by C. L. Cook

British prime minister, Gordon Brown appeared before that nation's Chilcot Inquiry yesterday, ostensibly to answer to Britain's entry into the invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq scheme.

 

[Below is the transcript of Mr. Brown's appearance before the Chilcot Inquiry in part; for complete transcript,

and video coverage of Mr. Brown's testimony, please see link to Chilcot's Iraq Inquiry here. ]

Gordon Brown in front of the Chilcot Inquiry -  Mar. 5, 2010 - transcript link
http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/45411/100503-brown.pdf

Friday, 5 March 2010

(RT HON GORDON BROWN MP)

THE CHAIRMAN: Good morning.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Good morning.

THE CHAIRMAN: Good morning everyone. Today, the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP, is here to give evidence to the Iraq Inquiry and the Committee are acutely conscious that this hearing takes place in the months leading up to a general election. From the time that we began our work last July, we have been at pains to preserve the absolutely impartiality and the independence of the Inquiry. We have been clear from the outset that we have to remain outside party politics and we have asked the political parties to respect that position and we repeat that request today.

It was for that reason that, before Christmas, my colleagues and I originally decided that we should ask to see the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Development Secretary after the general election. On 19 January, the Prime Minister wrote to me, reiterating he was prepared to give evidence whenever the Committee saw fit. We discussed this letter and concluded that, in the interests of fairness, we should offer the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Development Secretary the option to give evidence before the election, if they wished to do so, and all three have taken up this offer.

We will be seeing the Development Secretary later today and the Foreign Secretary on Monday morning. We have a very serious task before us, to establish the UK's involvement in Iraq between 2001 and 2009 and to learn the lessons for future British Governments facing similar circumstances. We can only accomplish that task successfully if we are seen to be fair, impartial and apolitical, and we are determined to do so.

Now, we recognise that witnesses are giving evidence based in part on their recollection of events and we cross-check what we hear against the papers to which we have given access. I remind all witnesses that they will later be asked to sign a transcript of the evidence to the effect that the evidence given is truthful, fair and accurate. Which brings me to my first question:

Prime Minister, you have been a senior member of the Cabinet since 1997 and Prime Minister since 2007, in June, and you are particularly well placed to offer us insights into the whole period covered by our terms of reference. It has been borne in on this Inquiry from the outset that the coalition's decision to take military action led directly or, most often, indirectly to the loss of lives of many people, servicemen and women in our and the Multi-National Forces, the Iraqi security forces, and many civilians, men, women and children, in Iraq.

Still more have been affected by those losses and by other consequences of the action. Given all that experience, I should like to ask right at the outset whether you believe the decision to take military action in March 2003 was indeed right.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: It was the right decision and it was for the right reasons. But I do want, at the outset, to pay my respects to all the soldiers and members of our armed forces who served with great encourage and distinction in Iraq for the loss of life and the sacrifices that they have made, and my thoughts are with their families. Next week, we will dedicate at the national arboretum a memorial to the 179 servicemen and women who died in Iraq and I think the thoughts and prayers of us are with all the families today. I should also like to say that there were many civilian injuries and deaths in Iraq as well, British citizens, and my thoughts and  prayers are with them, and we know that there was a huge loss of life in Iraq amongst civilians and I think any loss of life is something that makes us very sad indeed. So I would like to acknowledge the contribution of all our British forces, but particularly acknowledge the sacrifice of those who lost their lives. I think that this is the gravest decision of all, to make a decision to go to war. I believe we made the right decision for the right reasons, because the international community had for years asked Saddam Hussein to abide by international law and the international obligations that he had accepted. 14 resolutions were passed by the United Nations, and, at the end of the day, it was impossible to persuade him that he should abide by international law. My feeling is, and still is, that we cannot have an international community that works if we have either terrorists who are breaking these rules, or, in this case, aggressor states that refuse to obey the laws of the international community. I do think, Sir John, we have lessons to learn, however. I think in three areas I would like to discuss with you and I hope that you will take on board the questions and the answers that come from these issues.

The first is we have been fighting two wars and it is essential that we have the proper structures of decision-making, and, of course, as time has gone on, both Tony Blair and I have changed the structures of decision-making in government. I think the second thing is we won the battle within almost seven days, but it has taken seven years to win the peace in Iraq and I think we are developing the concepts of a just peace and how we can actually manage conflicts like this in a way that we get reconstruction and a stake in the future by, in this case, the Iraqi people. I think the third thing we have learned, and I would like to discuss it with you, but it is for you to ask me questions, is that there will be interventions in the future and international cooperation has got to be far greater than it was. Global problems require better global institutions and I would particularly draw attention to the importance in all this of the strongest possible relationship between Europe and America, something that I'm determined to build up and continue to make stronger in the future.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you Mr Brown. We would like to begin, if we may, by discussing your role as a senior member of the Cabinet in the period up to March 2003. We would propose then to come to the specific issues relating to your departmental responsibilities as Chancellor and then your role as Prime Minister after June 2007. So, first, your role as a senior member of the Cabinet. I will ask Baroness Prashar to start the question. Usha?

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: Prime Minister, as the Chairman said, I want to discuss your role as the senior member of the Cabinet in the period up to March 2003, but, before that, I would like to get a better understanding of your views about Iraq, because, by 2001, the government had been in power for four years and had taken military action in Iraq, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and, of course, after 9/11 in Afghanistan. What conclusions did you draw about the role of force in supporting our foreign policy objectives?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I think we had no alternative but to intervene in situations where there are two risks to the post-Cold War world. The first has been, as I mentioned, the action of non-state terrorists, and the second has been the action of rogue states, or, in the case of Iraq, aggressor states, and if the world community is going to mean anything in terms of our ability to cohere and our ability to live at peace, then we have to be prepared to take international action. It is, of course, far better if all countries are united in the action that has got to be taken, but it has been necessary to take action in situations where, either through terrorism we are put at risk in our own country, or through aggressor states the region, in this case in Iraq, the region around Iraq is put at risk as well.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: Can I just come back to the specific question on Iraq because Mr Blair argued in the Commons on 18 March 2003 that there was a link between terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, which constituted what he said was a fundamental assault on our way of life and that a threat of chaos from tyrannical regimes with WMD and extreme terrorist groups with the possibility of the two coming together, represented what he called a real and present danger, and he made similar points to us in his evidence to the Inquiry in January. Did you see a real and present danger of this kind coming from Iraq in 2003?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I think we are dealing with this post-Cold War world. Let me just say that, after the end of the Cold War, and the expectation that we would have peace and that the instabilities that had existed because of the Cold War were over, we found that there were a number of states and then we found there were a number of non-state terrorists who were prepared to cause huge instability around the word. This is essentially how this generation will be seen. We will be seen as a generation that had to deal with a post-Cold War era in which you both had terrorism and you had states like Iraq which were aggressor states because of what they had done in relation to Iran and also in relation to Kuwait, and, therefore, in my view, the world community is justified in taking action where international obligations in this case accepted by Iraq at the end of the Kuwait/Iraq war were not being honoured.

If you are going to have international law and international community, then you need to be absolutely sure that the world community can constrain and impose rules and regulations that allow us to live in a more peaceful world. So I'm not making a distinction between the two problems. These are two problems, however, that lead to action.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: I understand that, but can I just be more specific about this? Because what I really want to establish is whether you saw this as a real and present danger in March 2003.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: The evidence that we had -- I met the intelligence services on a number of occasions during the course of 2002 and early 2003, and in addition to my discussions in the Cabinet and in addition to my discussions with Tony Blair himself, I was given information by the intelligence  services which led me to believe that Iraq was a threat that had to be dealt with by the actions of the international community. Of course, at all points, we wished the diplomatic route to be successful. So throughout 2002 and early 2003, we were hopeful that the diplomatic route and the 1441 and the United Nations would bring Iraq to a sense that they had to cooperate and they had to disclose as well as dismantle whatever weapons they had, but the information we had was information given to us by the intelligence authorities.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: So you would agree with Mr Straw, who, I think, told the Inquiry that the case for military action stood or fell on whether Iraq posed a threat on international peace and security by reasons of his weapons of mass destruction. Would you agree with that?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: My thesis is this: that persistently Iraq had been asked by the international community to disclose and then dismantle weapons that
every country who signed that United Nations Resolution believed that they had, that we had a responsibility to ensure that international law in this case was upheld and the international community would mean very little if we could not, in the case of a country that had systematically -- was, in fact, a serial violator of international law -- we would have no sense that the political will would be there for future interventions which may be necessary, if we could not show that we could come together to deal with the problem of Iraq. But, of course, what we wanted was a diplomatic route to succeed, and right up to the last minute and right up to the last weekend, I think many of us were hopeful that that diplomatic route could succeed.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: So your concern was mainly about the breach of the United Nations Resolutions. It was defiance by Saddam Hussein of those  resolutions that you felt was a reason to invade --

