JANUARY 21, 2003
Attorney General submits draft legal advice to Downing Street and Mr Straw. He still argues that invasion would not be legal without a further UN resolution.
JANUARY 24, 2003
In correspondence between London and Washington, Mr Straw tells U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney that Britain would go to war without a second resolution - 'a la Kosovo'.
Sir Michael protests. 'I hope there is no doubt that without a further decision of the Council, and extraordinary circumstances (of which at present there is no sign), the UK cannot lawfully use force against Iraq . . . to use force without Security Council authority would amount to the crime of aggression,' he tells Mr Straw's private secretary and other officials.
Sir Michael told the inquiry that he and Mr Straw also had a face-to-face meeting. 'He took the view that I was being very dogmatic and that international law was pretty vague and that he wasn't used to people taking such a firm position.
'When he had been at the Home Office, he had often been advised things were unlawful but he had gone ahead anyway and won in the courts.'
It was the first and only occasion in his career that a minister had simply dismissed his legal advice, he added.
Former Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett gives evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry in London, insisted even Dr David Kelly believed Saddam Hussein had WMD
JANUARY 29, 2003
Mr Straw takes the highly unusual step of writing directly to Sir Michael to rebuke him for being 'dogmatic', copying his message to the Attorney General and Sir David Manning, Tony Blair's foreign policy adviser.
'I note your advice, but I do not accept it,' Mr Straw says. 'In the Home Office . . . even on apparently open and shut issues, the originators of the (legal) advice offered to me accepted that there could be a different view, honestly and reasonably held. And so it turned out to be time and time again. I am as committed as anyone to international law and its obligations, but it is an uncertain field.'
FEBRUARY 3, 2003
Lord Goldsmith writes to Mr Straw to defend Sir Michael, insisting: 'If a Government legal adviser genuinely believes that a course of action would be unlawful, then it is his or her right and duty to say so.'
FEBRUARY 6, 2003
Mr Straw writes to Lord Goldsmith after receiving his draft legal advice. He asks him to 'carefully consider my comments before coming to a final conclusion', adding: 'I would appreciate a conservation with you as well.
It goes without saying that a unanimous and express Security Council resolution would be the safest legal basis for use of force against Iraq. But I have doubts about the negotiability of this in current circumstances. We are likely to have to go for something else.'
MARCH 7, 2003
Attorney General submits his formal advice to the PM. He says a reasonable case can be made that the previous UN resolutions justify war but warns this may not hold up in a court of law.
MARCH 11, 2003
Mr Blair, Mr Straw and chief of the defence staff meet Lord Goldsmith in Downing Street. The Attorney General is told he must come up with a 'yes or no' answer about the legality of war.
MARCH 13, 2003
After meeting a senior Treasury lawyer, and his Tory predecessor Lord Mayhew, Lord Goldsmith tells Mr Straw he has come to a 'better view' of the legality of military action and has decided to back the conflict. At 7pm he meets Blair allies Lord Falconer and Baroness Morgan to deliver the same message.
MARCH 17, 2003
Attorney General tells Parliament war is legal thanks to previous UN resolutions.
MARCH 18, 2003
Mr Blair wins Commons vote on going to war. Bombing begins.
PRESSURE FOR A 'YES OR NO' ANSWER
Elizabeth Wilmshurst: The deputy to Sir Michael, pictured giving evidence at the Inquiry, resigned on the eve of war
Lord Goldsmith was told he must deliver a 'yes or no' answer on the legality of war in the days before the conflict was launched, the inquiry was told.
The then Attorney General, the Government's chief legal adviser, was given the ultimatum at a Downing Street summit.
On March 7, 2003, Lord Goldsmith had presented his opinion to Tony Blair in which he argued that a ' reasonable case' could be made for war - but it would be open to challenge in the courts and it would be safer to have a second UN resolution.
But as diplomatic efforts to win UN approval for a resolution crumbled, the Attorney General was called to a meeting on March 11 with Mr Blair, Jack Straw, defence secretary Geoff Hoon and chief of the defence staff Admiral Lord Boyce.
His legal secretary, David Brummell, told the inquiry that he had been told at the meeting that he needed to give a 'clear statement' about the legality of the war.
'Would it be lawful, yes or no?', Mr Brummell said. Two days later, Lord Goldsmith came to a 'better view' that a further resolution was not legally necessary.
Mr Brummell denied that Lord Goldsmith had been pressurised into giving the green light for war.
But yesterday's disclosures leave Lord Goldsmith facing intense pressure to explain why he changed his mind on the legality of war in the days before the conflict began.
The inquiry heard startling evidence that throughout the buildup to war, the Attorney General agreed with Foreign Office lawyers who were warning that military action would be unlawful.
He clashed with Mr Straw over a draft legal opinion which he gave to Mr Blair on January 14.
Foreign Office lawyer Elizabeth Wilmshurst - who saw a copy - told the inquiry: 'His provisional view was that a second resolution was necessary'.
In a letter to Lord Goldsmith dated February 6, Mr Straw demanded a legal interpretation 'which coincides with our firm policy intention'.
He added: 'I have been very forcefully struck by a paradox in the culture of government lawyers, which is that the less certain the law is, the more certain in their views they become.
'In international law, my experience is of advice which is more dogmatic, even though the range of reasonable interpretations is almost always greater than in respect of domestic law.'
40 days that made illegal attack into legal war on Iraq
• First law chief said second UN vote needed • Then Bush lawyers changed his opinion • Eve of battle revision to give troops clear yes
Lord Goldsmith in the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war. Photograph: Felipe Trueba/EPA
Lord Goldsmith, attorney general at the time of the Iraq war, acknowledged today that he changed his advice on the legality of the invasion twice in the five weeks leading up the start of the conflict.
He admitted that he was first convinced by American counterparts in February 2003 that military action might possibly be legal without a second UN resolution, then clarified his advice days before war broke out in March after senior commanders convinced him that the armed forces "deserved" a "yes or no answer".
In nearly six hours of testimony before the Chilcot inquiry, the most detailed and gruelling of the inquiry sessions so far, panel members interrogated Goldsmith on the motivation behind the switches in his position over six months in the runup to the war. While he rarely appeared flustered, he presented a picture of someone kept out of the loop of key decision-making, first struggling to get his voice heard and finally accepting what appeared to be politically inevitable.
Andrew Sparrow on Lord Goldsmith's evidence to Chilcot Iraq inquiry Link to this audio
He told the inquiry that he continued to believe that military action would be unlawful without a second UN resolution until as late as February 2003, but changed his position after talks with the Bush administration's lawyers in Washington.
