Chilcot report: we need a publication date by the end of the year | Letter from Shirley Williams
I welcome the news that the Chilcot report will extend its comments and conclusions to a wider group than Tony Blair’s immediate circle (Chilcot report will widen the blame for Iraq, 26 August). The Liberal Democrats were the only party whose leadership in both houses of parliament consistently questioned the information provided by both the British and American intelligence services, and did so as early as April 2002. We asked then repeatedly what evidence there was of a buildup in Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, what Unmovic – the UN inspection regime – was reporting on that matter, and argued that Unmovic should be allowed to complete its work.
We suspected that a decision to invade might have been reached as early as the meeting between Mr Bush and Mr Blair at President Bush’s Texas ranch in April 2002. We said that a second UN resolution would be essential to legitimise any military action. Our questions intensified after the September 2002 meeting between the prime minister and President Bush at Camp David, not only on the legality of invasion, but on the provision made for the reconstruction of Iraq after a probable victory.
I respect the uncompromising determination of Sir John Chilcot and his commission to find out the facts behind this, the most disastrous mistake of British foreign policy in the past 50 years, and to let those criticised present their own defence. But Maxwellisation is not extended to those of us who were critics from the beginning, even though we could now point to a growing body of evidence justifying our comments. I do not request such a privilege now. But it is important that a date for the publication of the report be made public before the end of the year, if all those who gave evidence are to be treated fairly.
Shirley Williams
Liberal Democrat, House of Lords
You report that Sir John Chilcot and his inquiry team are “dismayed” about recent media attacks on the delays to their report. If so, they have only themselves to blame for their misinterpretation of the Maxwellisation process.
As originally conceived, “Maxwellisation” was intended to allow those to be criticised in an official report to respond in general terms prior to its publication – not to drag publication out by challenging every word of every line. As the judges who rejected such challenges by Robert Maxwell four decades ago realised, that would amount to censorship by a thousand cuts – never mind rendering the report, when it eventually appeared, of merely academic interest. Yet that, however, is exactly the path down which the Maxwellisation of recent official inquiry reports has proceeded. At this rate, it seems quite possible that some of those to be criticised will be dead before the report finally appears, and thus evade criticism altogether.
Sir John Chilcot and his team should therefore cease whingeing about media attacks, set dates for the publication of their report and a deadline by which final comments should be received, and stick to that timetable irrespective of further complaints about wording from those to be criticised. A report into what has been described as the UK’s biggest foreign policy blunder since Suez deserves nothing less.
Joseph Nicholas
London
The delay of the inquiry chaired by Sir John Chilcot bears no thought for the loved ones of those who have died (Chilcot inquiry: bereaved father backs legal action to speed publication, 27 August). I am writing as the daughter of my late mum and stepdad, who both came to bear the atrocities of the Mid Staffordshire disaster.
In your article, Sir Robert Francis QC (with regard to the Mid Staffordshire public inquiry) alluded to having “the advantage of statutory rules governing the obligation to give those who might be the object of express or implicit criticism a fair opportunity to offer comments on them in confidence”.
Sir Robert may see this as an “advantage”; however, as a bereaved relative, I see the confidentiality of these letters of criticism as a disadvantage, as a person who is seeking transparency and truth. This considered, with the help of my MP Robert Buckland, I am – with at least one other – campaigning to make the Mid Staffordshire public inquiry Salmon/Maxwellisation letters public.
Sir John must consider that harm will continue while self-interest and narcissism reigns on both the war-torn faraway battlefields of our so-called freedoms and the high heady towers of the NHS; enveloping those we love, who die alongside the reckless reputations of atrocity.
But who am I to comment? I am just a girl who walks the downs of Wiltshire, trying to forgive.
Jade Taylor
Chiseldon, Wiltshire