Iraq Inquiry

Part of Opposition Day — [14th allotted day] – in the House of Commons at 6:21 pm on 24 June 2009.

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Photo of Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn Labour, Islington North 6:21, 24 June 2009

I have been present at virtually every debate on Iraq for the past seven years. I never thought that, seven years on, we would still be debating the legality of, and responsibility for, the war, and how to conduct a proper investigation into it. The image of Parliament has suffered enormously over the past few weeks—nay, the past few months. If we fudge this issue tonight and decline to hold the kind of open, public, legally based, oath-taking, subpoenaed inquiry that is required, yes, there will be a report—some kind of bowdlerised version of what happened will be produced by a group of Privy Counsellors, and everyone will go away and say, "That's fine"—but the demand for an inquiry will still be there, culpability will still be sought and the responsibility will still rest on those people who took us into the conflict. Fudging the issue tonight will merely delay the debate until another day, and another day after that.

I was one of those who helped to organise the massive demonstration in 2003, and I have attended hundreds of meetings all over the country against the invasion of Iraq and the legality of the war. The 1 million and more people who came to London on that day in 2003—and the millions more around the country who attended local demonstrations, wrote to their MPs, sent e-mails, signed petitions or simply expressed an opinion against the war—felt very let down by Parliament on that occasion. They also felt very let down by the political system, and a whole generation of young people have now been radicalised to question the effectiveness of this place and to wonder what is the point of a political system that can take us into a war that turns out to be illegal and then blinker its eyes to the consequences. We need to take some serious decisions tonight.