Today's evidence draws out some of the most important issues that Tony Blair will be pressed on when he appears before the inquiry on Friday.
In his evidence Goldsmith, the most senior legal adviser to Tony Blair's government, said he:
• Agreed that the wording of the crucial UN resolution 1441 used to trigger an invasion was unclear and ambiguous.
• Told Tony Blair in January 2003, two months before the invasion, that its lawfulness was questionable.
• Said he knew, however, that the United States would never agree to a fresh UN resolution.
• Subsequently told ministers and defence chiefs that his "better view" was that war would be clearly legal after all.
In late 2002, he was expressing concern about "optimism" in the government that the UN security council had provided legal cover for an invasion. He warned Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, not to assume that it would be "all right on the night". But on his return from Washington he now took the view, he said, that while a fresh UN decision would have been a "safer" course, a "reasonable case" could be made for war without going back to the UN.
Goldsmith told the inquiry that the US had put down "red lines", insisting that they would not allow the UN to veto military action. There was therefore no chance of a new UN resolution. He claimed that the French, who opposed the war, privately conceded that they had lost the argument. However, his assertion was later strongly denied by a senior French official close to Jacques Chirac, the French president.
Goldsmith said the official legal advice he presented to Blair on 7 March 2003 was a "green light for military action", although he warned that it carried some risk that Britain would face action in an international court.
He then heard that Lord Boyce, chief of the defence staff, and Lord Turnbull, the cabinet secretary, demanded a "clear view, a yes or no answer", the inquiry was told.
"Both were saying we are potentially at risk personally if we participate in the war if it turns out to be unlawful", Goldsmith told the inquiry. "Our troops deserved more than my saying there was a reasonable case so my responsibility was to come down on one side or another."
Asked why the case for war had suddenly become a stronger, Goldsmith replied: "It is the judgment you make of it. I was being overcautious. It wasn't good enough to say there was a reasonable case. I reached the view on balance the better view was that it [an invasion] was lawful."
Asked why an invasion could not have been delayed as Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, had not given up, Goldsmith replied: "That is not a question for a lawyer." He said it was for his clients – "ultimately" Blair, he agreed – to decide on the basis of their view of the evidence whether Iraq continued to be in "material breach" of its disarmament obligations.
When Boyce asked for "unequivocal" advice that war would be legal, Goldsmith said he asked Downing Street. No 10 replied that that was indeed the case. Goldsmith said he was ready for a debate in cabinet but it did not take place.
"Whether or not military action as a matter of policy was right or wrong was not for me to judge but as far as legality is concerned I stand by that advice."
He added that he reached his opinion "independently". He continued: "And it was my genuine view."
The inquiry panel and Goldsmith expressed their concern during yesterday's hearing that government departments were still insisting that documents passed to the inquiry could not be published. The documents are believed to relate to Goldsmith's advice on the legality of war . He told the inquiry: "I want to make it clear that I didn't agree with the decision that has apparently been made that certain documents are not to be declassified but I will give the evidence that the inquiry seeks."
The Cabinet Office said the documents concerned "technical and complex legal issues regarding the law officer's advice or the principle of legal professional privilege … on which we may require further advice". It added: "In these difficult cases, the government has communicated to the inquiry that it requires more time to give a view on declassification."
On Tuesday, Sir Michael Wood, chief legal adviser at the Foreign Office, and Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who resigned as his deputy over Iraq, said they considered the war contravened international law.
Iraq war inquiry: Tony Blair faces six hours of questioning today
Former prime minister expected to strongly assert that he acted in good faith when taking the decision to send British troops to join the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003
Tony Blair, who resisted calls for a public inquiry into Iraq while he was in office. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images
Tony Blair will give evidence to the Iraq inquiry today in a long-awaited appearance that is expected to shed some light on the most controversial decision of his premiership.
Sir John Chilcot and the four other members of the inquiry will question the former prime minister for six hours at the QE2 centre in London, where police have mounted a large security operation ahead of the protests being planned by anti-war campaigners.
Blair has always defended his decision to send British troops to join the American-led invasion in 2003 and today he is expected to strongly assert that he acted in good faith and that the war brought benefits to the people of Iraq.
But he is likely to face tough questioning about the events leading up to invasion, and in particular about the allegation that he was giving private assurances to the US president, George Bush, about Britain's willingness to go to war that contradicted what he was telling parliament and the public in the months leading up to the war about no decisions having been taken.
Blair resisted calls for a public inquiry into Iraq while he was in office and some Labour figures believe that the party's electoral prospects could be damaged by the evidence that has been emerging since Chilcot started taking evidence in November last year.
Gordon Brown originally wanted the inquiry to sit in private when he set it up, but Chilcot decided that almost all evidence should be heard in public.
The inquiry held a ballot for today's hearing, which will start at 9.30am, and more than 3,000 people applied. There are 60 seats in the room where Blair is giving evidence, and another 700 seats in the QE2 centre where people can watch the proceedings on a screen, but all the places have been allocated, and the inquiry has asked anyone without a ticket to stay away.
The inquiry has heard that Blair started preparing for war in 2002, and he will be asked about the private assurances he gave to Bush, particularly at a meeting they held at Crawford in Texas in April 2002 and in a series of private letters he sent to the US president later that year.
Sir Christopher Meyer, the US ambassador to Washington at the time, told the inquiry last year that he still did not know "what degree of convergence was, if you like, signed in blood, at the Crawford ranch".
Blair justified the decision to go to war on the grounds that he wanted to disarm Iraq and force it to comply with the conditions imposed by UN resolutions. But Lord Turnbull, the cabinet secretary at the time of the war, told the inquiry that he thought Blair was originally a believer in "regime change" and he urged the inquiry to question Blair about this closely.
Turnbull said he was surprised by the interview Blair gave to Fern Britton last year in which he said that he would still have thought it right to remove Saddam Hussein, even if he had known Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
Turnbull said the inquiry should question Blair about the comment on the grounds that it appeared to contradict what he said about disarmament being the reason for the war.
Blair will also be questioned about the dossier published in September 2002 about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Chilcot himself has suggested that it was wrong for Blair to say in the foreword to the document that the intelligence about Iraq's WMD was "beyond doubt", and other members of the inquiry have suggested that there was no evidence to support Blair's claim that the WMD threat from Iraq was "growing".
The inquiry will want to know why Blair did not allow the military to start buying the equipment it needed for war at an early stage. Geoff Hoon, defence secretary at the time, told the inquiry that Blair did not want this work to begin too soon because it would undermine his attempts to get an agreement at the UN.