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Yes, my view has always been, throughout this episode, that the sanctions and then the No Fly Zones and then the tightening of sanctions and then, of course, the demand that Iraq disclose to the international community what it had and what it was doing, this was all about the implementation of a new international set of rules that were necessary in a post-Cold War world, that we had already seen how much instability could be caused by individual states that were either failed states or rogue states, as well as seeing the effect of terrorism and the action of non-state actors in terrorism, that we had essentially failed in Rwanda to take action where it was necessary, we had tried hard in the Balkans to take action that was required, but 14 resolutions of the United Nations had been systematically violated and ignored by Iraq and it was our responsibility to make sure that the international order could work for the future.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: Can I move to more specifically about your role as a senior member of the Cabinet?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Yes.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: We understand from earlier evidence that Mr Blair discussed Iraq frequently with you in private conversations. Is that correct?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Yes, we had formal meetings of the Cabinet, and I think it is true to say in 2002 Iraq was --

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: I will come to that, but I'm talking about private conversations with Mr Blair.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I was going to say, in addition to these formal meetings of the Cabinet, I talked to Mr Blair regularly. We talked about all sorts of issues, of course, because we were dealing with the economic issues, we were with dealing with the reforms of the Health Service, we were dealing with a whole series of issues, including dealing with the Euro, an inquiry into how we would approach the Euro, but I would talk to him about Iraq and about the process of diplomatic negotiations.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: So you would say you were absolutely in the loop from early 2002 onwards?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Yes, I think we have got to understand that foreign affairs and the conduct of foreign affairs, as I have discovered since I became
Prime Minister, is quite different in many ways from the conduct of domestic policy, and there has been a whole debate over many, many years about Cabinet and Prime Ministerial Government. But what you have got now is a unique situation where, in the past, 50 years ago, Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries would operate through Ambassadors and operate through memos. You have instant contact between the Prime Minister and the American President. Instant contact between the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State. Of course, if it was necessary, between me and the Economic Minister, and that's true of
23 France and Germany and our relationships with them. So foreign policy is essentially -- the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, the Defence Secretary, involved very directly with their opposite numbers in every country, and they are in a position to report to you and report to the Cabinet about what is actually happening on a day-to-day, sometimes hour-to-hour, basis, and instead of intermediaries of the past, there is a huge issue about how individuals work far more closely together and the better the personal relationships, the better the conduct of foreign policy as well.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: But I understand that the relevant Cabinet Committee, that is the Defence and Overseas Policy Committee, didn't meet, but Mr Blair told us that there were lots of ad hoc meetings and he described as constant interaction within government on the key issues involving key players. Were you part of these interactions at these ad hoc discussions?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Yes, I was talking to the Defence Secretary from June 2002 about what would be necessary in the -- in case we failed in our  diplomatic efforts.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: What time in 2002?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: From about June 2002, about what we would have to do -- I think you will find that there is correspondence between the Defence Secretary and the Treasury about these issues, that we were discussing, in the eventuality that our diplomatic efforts failed, what would we do and what would be the nature of our military engagement. I said immediately to the Prime Minister that the military options that were under discussion -- there
7 should be no sense that there was a financial restraint that prevented us doing what was best for the military. I think Mr Hoon wrote me in June -- I think the Treasury did a paper in June about these very issues. I was then advised, I think, to talk to Mr Blair. I told him that I would not -- and this was right at the beginning -- I would not try to rule out any military option on the grounds of cost. Quite the opposite. He should feel free, because this was the right course of action, to discuss the military option that was best for our country and the one that would yield the best results, and that we understood that some options were more expensive than others, but we should accept the option that was right for our country.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: When did you become aware of the UK's decision to support the US invasion of Iraq?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: The decision was finally made by the Cabinet and then by the House of Commons --

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: When did you become aware?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: At the last minute, in March, right up until the last minute, I was hopeful, as I think the whole country was, that we would reach a diplomatic resolution of these issues. By the weekend --

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: But that was the decision to go to war. I'm talking about when did you become aware of the UK's support for the US invasion if one was to take place?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: We would support the US invasion only at the last minute when we were deciding that it was not possible for the diplomatic route to work any further. I remember going on television, I think it was the Frost programme, the Sunday before the Parliamentary vote and the day before the Cabinet decision on this matter, and even at that stage, we were hopeful that diplomatic routes could work, but even at that stage, we were also worried that the interventions of the United Nations were preventing a resolution and it was not possible to imagine that this could be sorted out simply by a delay. So it was, for me, a hope right up until the last minute that diplomatic action would work, and I think the efforts that Tony Blair and Jack Straw made in putting our case to the other countries and putting our case to the United Nations, they should not be faulted, because they tried everything within their power to avoid war. I think you will see, when I spoke at the Cabinet on the day before the Parliamentary vote, I was very clear that we had to exhaust all diplomatic avenues before we could included conclude that it was inevitable or impossible to avoid a decision about war and these diplomatic avenues were being tried right up until the last minute.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: Can I go back? In the wake of 9/11 and the change of approach of the US administration in 2002, Mr Blair said that there was a whole series of government decisions about smart sanctions and a very structured debate about the review the policy and government strategic options. Now, you were not at the meeting that took place at Chequers on 2 April -- at Crawford --

THE CHAIRMAN: Before Crawford.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: Sorry, before Crawford on 2 April. But do you recall that -- were you part of this review that took place?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Well, clearly when sanctions were being examined, the Treasury and the Foreign Office would be involved, because the implementation of sanctions depends on the Treasury's ability to do certain things, as it does the Foreign Office, but we were coming to a position where sanctions were being accepted by Saddam Hussein. He was finding ways round them.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: I know that, but I think my point really is: were you involved in discussions about smart sanctions and were you part of the structured discussions and policy options that were being considered in the early part --

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I was not --

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: -- of 2002?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I was not at any meetings prior to the Prime Minister's visit to Crawford, but I would know about the discussions about sanctions. If sanctions were to be changed, the Treasury would undoubtedly be involved and I would be involved in taking decisions.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: So you were being kept informed by the officials in the Treasury?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Yes, we would continue to monitor what was happening with sanctions, so, too, would the Foreign Office, because it was obviously our policy in relation to Iraq, depending on our knowledge as to whether sanctions were working or not, but the conclusion that we had reluctantly to draw was that sanctions were not being effective in the way that we had wanted and were inflicting damage on the Iraqi people, without, at the same time, causing the greatest of concern to the ruler of Iraq.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: As the situation evolved in 2002 and 2003, were you and other senior members of the Cabinet consulted on the developing policy?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Of course, of course. We had reports, as you will see, regularly to the Cabinet about the diplomatic course that was being taken and, of course, a lot of the discussions were leading up to the first resolution, 1441 in November, and the Cabinet was regularly kept in touch by Jack Straw and by the Prime Minister about what was happening. So I cannot see an argument that says that the Cabinet were not informed. We were informed fully about the process of the negotiations. They were essentially focused on the diplomacy. We hoped that the diplomacy would work and we were regularly updated on the problems as well as the opportunities that came from that diplomatic process.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: Were you informed of Number 10's exchanges with the White House and did you see Mr Blair's letters to the President?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: No, I would not expect to see private letters between Mr Blair and President Bush.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: Did he tell you the gist of the conversations he was having, the private conversations he had with him?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I would be discussing with him, on a private basis, all the other issues we were dealing with and he would keep me up-to-date with the progress of the diplomatic route, but at the same time -- I'm making it clear to you, from June 2002, we in the Treasury had to start making preparations in case there was a possibility of war. In June, we looked with the Defence Secretary at a number of options. We said finance was no barrier to discussing and concluding on the best options. In September, we wrote a paper about the reconstruction of Iraq, and we were amongst the first to look at the problems that had to be dealt with if there was to be reconstruction, had we ended up in a war that we had not sought but the diplomatic avenues had failed. I think we did some very important work in estimating what the cost of the war would be and I think we got it -- I think our first estimate was 2.5 billion by 2006, and then it was 4 billion, and I think we were right, and then we also --

