Iraq Inquiry Digest

Comment from andrewsimon
Time August 25, 2011 at 10:11 pm

These are of course key documents as far as the final report of the Chilcot Inquiry is concerned, so it would not surprise me in the slightest if they were being deliberately withheld with a view to declassifying them and then revealing them to the Inquiry committee at the last possible moment in order that they can be only considered by the Inquiry prior to the publication of their report.

If the Inquiry has already seen them it has made no mention of the fact. It is possible that the Inquiry has already seen them and that they are still otherwise embargoed, in which case the Inquiry *should* report on their content in due course lest it be seen as a coverup, and dare I say this, a complete and utter whitewash.

If these documents are not released to the Inquiry then the whole exercise just becomes a total farce.

I can see how the Inquiry itself might wish to keep its ‘powder dry’, so to speak, and not wish to pre-empt its eventual findings. Yet this is no reason to withhold the documents beyond the normal twenty days actioning time after Chris Lamb’s second application for the release of the documents by means of another Freedom of Information Act request.

Comment from chris lamb
Time August 26, 2011 at 7:50 pm

I am sure you are right, Andrew, that the Chilcot panel have seen the Cabinet minutes in question, on a classified basis. The final report will also no doubt make reference to conclusions drawn from the minutes and, indeed, earlier Cabinet minutes covering the lead up to the Iraq invasion going back to 2002.

Unfortunately, I do not share your optimism that these particular Cabinet minutes will be declassified for the report. The Butler Inquiry must also have seen Cabinet minutes in order to draw its detailed conclusions about how the development of Prime Ministerial “sofa government” seriously undermined Cabinet collective responsibility from mid 2002 onwards but no declassification of Cabinet minutes occurred as a consequence.

A more critical position from the Chilcot Inquiry about the undermining of collective Cabinet government by a Prime Ministerial power network could increase the case for disclosure by discrediting the Cabinet Office’s upholding of secrecy to allegedly protect the convention of collective responsibility. I doubt, however, that this would be a result voluntarily arrived at by the Cabinet Office which has steadfastly opposed disclosure regardless of all rulings against it.

I hope that I am wrong but I would also urge people to sign the e-petition to put extra popular pressure on the Government and Cabinet Office.

Comment from chris lamb
Time August 27, 2011 at 7:21 am

I was surprised by the ease with which the Cabinet Office permitted this e-petition to go through. It could be that the Cabinet Office sees it as a double edged sword in that a disappointing public response would give the Cabinet Office added ammunition to argue its case that there is not a strong public interest in disclosure of the minutes.

The Cabinet Office may be relying upon a rather cynical view that a limited public attention span and interest in what was a highly controversial issue some years back will paradoxically deliver a result in its favour. In putting forward this e-petition, I was greatly influenced by the success of the Hillsborough disaster petition which scotched the cynical view of limited public attention and fickleness in matters of the past.

I concede, however, that such petitions can turn out to be a double deged sword and there is an element of risk in them.

In considering the possible scenarios for the Cabinet minutes, I am least convinced by Andrew Mason’s suggestion that they could be declassified with the Chilcot report. The other scenario is that the Cabinet Office continues to resist disclosure. In the process of appeals, it could seek to use a disappointing e-petition to advance its case against a public interest in disclosure to the Information Commissioner. It could also bolster a very difficult manoeuvre- given a different political Cabinet composition- in putting together a new Section 53 veto if necessary.

The importance of support for the e-petition sharpening the sword edge for disclosure and not the contrary cannot be emphasized enough.

On the course of the Chilcot investigations, it has struck me as a weakness that such a strong focus has been placed on the Cabinet meeting of 17 March 2003, at which Goldsmith’s truncated legal statement was presented, when the key decisions committing the country to military force- unilaterally declaring Iraq in further material breach, clearing legal passage for military intervention and publicly reporting Iraqi non-compliance- were made between 13-15 March 2003, exclusively by the Prime Minister, Attorney General and Foreign Secretary. In this chronology of events, the Cabinet meetings of 9 and 13 March would be more important to assess whether Cabinet was excluded or included from these decisions.

That is why my FoI request, and the e-petition- also calls for disclosure of the minutes for the 13 March Cabinet.

Comment from andrewsimon
Time August 27, 2011 at 12:18 pm

Chris -

I note that at the time of writing this there are 289 pages of petition submissions on the Directgov site and that all of those from halfway-down page 223 to the end have only one signature each.

Yours is now on page 70 whereas before yesterday (and this entry with the petition’s first bit of publicity – Chris A then added a post about it to the Digest’s facebook page) it was somewhere in the abovementioned nether region.

I have to wonder how many people go to the Directgov site with the express intention of signing a few petitions on any given day, and beyond that how many people actually know that the facility even exists. The Digest is only a small site with a very limited number of readers so presumably it has had good effect so far, but sadly this posting will slip down the front page and into relative obscurity as time goes by and as we add new content.

I don’t know if Chris A could write a piece for the Guardian concerning the saga of these Cabinet minute FOI requests, but if he did I’m sure this would go a good way to raising the issue in the public consciousness. I expect, if this happened, we would see another spike in the number of signatories.

Either way, I cannot see how any Directgov e-petition can reach the attention of a significant section of the general public without appropriate and sustained publicity.

Comment from John Bone
Time August 27, 2011 at 9:46 pm

If Chilcot intends to find out, and report on, how decisions were made (which is what he claimed at the start of the Inquiry) he will have looked at all the Cabinet minutes from late 2001 onwards. That is standard procedure in evaluating any project or process, and it is often found that in fact no decision was made in projects or processes that have gone wrong. It is often found that decisions got taken outside the proper procedures or by mission-creep. My guess is that, in this case, it would be difficult to say when the Cabinet made a decision because the Cabinet was bounced into decisions.

Butler hinted at this by talking about “sofa government”. The question is whether Chilcot’s report will spell out the full implications for our system of governance of the Cabinet simply ratifying decisions that are presented to it as faits accomplis.

Comment from John Bone
Time August 28, 2011 at 11:45 pm

A question that hasn’t been addressed, as far as I can see, is this: what orders were the Armed Forces’ chiefs given and when? If it was Hoon who gave the orders, did he claim to be speaking on behalf of the PM or the Cabinet? What assurances were they given about legality?

It has always struck me as odd that the Armed Forces’ chiefs apparently only asked for a clear legal statement a few weeks before the invasion. Surely they would have asked for such a statement when they began preparations? Did they ask for a statement at the last minute because they realised that there had been a change in the situation since they were asked to begin preparations? Or had they been promised something in a statement (eg a direct communication from the AG) and found that the invasion was approaching without them receiving the clarification that they wanted?

Iain Paton said here, some time ago, that preparations by the UK military would involve them embedding in US military systems and this would make it difficult for the UK to stand aside when the US decided to invade. If this is the case, the UK military was preparing for an almost inevitable war in mid-2002. Did the military not notice the contradiction with the UK government position at that time that no decision had been made?