Iraq - Attorney-General's Advice
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr. McCabe) asked, whose cause would be served by publishing the legal advice. I have a simple answer: the cause of democracy will be served by publishing the legal advice. We have heard that Ministers' arguments that there is no precedent for publishing the Attorney-General's advice is wholly specious. In his comprehensive speech, the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) set out all the precedents going back to the 19th century. Before he informed us about the historical precedents, we already knew that the Government had partially revealed the advice by presenting a summary. I am not a lawyer, but I cannot see the difference between publishing a summary of the advice and publishing the whole advice.
The other argument that we have heard from Ministers—I hope that we will not hear it again this afternoon—is that the Government are somehow comparable to a lawyer's private client, but that is tendentious. The Government are not the clients; if anything, we are the clients, and therefore we are entitled to see advice that was sought in our names.
Some of my hon. Friends have asked why there is concern about the legal advice. One reason why there is concern is that it is widely acknowledged that the greatest expertise about the law in relation to war and foreign policy rests not with the Attorney-General, who is a distinguished commercial lawyer but not an expert on these matters, but the Foreign Office. Is it pure coincidence that the deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Office resigned on the eve of the war? Could it be that there were uncertainties within the Foreign Office that were not reflected in the published summary of the Attorney-General's advice?
Mrs. Mahon: At the United Nations, almost every person who was asked their opinion, including the Secretary-General Kofi Annan, did not give their blessing to the legality of the war. They are the experts on going to war.
Ms Abbott: I am grateful to my hon. Friend.
On the eve of war, the deputy legal adviser at the Foreign Office, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, resigned, which was not sufficiently remarked on at the time. Days before the war, the Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Michael Boyce, insisted on a simple statement on the legality of the war. That gives the lie to my hon. Friends who claim that the legality of the war was transparent all along. If the Chief of the Defence Staff demanded a definitive statement on the legality of the war, it means that there was uncertainty among those who were best placed to know—our armed forces. People ask why we are obsessed with this pettifogging issue and why are we always looking backwards, but I believe that the British public value our armed forces and do not want to feel that we sent them to fight an illegal war. That is not a trivial matter. Indeed, it goes to the heart of the framework of international law.
One of the reasons for the uncertainty, the bloodshed and the attacks on our forces in the region is a widespread belief internationally that the war was not legal. Certainly, military action was not taken on the basis of a genuine international consensus. It was undertaken unilaterally by the US and Britain. Whether my hon. Friends like it or not, the issue still concerns the British public. The legality of the war has a bearing on the legitimacy of the actions of our troops in the future.
The issue will not go away. There is a shadow hanging over the Government and all the bluster and threats against certain of my hon. Friends—such as intimations that we will be put in front of a special tribunals and asked whether we are, or have ever been, socialists—will not make it go away. The shadow from the war with Iraq is a widespread perception—not only among Opposition Members and Back Benchers—that we sent our troops into an illegal war. If the Government are confident of the legal basis for the war, they have nothing to fear from completing the process that they have started and publishing, in full, the Attorney-General's advice.
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