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: We are going to come back to that later, if I may say, but can I just go back to your point about the Cabinet meetings? Mr Blair did tell us that there were some 24 Cabinet meetings, but was the discussion substantive, because you were being kept informed? Were real options discussed? Was it a proper discussion and assessment of the risks and options or was it just pure information?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I think when a Cabinet is meeting, they are getting a report from each of the Secretaries of State, where there are issues that have got to be reported or resolved. In the case of Iraq, everybody was trying to get a diplomatic solution, so the discussions at the Cabinet were essentially about how we could push forward our diplomatic processes so that we could get a diplomatic solution which would prevent war. So what was being reported to the Cabinet on most occasions was what were the difficulties and what were the successes of our diplomatic efforts to persuade the rest of Europe, persuade other countries to join us in UN Resolutions or to join us in putting pressure on Iraq, or pressure, in some cases, or discussions with
some of the other Arab states.That was the main gist you will see recorded in the Cabinet minutes or the discussions at that time, because we were anxious to avoid war. We had to prepare for it and were doing that in the ways that I have suggested,but the Cabinet was essentially discussing how we could do more to move forward the diplomatic route.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: But my understanding is that it was, of course, a diplomatic route backed by military threat and there is information that in the preparations -- in the meeting at Crawford, you know, military options were actually discussed, but were these properly explored in the Cabinet? Because, yes, of course you are pursuing the diplomatic route, but were there contingency plans being made both about the military operation and the aftermath planning. Was there proper discussion at these 24 Cabinet meetings?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I was aware, as I have told you, because of the discussions I was having with the Department of Defence, about the various military options that were being looked at. In fact, as you probably know from the evidence that you have received, one set of military options would have led us to -- if war had to happen, would have led us into one part of Iraq, eventually the decision was to move into another part of Iraq and we became responsible for the Basra area, but that was not the original plan and that changed over a period of time.Now, I was involved in discussions about making sure that sufficient resources were available to do that, and I always said that resources would be available, but at the Cabinet I would say that the most general discussions that we had were -- generally, the discussions were about the diplomatic effort, but in the different committees, obviously, the Prime Minister was talking to the Foreign Secretary and the Defence Secretary about options. I was not involved in these discussions, but I was aware of what was happening because of the role that the Treasury had to play in advance financial planning for any eventuality that would happen.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: You received, I know, oral and written briefings and submissions from Treasury officials from the middle of 2000 onwards about development of the policy and about aftermath planning. What issues did your officials raise with you? What were the specific issues that were raised with you?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: First of all, the cost, and we looked at different estimates of what intervention would cost, depending on the options that were decided on, and my view was that it had to be the best military option and we had to support the military decision that was made and not rule out any option on financial grounds.The second thing we looked at was the reconstruction of Iraq and we knew that there would be world economy implications; for example, the oil price spiked $10 higher, and that was an effect of the initial part of the war. We had foreseen that, but we also had to look at reconstruction, and I was determined -- I may say it is one of my regrets that I wasn't able to be more successful in pushing the Americans further on this
9 issue -- that the planning for reconstruction was essential, just at the same time as the planning for war, if the diplomatic avenue failed, and we were
12 working on reconstruction and what might be done, what I have called earlier the search for a just peace. We were looking at that early on and we had a paper in September. We discussed a number of options. When it came to March, we had a special Cabinet meeting on this.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: This was discussion within the Treasury with your officials?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: A discussion with the Treasury officials, but also discussion about how the international institutions could be brought in.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: Did you discuss those concerns raised by those figures with the Prime Minister --

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Of course --

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: -- with the Cabinet?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: -- and we had a meeting of the Cabinet at the beginning of March, if I am right --

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: The beginning of March?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: -- 2003, where we discussed the reconstruction issue. I offered to prepare a paper that was to be sent to the Americans about the issues of reconstruction that had to be dealt if there was to be a military action, and we were determined to understand how we could get the international institutions involved in reconstruction. We didn't see that it was possible for Britain and America -- there were 40 countries eventually in the original coalition, but we didn't see how it was possible, without the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the United Nations, in the end, being involved in reconstruction to get the finance that we thought could be something in the order of 45 billion for reconstruction. So we were focused on this issue of reconstruction and, as I say, I wish that it had been possible to follow that through much more quickly in the aftermath of the first few days of the battles.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: From what you are telling me, it seems to me that you had very comprehensive briefing submissions from officials on these issues and you were fully appraised of these issues, but how did you ensure that your perspective was represented to the Cabinet and your colleagues? I mean, influencing Americans is one thing, but were you able to influence your colleagues about these issues?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Yes, I think we had a meeting of the Cabinet at the beginning of March in which we discussed -- of a Cabinet Committee, I may say, at the beginning of March in which we discussed these issues of reconstruction. Tony Blair asked me to prepare a paper that he then sent --

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: Reconstruction is one thing, but what about the military options? Because there was a question of, you know, what were the consequences if we got involved in the south of Iraq, what would be the cost of that?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I had already made it clear that the military option had to be one that was best for the military, and that the Treasury would not in any way interfere and suggest that there were cost grounds for choosing one option against another. That was not our job. The Treasury was there to advise on how we could deal with the financial issues that arose from the military decisions and the political decision decisions that were made.So there was no time from June when the Treasury said, "This is a better military option because it is cheaper or less costly". At every point, I made it clear that we would support whatever option the military decided upon with the Prime Minister and the Cabinet and that there would be no financial barrier to us doing
8 what was necessary to be done.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: My final question is about the Joint Intelligence Committee, because you will have received the JIC papers and we have been told by some Cabinet members that they had personal briefs on intelligence. Did you receive such briefings?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Yes, I did.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: Did you ask to be briefed?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I asked to be briefed and I was briefed.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: When was that?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I have got the dates of the meetings for you: 4 March 2002, so very early,9 September, 13 December, 6 February and 24 February. So I had five meetings with the intelligence chiefs where I was briefed on the evidence and information that they had and it was -- these were very full briefings.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: You were convinced that the WMD was a real threat?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: The information I was given was that there was evidence that was known to many countries, not just our country, about the weaponry that the Iraqi Government held, and, of course, at that time there was a greater certainty amongst the intelligence community that this weaponry was there. I think we have learned that intelligence can give us insights into what is happening, but we have got to be more sure, as people have recognised, about the nature of the intelligence we were receiving from certain people.

BARONESS USHA PRASHAR: Thank you.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thanks, Usha. Can I turn to Sir Roderic Lyne. Roderic?

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Prime Minister, I wonder if I could just pick up one point of detail from your conversation with Baroness Prashar, which is that, in March of 2002, the Cabinet Office produced an options paper which was a strategic review of the courses available over Iraq, whether continuing containment or regime change in different forms. Obviously a very important paper which we discussed with Mr Blair. Did you see that paper at the time?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I don't recall seeing that paper. My main involvement in looking at the options started from June.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Do you think that, as one of the most senior members of the Cabinet, you should have seen that paper? I mean, you were going to have to obviously pick up the bills, but you were also a key member of the Cabinet.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Yes, but I think everybody knew that we were pursuing a diplomatic route. Everybody knew that sanctions were being considered and how we dealt with them. The No Fly Zones had been an issue, of course, and everybody knew that there were options available to us.It was only when it became clear that we had to look at specific options and cost them that the Treasury became involved.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Yes, sir, there is a Treasury role, but your role is as a very, very senior member of the Cabinet, and here was the government looking at the fundamental question of whether you'd continue with containment or -- the mood in Washington had changed after 9/11, people were pushing for regime change there, and the government was looking at this choice. Isn't it curious that, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, you weren't actually shown the paper.


RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I think I knew that was happening at the time. I don't think I needed to see every paper that was put about this. But I do say that, by June, I was very much involved in looking at the financial aspects --

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Things had moved forward by then?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Yes.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Okay. I would like to try to form a clear understanding of the situation that the Cabinet faced in March 2003 as it came to the point of decision, and then, perhaps in a few minutes move on to the question of the conflict itself and the immediate aftermath. You have talked about the need to exhaust the opportunities for diplomacy and trying to make peace. Were you convinced that we had exhausted all the possibilities for a solution via the UN and through diplomacy by the middle of March 2003?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Yes, I am afraid we had to draw that conclusion, and I think members of the Cabinet, when presented with the information and the evidence, drew that conclusion as well. With one exception. I think that we had tried very hard on the diplomatic route. We had reached a situation where we had -- everybody agreed in November that there was an issue with Iraq, that the weapons had to be disclosed,that disclosure had to come and there was a final opportunity to do something about it. This had not happened in the intervening period and we therefore had reluctantly to come to the conclusion that there was, first of all, very little chance that Saddam Hussein would take the action that was necessary and then, unfortunately, that the countries that had signed 1441, that included a whole range of countries, including, if I may say so, Syria and countries like that,that we couldn't reach a final agreement about the nature of the action that was to be taken.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: But we were still in a situation in which the UN inspectors were reporting they were getting some cooperation from Iraq and they wanted more time to pursue their inspections and many members of the United Nations, including the Security Council, agreed with them. So shouldn't we have given them more time?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: But it was also obvious, I am afraid, that some countries were making it clear that they would not support action under any circumstances. So whether we had given more time or not at that stage -- and of course, it would have been far better if we could have given more time -- we had to have an assurance that countries that had signed 1441 were prepared to reach a decision at some point, and that was not the evidence that was available to us as we made our Cabinet decision.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: I would like to come back to that in a minute, but Number 10 itself had actually asked the White House for more time, and yet, on 17 March, the Cabinet decided that time had run out. Isn't there a contradiction there?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: No, because I think people did want to exhaust the diplomatic process to the full, but by that weekend, it was clear to us that there was a number of countries, who had supported the original resolution, that under no circumstances would agree to military action, even although people thought that was the only route ahead if Saddam Hussein continued to defy the United Nations. So it was the conclusion that arose from other countries now saying that, even if there were more time for the inspectors, they would not support action.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: You have referred to Iraq as an aggressor state and clearly Iraq had been an aggressor state. It had an appalling record of aggression against all of its neighbours under Saddam Hussein but at the time we are talking about, in March of 2003, was there actually a current threat of aggression by Iraq?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I think all the evidence that people had in November, let's say, before we come to the March resolution, that all the rest of the world agreed that there were problems that had to be addressed by Iraq if they were to be a member of the international community, and they felt that he had a final opportunity to deal with issues where he had not been honest with the international community and had not disclosed, far less dismantled, any of his weapons. So from November to March, the issue was not, it seems to me, that the rest of the world did not agree that there were disclosure problems and did not agree that there were disposal problems, the question was whether people would be prepared to follow the rules of the international community that, where someone consistently and persistently is a serial violator of the rules of the international community, action has got to be taken.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Yes, self-evidently, Iraq had been in breach of these rules for many years and many UN Resolutions, as you have pointed out, and the international community had responded to that through a range of measures, which you have also referred to, sanctions, No Fly Zones, as well as active measures of deterrence, but my question was: was there a threat of aggression from Iraq that required us to take this military action?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I put it the other way, the diplomatic route appeared to the Cabinet to have reached a conclusion where we could not see the possibility of Saddam Hussein abiding by the rules of the international community. I come back to my original argument. For me, the issue was, we are in a post-Cold War world, we are dealing with instabilities that exist in different parts of the world. If the international community cannot cohere, then we are sending a message to other potential states and other potential aggressors that they are free to do as they will. So for me, the issue was: are we, as an international community, prepared to follow through the logic of our position, and when the diplomatic route has failed, then we have either got to show ourselves unable to take action because we can't agree or we have got to be prepared to take the action as necessary. So for me, the issue goes back to how we, as an international community, will deal with problems where you have rogue states, where you have failed states, where you have obviously non-state actors who are terrorists, and if we cannot find a way of dealing with these problems, then the world will be a very unsafe place for the future. I am afraid this became a test of whether the international community was prepared to deal with problems in a post-Cold War world where instabilities were becoming more and more apparent.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: So it was that reason rather than the threat of aggression that convinced you?2

RT HON JACK STRAW MP [sic]: I have always taken the view that, if we can't build a strong international community where people abide by the rules that are set, and if we cannot cohere to do so, then we are sending a message to other states and other countries that they are free to do as they will.[?]

SIR RODERIC LYNE: This is a message that other states will have heeded as a result of the action in Iraq?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I think this is the issue. As I said at the beginning, one of the lessons that I learned from Iraq, and I think it is a lesson that the whole of the world has got to really come to terms with, is our international institutions for global cooperation on these matters are not yet strong enough. America and Europe of course must work more closely together, and one of the problems in Iraq was that that closeness of working was not seen. America and Europe are now working far more closely together with the French and the German and the Italian Government and the Spanish Government, working far more closely with the Americans, but if we are going to build an international community where people will feel safer from both the threat of terrorism and failed states or rogue states, then we have to have an international system of governance which people feel will take action when those people who break the rules are found to have done so.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Yes. From the answers that you gave to Baroness Prashar, would I be right in understanding that you were briefed on the terms in which Mr Blair had pledged the UK support to President Bush in the first half of 2002?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I believe right up to the last moment, we, Britain, were trying to get a diplomatic solution. So I'm not sure that I accept the premise of your question.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: I am referring to evidence we have been given by a number of people, Mr Blair himself, Alastair Campbell. Encapsulating, you said you didn't see the correspondence between Mr Blair and President Bush, but what I'm trying to understand is whether you, as a senior member of the Cabinet, understood the gist of what he was saying to President Bush in terms of pledging our support.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I think all of us knew what the stakes were, that we had to make the diplomatic process work or there was a danger that we would be at war with Iraq. But our efforts, right until the last minute, the efforts of the whole government, in my view, were to try to make a diplomatic solution work, and even in that last weekend, when I talked in detail to Tony Blair and was working very closely with him, we were trying to see whether we could get some of the countries who had indicated they would support no action under any circumstances to change their position. So I would say that the decision was made only after the diplomatic course was fully exhausted.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: But, as we have heard from a number of witnesses, we had told the White House privately in the first half of 2002 that if we couldn't make the diplomatic -- which was obviously the preferred route for both us and them -- couldn't get a peaceful resolution of this issue, that we would stand with them in taking firmer action.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Well, we had to prepare for war, as I said, because, from June, we were in -- the Treasury and I was looking at options that were available to us, but I still insist to you that at every point in that year, our first priority was to get a diplomatic solution.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: I think that's completely clear. The question I'm asking is whether the Prime Minister of the day had told you effectively what he told President Bush.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: We knew that the options available to us included going to war. We knew also, however, that the best chance of peace and the international community working to best effect was the diplomatic route, and I still hold to the position that I think you are trying to move me from -- the final decision --

