Training | 2010.03.05
LIVE – Gordon Brown gives evidence to Iraq inquiry
Minute-by-minute coverage as prime minister gives evidence to investigation into Iraq war. To start the live video stream, press the \'play\' button under the picture below
10.51am: Lyne says that Brown told the Commons in 2007 that progress in Iraq depended on progess in the Middle East.
Brown says all parties in the Middle East know what a final settlement must involve. The problem is getting them to make progress towards this.
He says he does not think what happened in Iraq made progress towards a peace Israeli/Palestinian peace settlement any harder.
10.45am: Lyne asks about the Blair/Bush correspondence.
Brown says the efforts of the whole government "were to try to make a diplomatic solution work".
The decision to go to war was taken only after diplomatic options were exhausted, he says.
But, Lyne says, the UK had told the US it would support war if that became inevitable. Had Blair told Brown what he had told Bush?
Lyne says other witnesses told the inquiry the Americans did "almost nothing" on this issue.
Brown says Bush was the first US president to commit himself to a Palestinian state.
Brown says he knew the options included going to war.
Lyne asks if that meant Blair had not told him "in terms" what he told Bush.
Brown says he would not expect to know exactly what Blair had said in his letters to Bush.
Lyne asks about the conditions that Blair attached to support for war, such as progress in the Middle East.
Brown says he was "directly involved" in initiatives on this issue.
Why was there not more progress by March 2003, asks Lyne.
Brown says it is very difficult to make progress in the Middle East.
10.37am: Lyne asks if Brown thought the diplomatic options had been exhausted by the middle of March 2003.
Brown says he did think that.
Everyone in cabinet agreed, with one exception (Robin Cook).
There was "very little chance" that Saddam would take the action that was necessary, Brown says.
But the UN inspectors were saying they were getting some cooperation from Iraq, Lyne says. Shouldn\'t they have had more time?
Brown says it was obvious that some countries would not support military action in any circumstances. (He does not name France, but that seems to be who he\'s talking about.)
Lyne says Brown referred to Iraq as an "aggressor state". But did it pose a threat in March 2003?
Brown says in November 2002 the rest of the world agreed that there were problems posed by Iraq. Action had to be taken because Iraq was a "serial violator" of international law.
But Lyne wants to know if there was a "threat of aggression" from Iraq.
Brown says he could not see Iraq abiding by the rules of the international community.
If the international community cannot cohere, we are sending a message to other ... potential aggressors that they can do as they will.
The issues goes back to how the international community deals with these problems.
This became a test of whetehr the international community was able to deal with problems in a post cold war world.
Brown says one of the lessons he learnt from Iraq was that the international instituions for dealing with these problems "are not yet strong enough".
He says new mechanisms are needed "if we are going to build an international community where people will feel safer".
10.35am: Sir Roderic Lyne asks if Brown says the Cabinet Office options paper prepared in March 2002.
Brown says he did not see it.
Lyne asks if he should have seen it. Brown says he thought he knew what was going on.
10.33am: Brown says "at every point" he made it clear the Treasury would support whatever military option the MoD decided was best. There would be "no financial barrier" to military action.
Brown says he had five briefings from the intelligence chiefs about Iraq. The first was in March 2002.
10.23am: Prashar asks if Brown was consulted as the situation evolved in 2002 and 2003.
Of course, says Brown. The cabinet was "regularly kept in touch" about what was happening. He does not accept the view that the cabinet was not kept informed.
Did Prashar know about Blair\'s letters to Bush?
Brown says he would not have expected to have seen letters between Blair and Bush.
But Blair did keep him informed about "the progress of the diplomatic route".
In September the Treasury wrote a paper about the reconstruction of Iraq.
I think we did some very important work in estimating what the cost of the war would be.
Prashar asks if the cabinet had "substantive" discussions. Were alternative options discussed?
Brown says everybody was trying to get a diplomatic solution. The cabinet was told about the progress in this area.
Prashar presses him again on alternative options.
Brown says he knew about the military options being considered. He always said resources would be available. At cabinet, the discussion focused on the diplomatic effort.
Prashar asks what issues his officials raised with Brown.
Brown again says that he favoured the best military option.
He says one of his "regrets" was that he was not able to persuade the Americans to take post-war planning more seriously.
(That seems to be a clear attempt to contrast himself to Tony Blair, who was reluctant to criticise the Americans very strongly for the mistakes they made in relation to post-war planning when he gave evidence.)
10.16am: Prashar asks Brown if he spoke to Blair about Iraq privately.
Brown says he did. He spoke to Blair about many issues outside cabinet.
But, as he\'s discovered since he became prime minister, the conduct of foreign affairs is different from other areas of government. Prime ministers can have "instant contact" with their opposite numbers abroad.
Prashar says Blair told the committee there was lots of ad hoc meetings about Iraq. Was Brown involved?
Brown says he was talking to the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, from June 2002 about what might happen if Britain had to go to war.
He says he told Blair that there should be "no sense that there\'s a financial restraint" affecting what the MoD could do. He would not try to rule out any military option on the grounds of cost. "Quite the opposite," he says. He argued that the government should support the option that was best for the country.
Prashar asks when Brown found out that the UK would support the US invasion.
Brown says he was hopeful the weekend before the war that diplomatic interventions might work.
When he spoke at cabinet on March 17, Brown was very clear that the government had to exhaust all diplomatic avenues.
(He has not really answered the point Prashar was raising. Blair seems to have given George Bush an assurance that the UK would definitely support the US if war became inevitable. Prashar was trying to find out when Brown became aware of this.)
10.09am: Lady Prashar asks about Brown\'s views in the pre-war period.
Brown says the international community has to be prepared to take action against aggressor states.