Blair will also be asked about the planning for postwar Iraq. The inquiry has heard complaints from many witnesses about the fact that Britain and the US did not prepare properly for the aftermath and, although Blair raised concerns about this with Bush, the evidence suggests that his warnings were ignored.
The Iraq war inquiry: will it call Blair to account?
The Chilcot inquiry will question Tony Blair about the Iraq war. So might we see the real truth emerge at last?
I feel 'responsibility but no regret', says Tony Blair in final statement Stephen Bates 29.01.2010.
Amid heckles, the former PM told Chilcot inquiry Saddam Hussein was a 'monster' who needed to be dealt with
Watch highlights from Tony Blair's afternoon session at the Iraq war inquiry Link to this video
Tony Blair told the Chilcot inquiry, at the end of six hours of evidence this afternoon, that he had no regrets for Britain's part in the Iraq war and its aftermath.
In a final statement before the hearing ended just after 5pm, he said that his decision as prime minister had been a "huge responsibility", adding: "There is not a single day that passes that I don't think about it."
But he insisted: "If we had left Saddam in power, even knowing what we know now, we would still have had to deal with him ... we have a completely new security environment today.
"I am sorry it was divisive and I tried my level best to bring people back together again. If I am asked whether Iraq is better, I believe in time to come, if it becomes the country its people want to see, we can look back with an immense sense of pride."
Blair was briefly interrupted by heckles from the public gallery, but continued: "I feel responsibility but no regret for removing Saddam Hussein. I think he was a monster. I believe he threatened not just the region but the world, and in the circumstances we faced it was better to deal with his threat and remove him from office. The world is better as a result.
Blair insisted that conditions in Iraq had improved as a result of the occupation and repeatedly blamed Iran and al-Qaida for attempting to destabilise the British and American efforts to restore order.
He told the Chilcot inquiry in a robust defence of his government's policy: "Nobody would want to go back to the days when they had no freedom, no opportunity and no hope. We are in exactly the same position in Afghanistan. You have got to be prepared for the long haul and prepared to stick it through to the end."The former prime minister admitted that it would have been better for the allies not to have dismantled the Iraqi army after the 2003 war and professed himself shocked and angry to learn of the abuses of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib detention centre, because it damaged the occupiers' reputation.
In nearly six hours of questioning, Blair acknowledged few mistakes or regrets about his handling of the Iraq war and its aftermath. He said outside forces – specifically al-Qaida and Iran – undermined British and American efforts. Questioned about the number of casualties during the occupation – a rising toll year by year until 2007 – he retorted: "You have to ask who was doing the killing. The coalition forces were not the ones, it was the terrorists."
He said the allies could have handled "indigenous criminality" but: "People did not think that al-Qaida and Iran would play the role they did."
The influence of Iran has been a recurrent theme of the former prime minister's evidence today.
Earlier in the session Blair said that had the advice of Lord Goldsmith, the government's attorney general, been that an invasion would be illegal the preparations for war would have been stopped in their tracks. "If Peter (Goldsmith) had said this would not be justified lawfully, we would have been unable to take action ... a lot turned on that decision. Therefore it was important that it was by the attorney general and done in a way which we were satisfied was right and correct."
Blair denied that the armed services' leadership was under-prepared or denied equipment for the war. "I don't think I refused a request for money or equipment at any time as prime minister," he said. "They regarded themselves as ready and they performed as ready. They did an extraordinary job."
The former prime minister robustly defended his decision to take Britain to war against Saddam Hussein in 2003 because he believed "beyond doubt" that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
He insisted that the joint intelligence committee's assessments were consistently strong that Iraq had a WMD programme.
"It was at least reasonable for me at the time, given this evidence of what the JIC was telling me, that this was a threat I should take very seriously," he said.
"All the intelligence we received was to the same effect. There were people perfectly justifiably and sensibly also saying that you cannot sit around and wait ... you have got to take action clearly and definitively.
"I decided that this intelligence justified our [understanding] that Saddam continued to pose a significant WMD threat."
Blair's only concession was that tabloid headlines in the run-up to the war that Iraq had weapons it could deploy in 45 minutes should have been corrected by the government. But he maintained that the figure only later took on a significance that had not been appreciated at the time.
He said he had sought to give the Bush administration the assurance that it would not act alone. The absolute issue was weapons of mass destruction and that a brutal regime could not be allowed to develop them.
He told the inquiry: "It was right for us to be with America since we believed in this too."
Blair argued that he had had differences with Bush: in persuading him that the Middle East peace process was linked to the terrorism process and he acknowledged that Britain had never believed that Saddam's regime was linked to al-Qaida.
But he added that rogue regimes had the capacity to link up with terrorist organisations.
The former prime minister, now a Middle East peace negotiator, pointed repeatedly to Iran as posing a current threat to the region because of its willingness to assist terrorist organisations. He told the inquiry: "When I look at the way Iran links up with terror groups, a large part of the destabilisation in the Middle East comes from Iran."
"There are very strong links between terrorist organisations and states that will sponsor them. There are those states, Iran in particular, which are linked to this extreme and misguided view of Islam."
Earlier, the former prime minister opened his appearance before the Chilcot inquiry in London by stating that the government's assessment of the scale of a terrorist threat changed dramatically after the al-Qaida attacks on the US on 11 September 2001.
Looking trim and tanned, but greyer than when he was in office, Blair told the inquiry that after 9/11 the British and American view changed "dramatically".
"Here's what changed for me: the whole calculus of risk," he said. "The point about this terrorist act was over 3,000 people had been killed, an absolutely horrific event. But if these people, inspired by this religious fanaticism could have killed 30,000, they would have [done].
"Those of us who dealt with terrorism by the IRA [knew] their terrorism was directed towards political purposes, it was within a framework you could understand. That completely changed from that moment – Iran, Libya, North Korea, Iraq ... All of this had to be brought to an end."
Blair told the inquiry that prior to 9/11 the British and American policy of containing Saddam Hussein's regime with "smart" sanctions had been worth trying, although there were holes in the way they were working.
He pointed out that his government's first military action against Iraq had been taken in conjunction with Bill Clinton's administration in 1998.
"I would fairly describe our policy as doing our best, hoping for the best, but with a different calculus of risk assessment," he said. "We thought he was a risk, but we thought it was appropriate to contain it."
The former prime minister avoided demonstrators outside the Queen Elizabeth Centre in Westminster, where the inquiry is being held, by being driven in early through a cordoned-off area at the back of the building.