SIR RODERIC LYNE: I'm just asking for a yes or no answer as to whether he told you what he told President Bush.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: The final decision was made in the end by the Cabinet after the diplomatic option was exhausted. I kept in regular touch with Tony Blair and I knew what the options were, but I also knew that he and I were trying to make sure that the diplomatic option was the one that was to be used and the one that was to be successful, and until it was exhausted, there was no decision made about going to war.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: No. Do I take it from this that he hadn't told you in terms of what he had said to President Bush?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I had regular conversations with Tony Blair and we talked about these issues, but I do not have copies of his letters and I don't know the exact conversation, and you wouldn't expect me to.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: In his exchanges and exchanges between his staff and President Bush's staff, he had emphasised that there were a number of points that the British Government wanted to establish before any conflict, any possible conflict, took place with Iraq.He put great emphasis, as we have heard in evidence, on the UN route, on building a wide coalition with international support, on gaining the support of public opinion in our own country on proper preparation, including preparation for the aftermath, and not least on achieving substantive progress in the Middle East peace process. I assume that you would be fully aware and supportive of those points?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Yes, we discussed the Middle East peace process particularly, because we felt that progress could be made, the Treasury, at that stage, and I, were working on an economic plan for the Middle East, where we could underpin the political route map with an economic route map, if you like, where we could offer the Palestinians the chance of greater prosperity if violence was abated, and we were really learning the lessons that we had learned in other parts of the world, including Northern Ireland, that if we could reduce the incentive to violence by making sure that people were more prosperous, then we might have a better chance of the peace process working. So I was directly involved in initiatives on that issue and it was essentially part of the Cabinet's interest in this whole region that we could move forward that Middle East peace process.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Why hadn't we succeeded in achieving more substantive progress on the Middle East peace process by March 2003?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I have dealt with friends in Israel and friends in the Palestinian authorities and the progress of peace-making in the Middle East is one where it is very difficult to get both sides to do the same thing at once and it is an experience of small steps forward and sometimes steps backwards, and, of course, the splits within the Palestinian organisations had made it more difficult and the changes in Israeli politicians obviously mean that you often have to start again.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: But we have heard from other witnesses that, while the Americans heard what we said about the importance of putting pressure on the process, effectively they did almost nothing to achieve this, except, at the very last minute, to publish the road map. So our efforts to persuade them to push this forward hadn't succeeded.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: President Bush did become the first President to commit himself to a Palestinian state and it was a very important step forward, but we always recognised that we had to get the balance right between the security that the Israelis needed for them to reach an agreement and persuading the Palestinians that there was a potential prosperity in a viable Palestinian -- economically viable Palestinian state. In all the times that I have been involved in this, you vary between wondering whether you can proceed inch by inch, or whether you have got to bring things to a head, as has happened in some instances over the last 10 or 20 years, and trying to work for a solution that is all-encompassing. Now, at that point, people were looking for something that was more all-encompassing and it didn't, in the end, move forward. We are still in the same position today, where we are trying to get small advances that would allow people to have confidence to have negotiations on the biggest issues.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: I mean, you said as Prime Minister in October 2007 in the House of Commons, that you were convinced, after you made a visit to the region, that progress in Iraq cannot be fully achieved without progress on the Israeli/Palestinian issues. Doesn't this imply that we should have continued to contain Iraq while trying to achieve more progress beforehand on the Middle East peace process?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I don't think so. Look, there is a debate about this and obviously you, as a Committee, will be wanting to enter into that debate.
In the Middle East, when I talked to Palestinian and Israeli leaders, they all know what the settlement that is necessary is likely to involve. They all know that final negotiations would involve the future of Jerusalem, would involve a land exchange, would involve agreement about the Palestinian refugees. It is how they get to this final settlement that is the issue, and how we can move them along when there are so many difficulties en route. Every time we try to move forward, there is something that happens that makes it more difficult to do so, and more recently it has been the problems in Gaza that have prevented us doing this. But I don't think that what has happened in Iraq has prevented us moving forward in the Middle East at all.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: That wasn't the point I was making. Let's come back to the Cabinet meeting that, as you have emphasised, took the actual decision,the meeting of 17 March 2003. That was the moment when you and other members the Cabinet, except, of course, for the late Robin Cook, who resigned, accepted shared responsibility for the decision to going go to war with Iraq, and if you look back from that point, do you feel that there should have been a Cabinet Committee set up before the conflict happened -- one was set up immediately afterwards to deal with it -- that people like you should have been represented on? I think, if I'm right in interpreting your answer to Baroness Prashar, you hadn't actually been at Mr Blair's ad hoc meetings on the subject that he told us about. You weren't at his meeting at Chequers in April 2002, which was an important one. You weren't at his meeting on 23 July 2002, which was an important one. There wasn't a Cabinet Committee, and yet the Cabinet now had to take this very big decision over whether or not to go
20 to war. Shouldn't you have been cut in earlier?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I have to say that traditionally the Chancellor has never been on these committees and I don't think it happened previously.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: On War Cabinets in the past?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: When it came to the War Cabinet being constituted, the Chancellor was a member of that.As I understand it, previously, in other instances, the Chancellor, under previous governments, had not been a member of the War Cabinet.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: You were widely seen as one of the most influential members of the Cabinet, as the most likely successor, accurately, to the then Prime Minister.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: It is very kind of you to say all this, but the fact of the matter is I did not feel at any point that I lacked the information that was necessary, that I was denied information that was required. But my role in this was not to second guess military decisions or options, my role in this was not to interfere in what were very important diplomatic negotiations; that was what the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary and the Defence Secretary were involved in. My role in this was, first of all, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, to make sure that the funding was there for what we had to do, and we did make sure that that happened, and, secondly, to play my full part as a Cabinet member in the discussions that took place, and that is indeed what I did, and when the Cabinet met on the Monday before the Tuesday vote in the House of Commons, I spoke at the Cabinet and made my position clear.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: You said in your opening remarks that one of the points from which we needed to draw lessons from fighting two wars was that we needed proper structures of decision-making.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Yes, that's absolutely right.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Looking back to the situation in the year and a half before we went to war with Iraq, did we have the proper structures of decision-making? Shouldn't we have had a Cabinet Committee, such as had existed in many previous governments, that didn't interfere with the conduct of business but that reviewed the strategy, reviewed the diplomacy, reviewed the preparations? Shouldn't we have had a committee to do that before the conflict, rather than just set one up afterwards?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I think we did learn lessons and I think, after the Butler Inquiry, Tony Blair set up a more formal system of decision-making, and that was the right thing to do. I may say that I have taken this further in the position that I hold now. We have a National Security Committee that includes in attendance all the intelligence chiefs, the chiefs of defence, as well as the senior ministers, and it will meet regularly to discuss issues related to Afghanistan, mainly now, but previously Afghanistan in Iraq. It is underpinned by a senior officials' meeting prior to that and a junior officials' meeting prior to that. The Foreign Secretary, the Defence Secretary and the International Development Secretary are asked to meet before these meetings to sort out issues relevant to the relationship between these departments, and I do say, as I said right at the beginning, that we are learning,
10 rightly so, that when you are facing, in this case, two wars, that the structure of government decision-making has to change and you have to involve in that decision-making all the security and defence chiefs in a very direct way and formal way, and you have also got to involve all the senior politicians who are involved in this. That is the structure of decision-making that I think is necessary for a world where we have an interventionist stance related to difficult problems where we are part of an international community trying resolve these problems. We have to have that formal process of decision-making. So, yes, I agree with you, we have learned lessons from the informality of the previous procedures, but, as Tony Blair said to you, he made changes himself as a result of what he learned and then the Butler Inquiry. I have made further changes, which I think are the right things to do, and I think National Security Council, the NSID, as it is called, as a committee has worked well and allows on equal terms all people who contribute that discussion -- should contribute to that discussion to make their contribution. So this is a reform in the machinery of government that I think has already been made, and if we are to learn further lessons, I will be guided by the Committee's conclusions on that very issue.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: That's obviously a very important point for us, as an Inquiry that is trying to learn lessons from this. So in the absence of the sort of structures that you have set up and that Mr Blair set up after the Butler Report, was it the situation, on 17 March 2003, that the Cabinet, and particularly the most senior members of the Cabinet, were adequately briefed, adequately informed, adequately aware of all the different aspects of this question in order to share in the collective responsibility for the decision?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Undoubtedly I was, and I had full information.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: You were?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: There is no sense in which I felt that I had inadequate information. Obviously, the intelligence information has had to be reassessed as a result of what we have now learned, but there was no sense in which we were denied information that was necessary for us making a decision, and certainly, on my part, I was fully engaged in the discussions that had taken place that weekend, before the Cabinet meeting, but, equally, I was involved in the financial decisions, that involved also being aware of all the military options that we had to consider. So I would stress that as far as both my relationship with the Prime Minister and with the information, I was fully in line with what was being done.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: On the intelligence which you mentioned, Robin Cook, of course, had raised concerns about the way the intelligence was being interpreted. He had actually challenged this. Were you aware at the time of his concerns? Had he discussed them with you?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Robin's view, as I understand it, was that the policy of sanctions and the No Fly Zones were a better way of dealing with the problem.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: But he had actually queried the intelligence too.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I do not recall a conversation with Robin about the intelligence. He may have mentioned that at the Cabinet. I cannot recall that. But I do know that when I had questions to ask about the intelligence, and I reported to you the meetings that I had with the intelligence services, they were telling me information that had not only been confirmed by their security services, but by other countries' security services as well. We have subsequently discovered that the sources of these intelligence reports to a number of different intelligence authorities were probably the same and the wrong sources, but at that time, I had full briefings from the intelligence services and I was given information that seemed credible -- plausible at the
time.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Because in Robin Cook's resignation statement, which was, of course, before we discovered that the intelligence had been faulty, he, in public, in the House of Commons, actually challenged whether it was correct, but had he essentially kept this to himself within the Cabinet? He hadn't made it more widely known?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I think we knew that Robin had objections, because he felt that the sanctions and the non-military route should be pursued, but I think the question of the intelligence emerged more, if I may say so, after this and after the investigations that have taken place into what actually happened that led the intelligence services to conclude certain things.Intelligence is a guide but it cannot be the only means by which you make decisions.


