Tony Wright: The Bill is about setting down some fundamental principles. We think that one such principle is that special advisers can "assist" Ministers-the Bill uses that term-but they cannot take Executive action or give orders to civil servants. The Bill does not specify that-does my right hon. Friend think that it should?
Tony Wright: May I ask my right hon. Friend what he thinks is more dangerous: politicians becoming generals, or generals becoming politicians?
Tony Wright: I should like to reinforce the point that has just been made about the need for decisive action if we have another catastrophe such as that in Staffordshire, which I hope we do not. The frustration in that case, knowing the enormity of what had happened, was the delay in doing anything about it, and particularly the inability quickly to put in a new chief executive and top staff to clean up...
Tony Wright: Should we not warmly congratulate the Cabinet Secretary on publishing his own expenses, and also those of all top senior civil servants, and is that not an example to the wider public sector?
Tony Wright: I was giving evidence to the Kelly committee but an hour or two ago, and I have to say that its members were very interested in the scheme and wanted to explore it in detail. They were particularly interested in the extent to which there was perhaps some confusion about the administration of the system and the regulation of it. Is there not a case, therefore, for taking a little more time, to...
Tony Wright: The previous Conservative Government's citizens charter came with no guarantees for citizens. I therefore welcome my right hon. Friend's announcement that this approach will have guarantees attached to it, but can he assure me that there will be a way of enforcing those guarantees?
Tony Wright: I think that we are making unnecessarily heavy weather of this. We have made enormous progress and consensus is within our grasp. All that my hon. Friend the Minister has to say is that, having learned the lessons of the consultations with Sir John Chilcot, he or the Foreign Secretary will come back to the House to announce the formal terms of reference for the inquiry and how it will be...
Tony Wright: Following that injunction, I think that we should all try not to revisit the substantive arguments about the Iraq war, on which we all took vigorous and divergent positions. For myself, I anticipated that I would support the Iraq war. I was a great admirer of the former Prime Minister—as, indeed, I am a great admirer of the current Prime Minister, and as I will be of any future Prime...
Tony Wright: Obviously, I was completely misled by what was said in the House at the time. I am sure that closer textual analysis would have revealed all the caveats in place then, but I am explaining why it is difficult to sign up to the Conservative motion today, even though I think that its terms are entirely right. I think that we have to do better with the inquiry's terms of reference; it is not...
Tony Wright: Let me try to be additionally helpful on that point. Surely the essential difficulty is that the Inquiries Act abolished the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921, which required a resolution of this House. Under that Act, all the powers that we are talking about were included. Parliament has given up the ability to enforce these provisions and needs to rediscover it.
Tony Wright: We are clearly in a much better place than we were just a few days ago. In addition to the points that the Foreign Secretary has just mentioned, will he tell me whether, after Sir John Chilcot has consulted, there will be formal terms of reference? If so, will they be converted into a substantive motion to be put before the House? Both of those things happened in the case of the Franks inquiry.
Tony Wright: I very much welcome my right hon. Friend's announcement of an inquiry. However, will he revisit the advice that he has been given by the Cabinet Secretary—I can understand why that advice was given—in two respects in particular? First, the central purpose of the inquiry is surely not just to learn the lessons, although that clearly is an objective, but to establish the truth of what...
Tony Wright: In the first part of the debate, I thought that I had intruded on some sort of private feud. It has now become much more fun, and I hugely enjoyed the speech made by the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague). I shall be brief, and I am sorry to inject a note of realism into our proceedings. I tried to do so when I asked the right hon. Gentleman whether he could tell me of all the...
Tony Wright: I will not give way for the moment, although I shall do so later. There are two problems with what is proposed. One is that it is dishonest, and the other is that it is dangerous. I am sorry to be rather serious about the matter, but I want to be serious. The proposal is dishonest because the proposers of the motion know that what they request will not happen. It is dishonest because it is...
Tony Wright: The argument is not that Governments do not go to the electorate early; of course they do. Governments go to the electorate when they think that it is to their maximum advantage to do so. That is a truism of all Governments in all times. That is the truism that I am trying to pass on, in a humble way, to the House. That is why it is essentially dishonest to claim that there is some kind of...
Tony Wright: I am very happy to discuss 1945 in considerable detail, but I do not think that the hon. Gentleman particularly wants to.
Tony Wright: I want to finish this point, if I may, because it is the point that I really want to make. If we were in the opposite position, we would be saying exactly the same kind of things, because that is what Oppositions do. That is the game that we play. I want to suggest to the House— [Interruption.] May I make the argument before hon. Members have a go at me about it? I suggest to the House that...
Tony Wright: I have said a good deal on that over the years, if I may say so, and I do not want to go there again, because I think and hope we have moved on. What I am trying to say—hon. Members may disagree with me, but it is pretty evident from what has happened in recent weeks and what happened last week—is that we have a house that is burning down. It therefore seems a bizarre moment to say,...
Tony Wright: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I simply say that we ought to put the fire out. Hon. Members who do not believe that there is a fire burning furiously are not listening to the electorate to whom they keep referring.
Tony Wright: I apologise for the mixing of metaphors, but I do not apologise for the argument. I do think that we are in the condition that I described, and millions of people out there are saying that they want nothing to do with this political system until we put our system in order. Hon. Members may disagree with that analysis, but I think that that is the position that we are in. We have a duty and a...