At the start of the hearing at 9.30am, inquiry chairman Sir John Chilcot warned members of the public attending not to interrupt and distract the session. He also stated that Blair may be called back at a later stage to give more evidence.
Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair's former chief of staff, gives evidence before Sir John Chilcot's panel. Photograph: PA
If you sit in the public seats at the Chilcot inquiry, one of the first things you notice is that the witnesses have their backs to you. There is a large television screen on one side of the surprisingly small, cold room, showing their testimony live; but you can watch that from home on the official website, so at first it feels a little disappointing to attend one of the long sessions and be presented, in the flesh, with only a rear view of the invaders of Iraq. From behind, one important man in a suit can seem much like another.
And yet, as the air conditioning hums and the politicians and civil servants and soldiers lay out their elaborate defences, it becomes clear that this perspective does have its compensations. Each witness sits at the same bare desk, only a few feet away, in an exposing black chair like a Mastermind contestant. And each gives off their own little physical signals, deliberately or not.
A seemingly smooth senior official from the Ministry of Defence describes the withdrawal of British forces from Iraq as "orderly, efficient and entirely peaceful", while jogging his feet furiously under the desk. Lieutenant General Barney White-Spunner, bulky and uniformed, commander of those forces during some of the fiercest fighting, answers questions respectfully enough; but his fingers drum impatiently on an armrest.
Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair's former chief of staff and Iraq confidant, sits with theatrical ease, lanky legs and feet splayed; yet he rocks his ankles from side to side when challenged. Alastair Campbell, Blair's even closer Iraq confidant, casually half-stifles a yawn as he begins his testimony – but also kneads the side of a finger with a tense thumb. Tomorrow, when Blair himself appears as a witness, he might be best advised to sit very still.
Beyond the witnesses, facing the public, sit the five members of the inquiry panel. Since the inquiry was announced last June – the fifth official British investigation in less than seven years into the 2003 Iraq war – it has often seemed that these inquisitors are being judged as much as the witnesses. The inquiry is much more ambitious than its predecessors: covering the hugely controversial build-up to the war, the conduct of the conflict itself, and the often chaotic aftermath – a total period of more than eight years, during which 179 British military personnel and an estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilians were killed.
The pressure for a definitive reckoning has been building ever since the 2004 Hutton and Butler reports so spectacularly failed to provide one. Since 2006, the year before Gordon Brown became prime minister, there had been regular hints from him and his allies that a Brown administration would differentiate itself from Blair's by properly examining what happened in Iraq. Yet on the day the Chilcot inquiry was unveiled, the Conservative leader, David Cameron, dismissed it as "an establishment stitch-up". That opinion has been widely shared since.
At times, the inquiry has not helped itself. This is from the "frequently asked questions" section of the Chilcot website: "Why is the inquiry being held now? Governments decide the timings of inquiries . . . Who picked the members? The prime minister. Does the inquiry have a freedom of information policy? The inquiry is not a public authority . . . so the Freedom of Information Act does not apply. Will the inquiry be able to apportion blame? The inquiry is not a court . . . nobody is on trial. When will the report be published? Late 2010 and possibly later."
Then there are the inquisitors themselves. None of them is a lawyer, despite the Iraq war being a minefield of legal issues. All are peers, and four out of the five are men; the sole woman is Baroness Usha Prashar. What is more, all four men seem to have pro-government elements in their biographies.
The chairman, Sir John Chilcot, a former senior civil servant, was part of the Butler inquiry panel which, in the eyes of most observers, was robust in its detailed judgments but too charitable in its conclusions. Sir Martin Gilbert is the official biographer of Winston Churchill; in 2004 he wrote in the Observer, "George W Bush and Tony Blair . . . may well, with the passage of time . . . join the ranks of [Franklin] Roosevelt and Churchill [as war leaders] when Iraq has a stable democracy."
Sir Lawrence Freedman is another grand British historian – professor of war studies at King's College London since 1982 – with less than neutral past views on Iraq. In the lead-up to war, he repeatedly wrote hawkish articles for British newspapers about the strategic threat allegedly posed by Saddam Hussein. In 1999, he contributed heavily to a famous Blair speech in Chicago that set out the arguments for military action against repressive and dangerous regimes.
Finally there is Sir Roderic Lyne, a former British ambassador to Russia. In Alastair Campbell's diaries he is referred to fondly as "Rod". In June 2003, a few weeks after the invasion of Iraq, the Times reported that during an international summit in St Petersburg, "Campbell took time out to race Sir Roderic Lyne through six miles of city streets. This was the third in a series of three races that the pair have run."
Yet for all this apparent cosiness, the inquiry has uncovered more since it began its public hearings 10 weeks ago than its many critics expected. On Tuesday, the foreign office's chief legal adviser at the time of the war, Sir Michael Wood, told the inquiry that in 2003 he had considered "the use of force against Iraq [to be] contrary to international law", but that the then foreign secretary, Jack Straw, had rejected his advice. In November, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's ambassador to the UN in 2003, told the inquiry that the Iraq invasion was of "questionable legitimacy". Earlier this month, Lord Turnbull, the cabinet secretary during the war, said that an "insider group" of Blair and a few advisers, "operating on false information", had controlled Iraq policy: "The cabinet system in general . . . kind of degenerated."
The former defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, has revealed that in Iraq, "quite a lot of [our] soldiers went into action in green combats" because Britain did not equip them in time with desert uniforms. And Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6 and a former adviser to Blair on Iraq, has described the government as utterly unprepared for the insurgency which followed the invasion: "Frankly, had we known the scale of the violence, it might well have led to second thoughts about the entire project."
Among professional Chilcot-watchers, there is a quietly growing sense of expectation. At these hearings, the Blair line on Iraq may finally be suffering death by a thousand cuts.
The inquiry is being held at a heavy grey conference centre in Westminster in central London. Every day when there is a public session, registration for attendees begins at 9am. There are some 60 public seats in the inquiry room (depending on how many official observers are also present), and they are allocated on a first-come basis, with Blair's appearance tomorrow the only exception.
Securing a seat is rarely difficult. Usually around 8am, a tiny, polite queue begins to form in the icy gloom outside the conference centre. In the queue are the sort of people you see at a book festival – overwhelmingly studying or retired, more women than men, generally white and middle-class. Iraqis, despite living in London in large numbers, are conspicuous by their absence.
Some people in the queue express a quiet anger about the war. "I never march, but I went on the million-strong march," says an elderly woman with a cane who is waiting to watch Jonathan Powell. "And this dreadful man, Blair, he's still getting away with it. I just hope somebody will . . ." She slowly shakes her head: ". . . I don't know what."