SIR RODERIC LYNE: From the five briefings that you had and the JIC papers that you read and received like other members of the Cabinet, were you convinced that the threat from what was being reported to be Iraq's programmes of weapons of mass destruction was growing?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I was convinced of a more basic fact, I just say to you; for me, I repeat the major issue was that a breach of the international community's laws and decisions was something that was unacceptable. As far as the intelligence was concerned, we took the information that was given by the intelligence services, but the more basic question was whether you could continue in a new world with circumstances where one country was determined to stand out against the international community no matter what happened.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: I think you have made that very, very clear. I think the Chairman wants to call a coffee break at this point. I would like to come back afterwards, if I can, to one or two other aspects of the question that faced the Cabinet on 17 March.

THE CHAIRMAN: I think now is the time for a short break.Can I say to those in the room: please do not leave the room unless you really need to, because it will take quite a long time to get in. We are going to resume in about ten minutes. (11.01 am) (Short break)(11.11 am)

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Let's resume and I will ask Sir Roderic Lyne to resume questioning, but on a different theme, I think.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: A different aspect of the same theme, I think. One of the important questions obviously that the Cabinet had to be clear about was the legality of the conflict. Were you fully satisfied with the advice that was given to the Cabinet on that point?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Yes. I believe that the role of the Attorney General was to advise us on the matter of the legality. He gave us advice, he was certain about the advice he gave, and we had then to go on and make our decisions on the basis, not simply of the legal advice, but the moral, political and other case for taking action.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Sure, but on the legal advice, were you and other Cabinet ministers aware that the Attorney General's position had been very different until early February 2003?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I wasn't aware in any detail of this. I wasn't involved in discussions with the Attorney General. I wasn't involved in meetings with the Attorney General at all. We had this straightforward issue. We were sitting down, as a Cabinet, to discuss the merits of taking action once the diplomatic avenues had been exhausted, unfortunately, and we had to have straightforward advice from the Attorney General: was it lawful or was it not?
His advice in the Cabinet meeting was unequivocal.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: So you, at that time, had not seen the formal written advice that he had presented to the Prime Minister on 7 March?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: No, and I think that -- look, I'm not a lawyer, I'm not an international lawyer. As I understand it, the constitutional position is very clear, that before a decision of such magnitude is made, the Attorney General has to say whether he thinks it is lawful or not. That was the straightforward question he had to answer. If he had answered equivocally in his statement to us, then of course there would have been questions, but he was very straightforward in his recommendation.To me, that was a necessary part of the discussion about the decision of war, but it wasn't sufficient because we had to look at the political and other case that had to be examined in the light of the period of diplomacy at the United Nations.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: So you and other Cabinet ministers,except, of course, for the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister, were not aware that the Attorney1 General's position had been equivocal only two weeks beforehand in his document of 7 March and had been indeed directly opposed to the position he took in
Cabinet up to about 11 February? You were completely unaware of this and you were unaware also that the Foreign Office's legal advisers, specialists in international law, did not agree with the position that the Attorney General presented to Cabinet?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I think there had been some press coverage about the Foreign Office. I may be wrong on that, but I think there may have been some press coverage.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: The Foreign Secretary referred to some press coverage.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Look, the question that came before us: was the advice of the Attorney General that this was lawful or not? The Attorney General gave unequivocal advice to the Cabinet. I think he has been along to the committee to explain the basis on which he gave that advice. I have heard him now give his evidence to the Committee, but he had a straightforward question to answer. It wasn't a simple question, but it was a straightforward question, "Was it lawful or was it not?" and he gave an unequivocal answer.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: You don't think the Cabinet needed to know whether this was based on a robust position or a slightly controversial position?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I think, in retrospect, people, as historians of this matter, will look at it very carefully and look at what happened and what was said between different people at different times and what were the first drafts, the second drafts and the third drafts. But the issue for us was very clear. I mean, we are a Cabinet making a decision. Did the Attorney General, who is our legal officer responsible for giving us legal advice on these matters, have a position on this that was unequivocal, and his position on this was unequivocal. He cited, as I have already done, the United Nations resolutions that led to us believe that Saddam Hussein had failed to comply with international law. He cited 1441 and the importance of the final opportunity for Saddam Hussein. All these things were said and it laid the basis on which we could make a decision, but it wasn't the reason that we made the decisions. He gave us the necessary means to make a decision, but it wasn't sufficient in itself.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: If you had known that his position had been equivocal only ten days previously in formal advice presented to the Prime Minister, would it have changed your view?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I don't think it would have changed my view, because unless he was prepared to say that his unequivocal advice was that this was not lawful, then the other arguments that I thought were important played into place, and that was what I have already talked to you about: the obligations to the international community, the failure to honour them, the failure to disclose, the failure to discharge the spirit and the letter of the resolutions, particularly 1441, and I knew that there was a debate about whether 1441 should lead to a further decision or to a further discussion.I knew that that was an issue. But it seemed to me the Attorney General's advice was quite unequivocal.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Then we get to the decision itself. As you say, the Attorney General has advised. The Cabinet has been advised that the diplomatic route effectively is at an end. At this point of taking the decision, only the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary had been fully involved in the approach; only the Foreign Secretary, so far as we have heard in evidence, for example, had been aware of the terms of the Prime Minister's correspondence with the President, which was very important. Only the Foreign Secretary had seen the earlier advice from the Attorney General. But the Cabinet as a whole has to share in the responsibility for this decision and we hadn't achieved all of the things we wanted to achieve on the Middle East peace process, in terms of UN support,in terms of international support and so on. Do you think that this Cabinet, in which only two members were fully in the picture, 100 per cent in the picture -- and you were obviously more in the picture than those who were not as close as you to the Prime Minister -- was able to take a genuinely collective decision, or was it being asked essentially to endorse an approach that had been taken by your predecessor at a time when the die effectively was already cast?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I have got to be very clear. I believed we were making the right decision for the right cause. I believed I had sufficient information before me to make a judgment. Of course, I wasn't trying to do the job of the Foreign Secretary or trying to second guess something that had happened at other meetings. I was looking at the issue on its merits and, as I have said to you before, I was convinced of the merits of our case. Equally, at the same time, we have learned about how we do these things in the future, and it was important to me that the matter went to Parliament and the matter went to a debate in the House of Commons and we have got to the remember to the vote in the House of Commons was absolutely overwhelmingly in favour of taking the action that was necessary, and I believe that in future it will be important that a government puts this matter to the House of Commons as a matter of right, that the House of Commons vote on these matters before any country goes to war. So I think we have learned from the process that we need also Parliamentary engagement in this and I favour a change in the constitution, which we are bringing about, where Parliament will, in all normal circumstances, vote on the issue of peace and war.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Two of your colleagues who were around that table, the former Development Secretary and the then Foreign Secretary, in their evidence to this Inquiry, have told us of the concerns that they had. Mr Straw described this decision as the most difficult decision he had ever faced in his life and one of the most divisive questions of his political lifetime. It was obviously a very difficult decision for him. Was this a decision that you had any personal reservations about?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Nobody wants to go to war. Nobody wants to see innocent people die. Nobody wants to see your forces put at risk of their lives. Nobody would want to make this decision, except in the most gravest of circumstances, where you were sure that you were doing the right thing. I have said that I think it was the right decision made for the right reasons. I think the issues that arise in reconstruction and what happened afterwards are issues where I want to learn the very important lessons, and we are learning important lessons for the future, but the decision to take the actions we did, was the right decision and it was made for the right reasons.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: You spoke just now of the importance of the House of Commons vote, and obviously your own influence in securing support for what was a controversial decision in the House of Commons on 18 March must have been important. Were you happy with the way that the question was presented to the House of Commons by your predecessor in his speech on that day?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Yes. We were in a position where the Cabinet had made its recommendation. I think, in future, the House of Commons will have the right to make the final decision, and that is what I'm trying to achieve.It was clearly a vote that was made after the recommendation of Cabinet, which was sufficient in itself for us to make the decision to go to war, but it would have been better, and it will be better in the future, that Parliament retains the right to make the final decision.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: You stressed right throughout this morning the importance to you of maintaining international order and international institutions in the world that we now live in. But we were in a situation, you as a Cabinet, were in a situation, of having to go to the House of Commons and ask them to support something for which we had not got the support of the United Nations Security Council? Wouldn't it have been much better if we had been able to prolong the diplomacy until such time as we had got the support of the Security Council, thereby strengthening international institutions?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: If there had been any chance that the Security Council would have been prepared to come to a decision based on its merits, within a few weeks' time, I would have supported that, but countries had made it clear that, irrespective of the merits, they were determined not to enforce the will of the international community.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Which countries?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: A number of countries were making it clear that, irrespective of what actually the results of the investigation were, that although the 1441 had said that they were prepared to consider all necessary measures --