Prashar says Blair argued in the Commons on March 18 2003 that the threat posed by the possible link between Iraq and terrorism was a real danger. Did Brown perceive this threat?
Brown says after the end of the cold war a number of post-state terrorists were threatening instabliity around the world.
In my view the international community was justified in taking action ... where international obligations were not being honoured.
The international community has to be able to impose rules and regulations, he says.
But did Brown see Iraq as a "real and present danger", Prashar asks.
Brown says he met the intelligence agencies on a number of occasions. He was given information by them that led him to believe that Iraq was a threat that needed to be dealt with.
So Brown would agree that the case for war depended on the threat posed by Iraq?
Brown says the international community would mean "very little" if no action was taken against a country that was a "serial violator" of international law.
Right up until the last weekend before the invasion, Brown says he and others were hopeful that war could be avoided.
The international community had failed in Rwanda to take action when necessary.
It was our responsibility to make sure the international order could work for the future.
10.04am: Chilcot says Brown is "well placed" to offer insights covering the whole period of the inquiry, 2001 to 2009.
Does Brown believe the decision to go to war was right.
Brown says:
It was the right decision, and it was for the right reasons.
But he wants to pay his respects, at the outset, to those servicemen and women who lost their lives. Next week a national memorial will be unveiled at the national arboretum. He also acknowledges that there was considerable loss of life in Iraq.
It was impossible to persuade Saddam Hussein to abide by international law, Brown says.
There are "lessons to learn", he adds. He says there are three areas where lessons can be learnt.
First, decision-making in government: Tony Blair and he have both recognised the need to improve this, he says.
Second, peace-making: Brown says the war was won easily. But it has taken much longer to establish peace.
Third, international relations: Brown says there are lessons to be learnt here too.
10.02am: Sir John Chilcot opens the hearing. He\'s "acutely conscious" that the hearing is taking place in the run up to an election. The inquiry want to "remain outside party politics". They have asked the political parties to respect that.
(Fat chance. Has he read William Hague in the Daily Mail today? See 8.56am.)
10.02am: They\'re taking their seats now.
9.42am: Here are some other people and organisations providing live coverage of Brown\'s appearance:
Sky\'s Glen Oglaza on Twitter
BBC\'s Laura Kuenssberg on Twitter
Channel 4\'s Iraq Inquiry Blogger on Twitter
Iraq Inquiry Digest live blog
9.39am: Brown has just arrived at the QE2 centre.
9.33am: Robert Peston\'s piece about Brown and the Iraq war on the Today programme this morning is also worth listening to. Peston is now the BBC\'s business editor, but as political editor at the Financial Times he was very close to Brown and his team and he wrote a book, Brown\'s Britain, which was widely seen as a semi-authorised biography. Peston said this morning that while he was researching the book he spoke to a minister with "an unchallengable knowledge of [Brown\'s] views" (Brown himself? Ed Balls?) who said Brown believed that government should always consult and inform parliament properly before going to war. Peston went on:
The unavoidable implication was that Gordon Brown as chancellor did not believe parliament had been properly informed which would, of course, be explosive if he said that today, so he won\'t.
9.30am: According to Channel 4\'s Iraq Inquiry Blogger, there are only about 30 people protesting outside the QE2 centre.
9.18am: On the Today programme this morning Norman Smith had a good package about Brown\'s attitude to war in 2003. It includes this quote from Peter Kilfoyle, a Labour MP who opposed the war.
I think [Brown\'s] political calculation was that this was a no-win situtation and so, when in doubt, he said nothing. I just think he assumed that this was a loser and he did not want to be cornered in what turned out, quite rightly, as a tragic situation.
9.09am: The Stop the War Coalition are due to be protesting outside the QE2 centre today. According to the Press Association, they will have a mock cheque made out for £8.5bn - the cost of the war. Lindsey German, the group\'s convener, told PA:
Gordon Brown has as much blood on his hands as Tony Blair for the illegal war in Iraq. As chancellor of the exchequer from 2003 to 2009, he was paymaster for the war. Stop the War will be demonstrating to protest against both his culpability for the Iraq disaster and for his escalation of the war in Afghanistan.
8.56am: Today will be an uncomfortable day for Gordon Brown. He will be forced to spend three and a half hours talking about a subject, Iraq, that he would rather ignore. When Tony Blair was prime minister Brown did defend the war - both before it started, and afterwards - but he did so very sparingly, and in a way that failed to dispel reports that privately he was deeply sceptical about the whole thing . Since 2007 he has been frequently criticised for failing, as chancellor, to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan properly. When Brown set up the Iraq inquiry, he originally wanted it to take evidence in private. To his credit, Sir John Chilcot rejected that approach and today the nation will be able to watch the prime minister in the hot seat.
It\'s traditional for papers on these occasions to publish lists of "key questions he must answer". In a novel twist, the Daily Mail has got William Hague - who has got plenty of questions of his own that he should be answering (about Lord Ashcroft) - to come up with four . In the Guardian we\'ve got five . The Times has gone even further. They\'ve got 10, and they\'ve put them in a leader .
The Times has also put what may be the key question on its front page. It\'s from Lord Guthrie, a former chief of the defence staff, who has often criticised Brown before for not properly funding the Ministry of Defence. Guthrie told the paper :
Not fully funding the army in the way they had asked ... undoubtedly cost the lives of soldiers. [Brown] should be asked why he was so unsympathetic towards defence and so sympathetic to other departments.
The hearing starts at 10am and the morning session is due to finish at midday. The afternoon session is scheduled to run from 1.30pm until 3.30pm. Later, from 4.30pm until 6pm, Douglas Alexander, the international development secretary, will be giving evidence about his department\'s work in Iraq since 2007.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/[...]don-brown-chilcot-inquiry-live