Yet just as often, people talk about the witnesses as if they were festival performers: "Did you see Alastair Campbell?" says one middle-aged woman to another. "He's an enormous guy. He came in and threw down his briefcase." Given Labour's election prospects, the inquiry may be the last public appearance for Blair's inner circle as true political celebrities.
At the registration desk, attendees must sign in and show a photo ID: a small sign that the Iraq war has not been good for British civil liberties. The queuers obediently proffer their passports. Then a series of no-frills temporary signs reading "Iraq inquiry" lead deep into the conference centre, past empty rooms much larger than the one hired for Chilcot, into a corridor at the back of the building. Here, members of the public must surrender mobile phones and laptops; the outside world begins to recede.
In the inquiry room, the blinds are always drawn in the single broad window that faces Parliament Square, where the peace protestor Brian Haw has been camped with his Iraq and anti-Blair placards for the last eight years. The Chilcot rules forbid attendees from "the display of banners or the throwing of objects", and instruct them to listen to the witnesses and their inquisitors in silence. As Chilcot himself put it last month, in a statement on the inquiry's desired tone: "We are not here to provide public sport."
On 8 January, to hear the smooth man from the Ministry of Defence and the current British ambassador to Iraq, there were half a dozen people in the public seats. At 10am, the first witness entered and a churchy hush descended. For the next three hours – the length of a standard session – the panel probed with well-mannered relentlessness. Their voices were low and precise and studiedly emotionless, but after a while the inquiry members' different approaches became clear.
Chilcot himself questions witnesses sparingly. He is 70 and has a soft, almost grandfatherly manner that conceals decades of experience in sensitive civil service roles, often involving the intelligence services and Ulster. Freedman is slightly younger and blunter, a heavy-set man who is an authority on nuclear deterrence and the Falklands war. When civilian witnesses are vague or contradictory about military matters, he impatiently points out their weaknesses.
Gilbert is friendlier: he makes eye contact with witnesses and nods encouragingly. He seems to want to build relationships. Prashar gives no such indication. She was made a life peer by Blair in 1999, aged only 51, after a precocious career in quangos and charities concerned with poverty, prison policy and race relations – but she gives no hint of wanting to return any favours. Her manner is severe: pursed lips, a hawk-like stare, the occasional disapprovingly worded question. On the very first day of the inquiry, summarising the Blair government's tendency to give different explanations for its Iraq policy to different audiences, she said: "It seems a deliberate policy of ambiguity."
Lyne seems to share her scepticism. Mouth permanently turned down, eyes narrow, chin resting on intertwined hands, he is like the bad cop at an Oxbridge interview. It is as if he is determined to erase that history as a running buddy of Campbell. Near the end of the session with the MoD man, who had been insisting that in Iraq the Americans valued the British military contribution, Lyne raised an eyebrow. "We weren't a sardine against a whale?"
Such moments are the reward for spending so many hours in this small room – moments when the rickety, but never-quite-demolished, rationale for the invasion erected by Blair and his people almost a decade ago seems to lose another of its props. But you need strong powers of concentration to catch these moments; often, the hearings are as slow and endless as an attritional session in a Test match.
Answers from witnesses can go on for many minutes: evasive politicians know how to eat up time in a tricky interview. One regular attendee in the public seats, a very upright woman who wears smart scarves, knits while she listens. Just before or just after the lunch break, other members of the public sometimes slump and doze off.
But on the days that the Blair inner circle give evidence, the atmosphere is different. For Campbell's appearance, every place in the public gallery was taken, which had never happened before. As soon as I sat down and took out my notebook, a woman in a neighbouring seat with an intense air introduced herself. "I am from one of the bereaved families," she said. "My sister was kidnapped and died in Iraq."
Margaret Hassan was a British aid worker murdered during the Baghdad insurgency in 2004. Her family saw video footage of her captivity and death. Hassan's sister, Deirdre Manchanda, was contemptuous about the inquiry: "Sir John Chilcot," she said, with heavy sarcasm, "I wish he was my grandfather. When he consulted the bereaved families [before the hearings], I said, 'This is a huge conference centre, get another room for when Tony Blair appears. Or can the bereaved families have reserved seats that day?'"
Manchanda went on: "I wouldn't shake Tony Blair's hand. But like other people here from the bereaved families, I haven't thrown eggs. We have conducted ourselves in a dignified way. Chilcot wrote back very politely, but not one proposal I put was agreed to."
A press officer for the inquiry says a small, controllable room was chosen in order to mimic the sober proceedings of "a Commons select committee" – a rather modest model, you might think, for a supposedly seminal public investigation of Britain's most controversial war since its 1956 invasion of Suez.
Chilcot has shown other limitations so far. Sometimes its machinery seems underpowered. Throughout each session a lone secretary does a simultaneous transcription, which is shown on a large monitor in the room. Every day I attended this month, the transcriber never changed. Early one evening, after a witness from the Foreign Office had spent many minutes doggedly trying to persuade the inquiry panel that "Iraq is now seen, I think widely, as a success story", the transcriber asked for proceedings to be halted. "We've been going for almost two hours," she announced, "and I'm exhausted." Chilcot gave her a kindly look, then abruptly decreed the session over. There was no mention of using a back-up typist.
More damagingly, perhaps, there has been no testimony from foreign witnesses: no Iraqis, no French diplomats to explain why their government refused to back the invasion, and above all, no Americans.
George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice – these spectres from the recent past haunt almost every passage of testimony from the British politicians and civil servants. At the inquiry 10 days ago, Jonathan Powell, a veteran of decades of transatlantic diplomacy, gave, in his languid, insider's way, a slightly terrifying account of how the "special relationship" worked over Iraq.
Asked to encapsulate how Blair responded to Bush's desire to invade, Powell said: "If you just go to someone and say 'You're completely wrong' . . . or you say 'I'm not going to do anything with you', your amount of influence is less." A few days before, Campbell was even franker: "The PM [Blair] – his instinct and his leadership would [always] say we should be with the Americans. Does that mean you tailor your policy to suit theirs?" Campbell unconvincingly answered his own question: "No . . ."
When not invoking the special relationship, the testimony of pro-war diehards such as Campbell has often relied, as you might expect, on playing games with words. At one point, the ex-spin doctor claimed audaciously: "If [the UN weapons inspector] Hans Blix had been able to say, 'He [Saddam Hussein] has got rid of the lot,' that would have been regime change – in that it would have been a different sort of regime." The inquiry panel did not respond. Whether they were persuaded by, or dismissive of, the logic was hard to judge. But a rebellious groan of disbelief came from the public gallery.