SIR RODERIC LYNE: But which countries said that?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: -- they wouldn't be prepared to do so.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Which countries said that?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I think it was being made clear by a number of countries in the region, and I think France and Germany was making that clear also.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Germany wasn't on the Security Council. Are you really referring to France here?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Statements were made by President Chirac which were very clear that he was not prepared to support military action.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: At that time.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: He was not prepared to support military action and could give no indication that there was a time when he would support military action.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: After he made his statement, didn't the French Government immediately contact Number 10, the Foreign Office, the British Embassy in Paris to say that the British Government was not interpreting his statement in an accurate way.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: That may have happened, but, you know, I wasn't the Foreign Secretary or the Prime Minister. The contacts that would be had with the French would be through them. What I knew is that there was very little chance on our assessment that the diplomatic route could lead to success if a number of countries were not in themselves willing to consider the action that would flow from that. Look, I think you have got to understand -- and I know the Committee will want to look at this -- we are at the beginning of a new phase of the world community. We were in a post-Cold War phase, where the tensions between Russia and America are not the paradigm within which people see what they should do as individual states around the world.There is a danger in this period that certain countries, rogue states, would be prepared to take actions that hurt the international community and certainly disobeyed the laws of the international community, and this was a test of whether the international community could hold together. Unfortunately, we could not bring all countries along, but if the international community had then decided that, after 14 resolutions and after a huge attempt at diplomacy and after trying sanctions but not succeeding with sanctions, it was going to give up on this, then I think we would be sending a message to every potential dictator around the world that they were free to do what they wanted. I think that is a very important message to learn;that nothing was going to be perfect in a situation where we were in the midst of creating the -- if you like, the institutions and the practices of a new world. It was perhaps inevitable that some countries would not feel part of that process for the time being, but relationships between France, Germany and Britain and America, are stronger now than they have ever been and I think that shows our determination, as all countries working together, to create the international community that requires that international law and international rules be observed.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: But at this precise time we are talking about, the UN inspectors were saying, "Give us more time". The French Government was saying to us, and the Chilean President, who was a crucial player, the Chilean government on the Security Council, were again saying,"We need more time before we come to this decision". They weren't saying, "We will never do it". So why did we have to take the decision on 17 March?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I think you have got to make a judgment here --

SIR RODERIC LYNE: It wasn't because the Americans had said,"We are simply going to take military action this week"?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I think it is a matter of judgment here, that for --

SIR RODERIC LYNE: But there was an American military deadline, wasn't there?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: But it is a matter of judgment for the British Cabinet, and I'm talking about the decisions that we made and not that other countries made. The matter of judgment was whether, after 14 resolutions, after 1441 had united the international community, after Saddam Hussein had refused to comply, was giving minimal disclosure, the diplomatic channels had become exhausted, as to whether you take the action that you said in November you were prepared to take. We were prepared to take that action and I justify that decision on the basis of our judgment that the diplomatic route had become exhausted.Now, other people can take different judgments, but this was the judgment of the British Cabinet at the time.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Mr Straw told us in his evidence that a foreign policy objective of regime change would be improper and self-evidently unlawful. Mr Blair, perhaps in contrast to that, had said in his speech in Texas in 2002, talking not just of Iraq but in more general terms:"If necessary the action should be military, and again, if necessary and justified, it should involve regime change." He said to this Inquiry that Saddam had threatened, not just the region, but the world, and in the circumstances it was better to deal with this threat, to remove him from office. Does that imply that the British Government had ended up by aligning with the American interpretation of international law, the revival argument that the Attorney General presented to the Cabinet and the American objective of regime change, which had always been their policy, indeed under the previous administration, under pressure of an American military deadline?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Our position was not that. Our position was to support action so that the will of the international community, that Saddam Hussein disclose and dispose of weapons, be reinforced, and at the back of my mind was this sense that, if the international community did not act here, then the international community would find it difficult to gain credibility for acting in other areas, and this new world order that we were trying to create was being put at risk. So I go back to what I say is the wider argument about defying the will of the international community.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: But in order to achieve that objective that you have described, was it, in effect, essential to remove Saddam's regime from office, irrespective of weapons of mass destruction?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: That became the result of the action. That became the result. But the intention of the action was to force Iraq to abide by the
25 interpretation of the international community about its obligations, but, in the end, his failure to comply and his failure to disclose and then dismantle was seen as a reason why action had to be taken inside Iraq and the eventual effect of that was to remove him from office.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Chairman, I think you wanted to come in.

THE CHAIRMAN: Mr Brown, I would like to just pick up a point, going back to the legal advice, looking ahead,not back at what happened in the Cabinet that made the decision, but rather to a possible lesson to be learned for the future. There was implied in the full advice, which the Cabinet didn't see, and didn't ask to see, that there was a risk exposure both for ministers themselves and not least for Crown servants, both military and civil, in the event that in some jurisdiction or in some process it could be found that the decision was not lawful. Now, is a plain constitutional doctrine that says: the Attorney rules, "Yes, it is, no, it isn't", sufficient when there is that element within it -- and I'm thinking about future situations, where the risk exposure of Crown servants and Crown ministers may be involved?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I knew at that stage that the Permanent Secretary to the Civil Service and the military chiefs had required, as they should have, clear guidance as to what the position was. So I knew that they were satisfied that they had got the legal assurances that were necessary. As far as the future is concerned, I think our desire to be more transparent in the way we make decisions has, of course, got to be balanced by the needs of national security, but I think it is important that we do everything in our power, if we are putting these issues to Parliament and not simply taking executive decisions without recourse to Parliament, then I think we will have to provide greater information than was done at that time. So that is one of the lessons that I think will be learned, it will be inevitable that Parliament would, in the circumstances in which it was making the final decision, ask for greater information. So I think this is one of the lessons we can learn. But I do say that everything that Mr Blair did during this period, he did properly, and I do not say that I was anything other than fully informed about the issues that I needed information on to make my decisions.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Back to you, Sir Roderic.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Could I now turn to the campaign, but particularly to the immediate aftermath of the military action? In January this year you said in a press conference that the mistake in the war was not to do the reconstruction and plan it in the way that was necessary to so that Iraq could recover quickly after Saddam Hussein fell. What went wrong with the planning for the aftermath?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I think this will be debated for many years to come, and I hope that your Inquiry can make some recommendations about how we deal with it in the future. Look, the ideal situation would be this: that an international organisation like the United Nations have a security and reconstruction agency that is available immediately reconstruction of an individual country needs to happen. That would be true, for example, in Zimbabwe, if there was to be a change of government. It is certainly true in Sudan, Somalia, it is certainly true in the Balkans areas where reconstruction has to take place. So one of the lessons we have got to learn is that there are going to be interventions that are necessary in the future for humanitarian or for other reasons, that you will have failed states, you will have conflict-ridden states that will break down. You will have states that need to change, and we should have in place, as we have now in Britain -- we have got 1,000 people who are ready to help in reconstruction, immediately if there is a need for it. We should have a United Nations or an international agency which is responsible for security and reconstruction. Just as we have military support, we need civilian support so that we can do all things that are necessary when a broken state has to be rebuilt. So that's my first lesson that I learned. I always thought, from June 2002 onwards, that reconstruction would be a problem. In my first meetings, I said that we had to plan properly for that. But we couldn't. Let us be honest, we couldn't persuade the Americans that this had to take the priority that it deserved, and the course of action in Iraq has been that we only came to what I would call the Iraqi-isation, in other words, Iraq security forces, Iraq police, Iraq economic development and Iraq political development -- that was the basis on which reconstruction could take place. That is what a just peace involves, and we only came to that later and not at the first point after the invasion. I regret this, I cannot take personal responsibility for everything that went wrong. We tried -- I did a paper to the Americans just before the war was declared that said that these things had to be planned for and we needed the international organisations to be involved.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: We had, of course, anticipated that the United Nations would do exactly as you said and it had a lot of experience and also organisations like the World Bank. But we weren't able to do that because we couldn't get the support of the United Nations. So that -- I mean, you can have an international agency, but if you don't have the legitimacy that allows it to operate, then you are stuck, and so that was surely the situation we found ourselves in.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: But the United Nations did come in at a later stage.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: After a resolution in May.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I was Chairman of the IMF at that time and the IMF -- the IMF Committee at the time, and the IMF were prepared to come in. The World Bank was prepared to come in. I talked to the President of the World Bank and asked them to come in, and we had the two funds, the development fund for Iraq and the international reconstruction facility for Iraq, but it is true to say that the post-war planning -- because we now know that you cannot win the peace simply by military action, you need to engage the people of Iraq, or any other country, you need to give them the chance of political empowerment at some stage, you need to have strong security forces and you need what I discovered in Basra, you need economic development. People have got to have a stake in the future. These things were not the central part of the initial reconstruction plan, but they became that way, and the lessons that we have learned in Iraq are now being applied in Afghanistan in the policy that we are pursuing now, and I hope the Committee may be able to draw some of the lessons that we have learned in Iraq and say that they are more relevant to other situations as well as to Iraq itself.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: I think there is going to be a lot there for us to explore. You say that from June 2002 onwards, you were pressing for thought to be given to this question, but the British Government's own planning for the aftermath really didn't get into gear until February 2003. Why did we take so long? Why were we so late doing it?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I think the Committee will have a paper that we did in September --

