Alice Mahon MP today issued the following statement:

‘The Foreign Affairs Committee report and the Prime Minister’s appearance before the Liaison Committee will do little to persuade the majority of public opinion that the British government was right to take us into a war in which at least 6,000 civilians are reported to have been killed and tens of thousands more seriously injured.

‘The electorate deserves better than to be left with a lot of unanswered questions. The Prime Minister owes parliament and the public an urgent explanation about the many issues outstanding. This was not forthcoming at today’s Liaison Committee. Only an independent inquiry can bring this to a satisfactory conclusion.

‘The government’s case for war against Iraq, was founded on the claim that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction posed a serious threat. The Prime Minister based his position on intelligence sources which were laid out for parliament and the public in two dossiers.

‘The second of these, the dodgy dossier, is known to have used plagiarised and out of date material, and was already thoroughly discredited before the Foreign Affairs Committee reported. The Prime Minister ducked this issue when questioned by the Liaison Committee this morning.

‘In the case of the September dossier, the Foreign Affairs Committee reported that it was not in a position to know if this material was faulty or misinterpreted because it had not had access to intelligence sources. This means the Committee has exonerated the government without having the necessary information to decided whether ministers mislead parliament or not.

‘I do not blame the Committee. It was making the best fist it could of the matter. And its report is very far from a vindication of the basis on which the Prime Minister persuaded parliament to go along with war on Iraq. In fact, Downing Street was only exonerated from having exerted improper influence on the drafting of the September dossier because the Foreign Affairs Committee chair exercised his casting vote at this point in the report’s conclusions.

‘Many of the Foreign Affairs Committee criticisms suggest that there is considerable room to doubt claims that no political pressure was exercised in the compiling of the dossier. For example, the report concluded that the claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes – which was highlighted by the Prime Minister when he presented the dossier to parliament – was given unwarranted prominence, that the language of the dossier was more assertive than usual for intelligence reporting, and that it was wrong for a Downing Street special adviser, Alistair Campbell, to chair a meeting about intelligence matters.

Furthermore, in another report issued yesterday, Operations in Iraq, the Ministry of Defence admitted that it had only limited information about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. All this suggests that political pressure was brought to bear in the compiling of the dossier.’

ENDS