The contempt of parts of Whitehall for Blair's Iraq enterprise has also been obvious. Lord Turnbull became cabinet secretary in late 2002 with Bush and Blair, according to many accounts, already set on war, and was subsequently kept out of the loop on Iraq by what he called Blair's "insider group". At Chilcot two weeks ago, he got his chance to take revenge. Tall and dapper and self-possessed, wearing a perpetual half-smile, he first sought to establish his own innocence – "I had no part in the preparation of the dossier [on WMD]" – then he was withering about the conduct of the war.
There had been, he said, a kind of collective delusion in Downing Street about the rightness and practicality of invasion – "a prematurely achieved consensus", in his mandarin's stiletto phrase. Turnbull waved a hand and gave an example: "[British government] papers said Iraq had a functioning public sector. In the event, it partly collapsed of its own accord . . ." Turnbull paused for effect. "And Bremer [the US governor of Iraq] destroyed what was left."
The Chilcot inquiry is partly about reputations. Witnesses want to protect or even polish theirs; and they sometimes want to damage others'. Campbell, still the loyal Blairite hitman, spent sections of his testimony rubbishing earlier testimony from Blair's Iraq critics. Powell, the more subtle Blairite, suggested almost in passing that Gordon Brown was more involved in Iraq than previously supposed: the costs of the British military expedition, Powell murmured, "were discussed with Gordon Brown and with the Treasury".
Last week, Jack Straw, by his own account a reluctant supporter of the war, halted his testimony at one sensitive point and gave the most fleeting of sly smiles. "You'll have an opportunity," he said, "to ask Mr Blair about that next Friday."
But Chilcot also touches on deeper issues. Modern Iraq was effectively created by Britain at the end of the first world war: the amalgamation of three provinces from the defeated Ottoman empire. Since then, Iraq has been a British mandate (or semi-colony), a fertile territory for British oil companies, the object of British military attack in 1941, 1991, 1998, 2000 and 2003, and the labyrinthine subject of successive British official inquiries. The 1992-1996 Scott inquiry into arms sales to Iraq; the 2004 Lloyd inquiry into "Gulf war illnesses" suffered by British troops in the 1991 war; the Hutton inquiry; the Butler inquiry . . . Chilcot sometimes feels like just another grope towards the same uncomfortable truth: that the British state still feels it has a right to an influence over Iraq, and has, over the decades, done many questionable things to maintain it.
At Chilcot earlier this month, the current ambassador to Iraq, complete with pinkish tan and determinedly positive manner, pointed out that, "We are the only country for whom the Iraqis have a specific nickname." Lyne asked what it was. "Abu Naji," said the ambassador. Lyne asked what that meant. "It is untranslatable," said the ambassador, "but it is a slightly backhanded compliment . . . a sense that the British are these nasty, cunning operators, who never tell you exactly what they think and what they mean . . . but there is also a sense of affection." From the historians and Whitehall operators on the inquiry panel, there was rare, knowing laughter.
So how will they treat Blair tomorrow? Chilcot, says someone who knows him, is "worried about getting Blair wrong", about being seen as too soft. From the increasingly combative tone of the hearings, it does not feel as if the former prime minister is going to escape entirely. Yet his Iraq inner circle, such as the former attorney general Lord Goldsmith yesterday, have been strikingly unyielding at the inquiry so far.
British official inquiries are always hard to read while in progress: Lord Hutton, before he issued his evasive Iraq report, was widely portrayed as outspoken and tough. And Chilcot, with its ever-shifting timetable and cast of characters – foreign witnesses may eventually be called – seems a particularly volatile project.
"It is fluid," says an inquiry press officer. "It is going where the evidence is taking it." And its findings will probably emerge under a different government and in a new political landscape: they may be devastating, or the caravan may quickly move on.
For now, there are days when the inquiry's small, cold room in Westminster feels like the centre of the world. On Tuesday, for an electric hour, the witness was Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the Foreign Office lawyer who resigned after her view that war would be illegal was ignored. When she finished giving evidence, there was, for the first time, and in direct contravention of the inquiry rules, a great spontaneous crackle of applause from the public gallery. It felt like a release, a statement – a small vindication of the inquiry. But the official transcript does not record it.
From Times Online
January 29, 2010
Tony Blair admits Saddam threat was overstated
Philippe Naughton
Tony Blair opened himself up to a charge of misleading Parliament today when he told the Iraq inquiry that by any objective analysis the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's chemical and biological weapons programme had not increased after 9/11.
That statement directly contradicted Mr Blair's warning to MPs in September 2002 – six months before the invasion – that Saddam's weapons programme was "active, detailed and growing".
The former Prime Minister was making his long-awaited appearance as the star witness before Sir John Chilcot's panel of inquiry, where, despite a nervous start, he delivered a typically unrepentant account of the decision to commit British forces to the US-led invasion of Iraq.
"This isn’t about a lie, or a conspiracy, or a deceit, or a deception, this is a decision," he told the panel.
"And the decision I had to take was, given Saddam’s history, given his use of chemical weapons, given the over 1 million people whose deaths he caused, given 10 years of breaking UN resolutions, could we take the risk of this man reconstituting his weapons programme?"
Mr Blair was at pains to set the Iraq conflict in the context of the post-9/11 world, explaining that the events of September 11, 2001, had changed the "calculus of risk" for the transatlantic allies.
However, as part of that analysis Mr Blair conceded that the threat posed by Saddam's purported programme to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD) had not actually grown — only the understanding of that threat. "It wasn’t that objectively he had done more," he said of the Iraqi leader. "It was that our perception of the risk had shifted."
The comment appeared to contradict Mr Blair's own statement to the Commons on September 24, 2002, as he presented what later became known as the "sexed-up" intelligence dossier on Iraq's WMD programme. Mr Blair told MPs: "His weapons of mass destruction programme is active, detailed and growing. The policy of containment is not working. The weapons of mass destruction programme is not shut down; it is up and running now."
That dossier included the now discredited claim that President Saddam could deploy WMD within 45 minutes.
Several hundred demonstrators — chanting "Jail Tony" and "Blair lied" — gathered outside the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre, although the former prime minister managed to slip in via a cordoned-off back entrance two hours before he was due to appear.
It was a far cry from the mass marches of February 2003, a month before the invasion, when millions marched around the country to protest against the looming war.
From Times Online 30.01.2010
Iraq inquiry: Tony Blair slated for Iran threat claim
(Matt Lloyd/Times & Canon Young Photographer of the Year)
Protestors demonstrated outside the conference centre as Tony Blair gave evidence to the Chilcot inquiry Robin Henry
Tony Blair’s claims that Iran now poses as serious a threat as Saddam Hussein's Iraq have been dismissed as a "piece of spin" by the British ambassador to Tehran.
