Blair confirms inquiry into WMD intelligence

On Sunday, US President George Bush announced the creation of an independent bi-partisan inquiry into intelligence failures over Iraq's, so far, undiscovered WMDs, and today it was Tony Blair's turn to set up a similar inquiry this side of the Atlantic.

The Prime Minister, in his twice-yearly grilling by the cross-party Commons Liaison Committee this morning, confirmed that the inquiry would be now go ahead.

Later, in the House of Commons, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw outlined detail on the remit, membership and operation of the inquiry.

The committee, he said, will work closely with the US inquiry and the Iraq Survey Group and will report back in the summer. It will also have access to all intelligence reports and assessments and other relevant government papers, and will be able to call witnesses to give oral evidence in private.

The task of the committee will be to:

• investigate the intelligence coverage available on WMD programmes of countries of concern and on the global trade in WMD, taking into account what is now known about these programmes;
• investigate the accuracy of intelligence on Iraqi WMD up to March 2003, and to examine any discrepancies between the intelligence gathered, evaluated and used by the Government before the conflict, and between that intelligence and what has been discovered by the Iraq Survey Group since the end of the conflict;
• and make recommendations to the Prime Minister for the future on the gathering, evaluation and use of intelligence on WMD, in the light of the difficulties of operating in countries of concern.

Former Whitehall mandarin, Lord Butler, will chair the panel, which will also be comprised of Sir John Chilcot, Field Marshal Lord Inge and the MPs Ann Taylor and Michael Mates.

Lord Butler of Brockwell is a former Cabinet secretary who has served under Britain's prime minister's since 1972. He was Cabinet secretary to the Thatcher, Major and, for a short time, Tony Blair administration.

However, the Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy has told the Prime Minister that his party will not participate in the inquiry.

Mr Kennedy said that his key requirement – that that the inquiry should not only investigate the quality of intelligence, but the judgments which were made by the politicians about those intelligence assessments – had not been met, and so the Lib Dems could not participate.

Speaking after the announcement in the House of Commons that the inquiry would go ahead, Mr Kennedy said: "It is a matter of regret that the Liberal Democrats are unable to participate."

He added: "There is now widespread public disbelief about the stated reasons for our participation in the war in Iraq. That disbelief is undermining public trust in the office of the Prime Minister. The way to re-establish that trust would be to have an inquiry which addresses the key questions directly and openly. It does not seem to me that this inquiry will be able to do that.

"I shall continue to challenge the government about these matters, as I and my party have been doing consistently over many months. We seek the answers the public is also seeking. I am not satisfied that this inquiry will satisfy those concerns."

During this morning's session with MPs, Mr Blair was keen to point out that No 10 had not been railroaded into its decision by Mr Bush's announcement in Washington. He said that as the Hutton Inquiry had dealt with the question of the government's honorable intentions regarding the September intelligence dossier, it was only right to now consider the method and quality of the intelligence upon which the government had acted.

Today's newspapers are scornful of what is perceived to be a government u-turn forced not by Parliament nor public unease over the basis of Britain's decision to go to war, but by unequivocal remarks made by the US president to reporters.

(gmcg)