Sir Richard Dalton was fiercely critical of Blair's testimony at the Iraq inquiry yesterday, in which the former Prime Minister compared Iran's nuclear proliferation to the perceived threat of Saddam Hussein's weapons program before the war.
Blair, now a Middle East peace envoy, said the international community must now be prepared to take a "very hard, tough" line with Tehran.
He also attacked Iran for supporting the Islamic extremist insurgency after the Iraq regime had been toppled, saying it had nearly caused the coalition mission to fail.
However today Sir Richard said Blair was only suggesting a harder line with Iran to justify his own military action against Iraq.
“To say that Iran was the principal reason seemed to me to be part of a broader argument which he was trying to make, namely that it makes what he did in Iraq look better if he extends it to the future and says the policies then might have to be applied," the ambassador said.
“But Iran is a completely different situation.”
He also warned that the next government should make it clear they would not pursue the same action.
Sir Richard told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “One result of Tony Blair’s intervention on Iran - he mentioned Iran 58 times - is to put the question of confronting Iran into play in the election.”
“We need to be much clearer, as voters, with our politicians and with our candidates that we expect a different behaviour and a greater integrity in our democracy next time.”
Blair raised Iran during his day-long questioning at yesterday’s session of the Iraq Inquiry.
In explaining his reasons for going to war, he said: “My fear was — and I would say I hold this fear stronger today than I did back then as a result of what Iran particularly today is doing — my fear is that states that are highly repressive or failed, the danger of a WMD link is that they become porous, they construct all sorts of different alliances with people.”
He went on to blame Tehran for destabilising the Iraq in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion.
Blair said despite extensive planning they had not foreseen the role played by al-Qaeda and Iran in fomenting the insurgency that broke out.
He added: “The real problem is that our focus was on the issues that in the end were not the issues that caused us the difficulty.”
“People didn’t think that al-Qaeda and Iran would play the role that they did. It was really the external elements of al-Qaeda and Iran that really caused this mission very nearly to fail.”
He also claimed Iraq may have become involved in a race against Iran to develop nuclear weapons if Saddam’s regime had not been removed.
Clare Short: Tony Blair lied and misled parliament in build-up to Iraq war. James Sturckeguardian.co.uk, 02.02.2010
Clare Short arriving to give evidence at the Iraq inquiry. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Clare Short, the former international development secretary, today accused Tony Blair of lying to her and misleading parliament in the build-up to the Iraq invasion.
Short, giving evidence to the Chilcot inquiry into the war, also said that the 2003 conflict had put the world in greater danger of international terrorism. Declassified letters between Short and Blair released today show she believed that invading Iraq without a second UN resolution would be illegal and there was a significant risk of a humanitarian catastrophe.
She told the inquiry that she had a conversation with Blair in 2002. He told her that he was not planning for war against Iraq and that the evidence has since revealed that he was not telling the truth at that point, she said.
She also said she was "stunned" when she read the 337-word legal advice on the war written by the then-attorney general Lord Goldsmith during a cabinet meeting on 17 March 2003, three days before the war began. She was forbidden by Blair from discussing it during the meeting.
"I said, 'That is extraordinary.' I was jeered at to be quiet. If the prime minister says be quiet there is only so much you can do. "I think for the attorney general to come and say there's unequivocal legal authority to go to war was misleading."
Short, who was applauded by some audience members in public seats at the end of her evidence, said the ministerial code was broken as cabinet colleagues were not aware of Goldsmith's modifications to his legal advice over the previous weeks. The inquiry has already heard how Goldsmith changed his mind over the need for a second resolution after visiting the US the month before the war.
Short said cabinet colleagues were unaware of the legal advice given by the most senior Foreign Office lawyers, Sir Michael Wood and Elizabeth Wilmshurst, which called for a second UN resolution.
"The ministerial code said legal advice should be circulated and it wasn't. We only had the answer to the parliamentary question [Goldsmith's short ruling]. There was a lot of misleading of parliament too by the prime minister of the day. "The ministerial code is unsafe because it is enforced by the prime minister and if he's in on the tricks then that's it. When I found out what went into it I think we were misled."
She added that she had "various cups of coffee" with Gordon Brown, at that time the chancellor, who "was very unhappy and marginalised [in the run up to war]". He was disillusioned about a number of issues, not specifically Iraq, and felt Blair was "obsessed with his legacy".
Later, Short added that after the war "Gordon was back in with Tony and not having cups of coffee with me any more".
Asked about the cabinet meetings in the run-up to the war, Short told the inquiry that the cabinet did not operate in the manner it was required to constitutionally.
"It was not a decision-making body. I don't think there was ever a substantive discussion about anything in cabinet. If you ever raised an issue with Tony Blair he would cut it off. He did that in July 2002 when I said I wanted to talk about Iraq. He said he did not want it leaking into the press."
Short described cabinet meetings as "little chats" rather than decision-making opportunities. "There was never a meeting … that said: 'What is the problem? What are we trying to achieve? What are our options?'"
The declassified documents showed that Short believed the situation in Iraq to be "fragile" before hostilities began.
In one, written on 14 February 2003, she wrote: "Any disruption could lead to a humanitarian catastrophe. With some more time, sensible measures can be taken to reduce these risks and improve people's prospect of stability after the conflict."
Short told the panel that both the British and US armies failed to honour their Geneva convention responsibilities to keep order, describing the situation in the post-invasion aftermath as "mad", with food for refugees only being ordered at the last minute.
Short said Blair persuaded her against resigning on the same day as Cook by assuring her that the UN would have the lead role in reconstructing Iraq and that George Bush would support the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
Asked why she didn't resign earlier, she said: "If I knew then what I know now, I would have." As for the pronouncements that the French would not back a second resolution, it was one of the "big deceits" of the British, Short said.
The French president, Jacques Chirac, could have supported military action but not while UN weapons inspectors wanted more time and it should have been given. "There was no emergency. No one had attacked anyone. There wasn't any new WMD. We could have taken the time and got it right. The forces weren't ready to go in. They have said that themselves."
Short ended her evidence by calling for a serious debate about the "special relationship" with the US, calling the current one "poodle-like".
Short stood down from the cabinet on 12 May 2003, nearly eight weeks after the invasion.
We are turning the tide against Taliban in Afghanistan, says Gordon Brown
Prime minister opens international conference on Afghanistan with speech announcing creation of international fund to finance a national reconciliation programme
Gordon Brown meets President Hamid Karzai at 10 Downing Street, ahead of the conference on Afghanistan in London Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/AFP/Getty Images
Gordon Brown today claimed that coalition forces were "turning the tide" against the Taliban as he opened an international conference in London on the future of Afghanistan.
The prime minister also announced the creation of an international fund to finance a national reconciliation programme unveiled by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai.
Brown said that the international community would back plans for insurgents to be offered "a way back into mainstream life", provided they renounced violence and cut their links with al-Qaida.
But he delivered this message to al-Qaida: "We will defeat you. Not just on the battlefield, but in the hearts and minds of the people of Afghanistan – and in any and every country where you seek refuge."
Brown said that more than 8,000 extra Nato troops had been committed to Afghanistan since the US president, Barack Obama, announced a surge in US forces in the country last year.
"A military surge is turning the tide against the Taliban-led insurgency, and at the same time building the capacity of the Afghan forces who are fighting alongside us," he said.
"With regard to training and equipping the Afghan security forces, five to 10 years would be sufficient. With regard to sustaining them … the time period extends to 10 to 15 years," he told Radio 4's Today programme.
But in his speech Brown stressed that the process of handing over control over security in Afghan provinces to the Afghans would begin this year.
He said that the Afghan army would number 134,000 by October this year and 171,600 by October next year and that Afghan police numbers would reach 109,000 by this October and 134,000 by next October.
"This will bring Afghan national security forces to 300,000 in total – a presence that is far bigger than our coalition forces," he said.
In his speech Karzai said a national council for peace, reconciliation and re-integration would be established in Afghanistan. It will be followed by a "peace jirga", with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia playing a "prominent role" to "guide and assist" the peace process.
"We must reach out to all of our countrymen, especially our disenchanted brothers who are not part of al-Qaida or other terrorist networks, who accept the Afghan constitution," he said.
The international fund to support the reintegration programme will be worth several hundred million dollars. Britain's contribution will be worth less than $10m (£6.2m)
Karzai also said that the fight against corruption would be "a key focus of my second term in office". The work of Afghan anti-corruption bodies will be overseen by a new independent group of international experts, in what is seen by Downing Street as a significant step towards making the Karzai regime more accountable.
Today the Foreign Office issued a statement criticising Iran for not attending the conference, which is also being attended by the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, as well as representatives from Nato, the United Nations, the European Union and other international organisations such as the World Bank.
The Foreign Office said: "The UK made every effort to involve Iran in the conference, not least by inviting them to join the core group drafting the communique.
"Senior representatives from all of Afghanistan's neighbours and the wider international community are attending, but despite their professed interest in contributing to regional solutions to Afghanistan's challenges Iran has chosen to isolate itself from this event.
"Iran's decision will disappoint the more than 70 countries and international organisations that are attending. It's a missed opportunity for them."
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Special Reports: The Iraq War Enquiry & Afghanistan Link to: 
UK child poverty
'Little emperors': A lack of discipline has created a generation of spoilt youngsters (Posed by models)
Dr Sigman, a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, said nursery-age children are becoming increasingly violent and disrespectful towards their teachers, 'parent battering' is on the rise and the number of policemen attacked by children is soaring. Dr Sigman said: 'Authority is a basic health requirement in children's lives. 'Children of the spoilt generation are used to having their demands met by their parents and others in authority, and that in turn makes them unprepared for the realities of adult life.
Young thugs need 'help not prison', says Michael Caine at premiere of his new film about 'broken Britain' By Richard Simpson 2009.09.14.
Samantha Orobator narrowly escaped the death penalty in Laos this month after being convicted of smuggling heroin. Photograph: Sakchai Lalit/AP
State benefits for poor pensioners have slipped
Children of broken Britain among least happy in Europe
and Steve Doughty 2009.04.21.
Drug abuse is one factor that lowers the well-being of British children
High numbers of NEETS - 16 to 18-year-olds not in employment, education or training - typified the problem, it was found. All the wealthy countries of Europe were placed ahead of Britain by the research that looked at health, family relationships, poverty and joblessness among parents.
Crime levels and pollution also contributed to the low standard of living for youngsters in the UK. 
Drinking alcohol, smoking and underage sex also play a part in lowering the quality of life for children in the UK
Children's services was the only area where more councils declined than improved
Sir Bruce Keogh described the failures of 'gross and terrible' breach of trust.
A family takes tea in 1954, the year rationing ended. Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images
MPs' expenses: Richard Branson calls for cut in number of MPs. 2009.05.26. PHOTO: GETTY The number of MPs should be halved and their salaries doubled, claims Sir Richard Branson. 
From an Interview with 'The News of the World' (London)
Parliament
2009.05.20. Michael Brown, an MP for 18 years, reflects on a historic day at Westminster
The most expensive MP excluding travel was Health Minister Ann Keen, who claimed a staggering £167,306. Mrs Keen and her MP husband Alan, who both have West London seats, have been nicknamed Mr and Mrs Expenses. Last year it emerged that they had used £175,000 of taxpayers' money to help buy a flat near Parliament while they already have a constituency home nine miles away. 
Ten applicants for every job as unemployment set to smash through 2million barrier By 
Generals go to war over Iraq inquiry
Geoff Hoon and Admiral Lord Boyce leaving Downing Street in March 2003, days after the beginning of the invasion of Iraq. Photograph: Reuters
Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth travels in a Chinook helicopter en route to Lashkar Gah in Helmand Province yesterday
Sir John Chilcot arriving at the Iraq inquiry last month 
John Scarlett gives evidence at the Iraq inquiry: 'Scarlett's evidence was smooth as silk, explicit as Channel fog. The panel never sought to lay a glove on him'
The Dutch government's decision to support George Bush and Tony Blair's attack on Iraq had no basis in international law, the Davids report found. Photograph: Mario Tama/AFP
Former spin doctor Alastair Campbell, left, refuses to accept any blame for himself or then Prime Minister Tony Blair for Britain's entry into the Iraq War.
Evidence: Sir Michael Wood arrives at the inquiry yesterday
Former Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett gives evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry in London, insisted even Dr David Kelly believed Saddam Hussein had WMD 
Elizabeth Wilmshurst: The deputy to Sir Michael, pictured giving evidence at the Inquiry, resigned on the eve of war 
Tony Blair, who resisted calls for a public inquiry into Iraq while he was in office. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images
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Gordon Brown meets President Hamid Karzai at 10 Downing Street, ahead of the conference on Afghanistan in London Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/AFP/Getty Images