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Recommendations were made. We only set up the Iraq Planning Unit on about the 11th or so of February 2003.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: This was -- originally, of course, we wanted this to have been an international effort, so our original proposals were that we had to involve the UN, IMF, World Bank as quickly as possible. That was obviously frustrated by what was happening in the diplomatic negotiations over trying to find a way forward.We had a meeting, I believe, on March 9th, of ministers to discuss reconstruction. I was asked, as a result of that --

SIR RODERIC LYNE: That's very late.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Yes. That was as a result of the papers that had been done. We had a meeting on March 9th. At that meeting I was asked to do a paper that we sent to the Americans after that meeting about some of the things that we thought had to be done for reconstruction.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: But why do you think the Cabinet hadn't paid more attention to the aftermath planning at an earlier stage?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I think because we were more confident than you may look now that the diplomatic process would have more success, but clearly we were preparing for military options and clearly we had also to prepare for reconstruction.Now, the work that was done in America, and clearly the work that was done in Britain, was not done as much in parallel as it should have been done.

THE CHAIRMAN: Could I just intervene? We know from what we have heard and read from open sources that there was a great deal of planning done for the aftermath by the State Department.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: That's right.

THE CHAIRMAN: But that was not drawn on when the Department of Defence became that department. Is that right?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: This is the problem I'm alluding to; that there was a different decision being made about what the path of reconstruction would be, and, obviously, our planning was based, first of all, on more international involvement by other partners, and, secondly, on the issues that I have raised that we have learned more about in recent years, that you have got to get the Iraqi people on your side. This is what General Petraeus of course learned when he was in his -- the work that he did in 2006/2007, that you have got to have economic projects that allow people to feel they have a stake in the future and you have got to get the security and armed forces of Iraq sorted out in such a way that they can be responsible for security and that requires a non-corrupt police as well. Now, these are all the lessons that we have applied in Basra, and I believe, if we look at this in the next session, we have learned lessons from Basra that are applicable to Afghanistan, but also to other countries around the world.But I come back to this original point that, really, this new world has got to have some international organisation that is responsible, not just for peacekeeping, and not just for humanitarian aid where we have international organisations, but for stabilisation and reconstruction.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: But, presumably, it will only be able to operate in areas where there is an international consensus in favour of the action, which obviously wasn't --

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I'm not sure about that, if I may say so, Sir Roderic, because, in the end, the United Nations came into Iraq, was prepared to come in.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Only after the resolution had been passed in May.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: That was two months later, but it did pass that resolution. Of course, the United Nations mission in Iraq led to the tragedy of deaths in Baghdad and the withdrawal of the personnel of that mission, and the World Bank mission personnel, the IMF personnel had to be withdrawn. We had Treasury people in Iraq during this whole period who were working in very difficult circumstances, very bravely, organising the new currency for Iraq, organising the new financial budgeting system for Iraq and organising part of the reconstruction. So we were directly involved in all these things.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: You said that in the planning period we and the Americans weren't joining up effectively and obviously a lot of warning signals came back from Washington to London in the early months of 2003, expressing great concern about the American lack of planning for the aftermath and the shift of locus to the Defence Department. We have heard this from a lot of earlier witnesses. Shouldn't we, given the very large commitment we were making to this operation in the military commitment, have been able to exercise more influence over the Americans to make sure that the aftermath plan was done properly and we were cut into it.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Later in the year, I did go across to the States and I did --

SIR RODERIC LYNE: I'm talking about the period before the invasion.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Yes, I made it absolutely clear to the United States that I felt that they had to take more seriously the issues of reconstruction.
For the first period, of course, the issue was: would the military campaign succeed? It succeeded in a very short time, as you know, so the issue of reconstruction became more urgent and more immediate than perhaps people had expected it to be. I can only say that we had started planning in the Treasury for this some months before but we had to persuade our other colleagues that this was the right thing to do. I mean colleagues in other governments, the American government in particular.

SIR RODERIC LYNE. The planning done by your officials in the Treasury, had that looked at the likely scenarios that might arise after conflict in Iraq, including an upsurge in terrorism, instability, having to deal with very damaged infrastructure, the need for a peacekeeping force to keep a lid on the ethnic and religious tensions there and so on? Were these things that the Treasury was looking at?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: A lot of these matters would be matters that the Foreign Office would be looking at more carefully than we would be. We were looking at the economic issues that would arise, about jobs, about the provision of utilities, about the currency -- as you know, we completely remodelled the Iraqi currency.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: So you were looking at these things. Do you think that the problems which did arise in the aftermath could have been mitigated if the coalition had been much better prepared really to get into action on the issues that you have mentioned right at the beginning and if it had had this wider international support that we didn't get until after the second resolution was passed in the United Nations in the middle of May?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Yes. We have got to remember,however, that there were 40 countries as part of coalition, it wasn't two, three, four or five, there
were 40 countries.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: But there were only two occupying powers, us and the United States.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: That's right, but we've got to remember that, by May, the United Nations had come into play, and despite all the difficulties they faced in the future, the United Nations were part of the reconstruction programme. We needed the IMF and the World Bank. What we had concluded in the Treasury was that we would need all these organisations to be involved for the reconstruction to be successful.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: At what point did it become obvious to you, before the conflict, that this planning was defective? Did you get worried about it?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I don't think that we were fully aware of all the tensions within the US administration.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Of how bad it was going to be?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I feel that we should, of course, have been able to more quickly do what we eventually did on politics, economics and security,that is building up the Iraqi forces, but the decisions that were made in the first days were not in line with that. We have learned that lesson and that lesson has to be learned for future conflicts as well, that it is only a necessary condition of changing Iraq that military action happened, that it was only sufficient if we had the reconstruction, and that's what I mean about a just peace; a just peace must involve -- and I think we have got to look at this for other countries -- that there is a right of the citizens to participate in the political system established as quickly as possible.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Once you get security and law and order.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Security and reconstruction go hand in hand.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: The UK was not only the joint occupying power of the United States, but it was also decided that we would take lead responsibility for the four provinces in the southeast of Iraq. Were you involved in the decision that we should take on this responsibility?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Yes, this was a big decision because, basically, we were taking far greater responsibility for one area, Basra was about 2 million people, the other provinces were another group of people, and Basra became the centre of both our problems and what we were eventually able to achieve successfully I think in putting Basra into a position where it could govern itself.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Do you remember when the decision was taken that we would take on this role?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: There were two decisions, weren't there? The first decision was when the military decision was that instead of our troops going in in the north, our troops would go in in the south, and that was a decision taken by -- on military advice and that was a change that was made to our plans. The second decision was how we would organise Iraq after the military success. I can't recall exactly when we were given the responsibility for Basra, but I know that for us it then involved economic, social and political measures, including big measures in economic development.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: There were some meetings that again have been discussed in earlier evidence, held in March, the Prime Minister, the Development Secretary -- I can't recall offhand whether you were at them or not -- about taking charge of Basra and what would be required for that and funding for it and so on.
9 RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: There was a War Cabinet, as you know, that --

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Before the War Cabinet was set up.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: The March 9 reconstruction meeting?

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Yes. Now, subsequently, once the occupying -- the invasion had happened, we were in position as occupying power. We began to have to deal
with some very, very serious problems of insurgency within Iraq, a huge security problem which got worse and worse. Do you consider that the problems that the British and the Americans did encounter as occupying powers were principally caused by external interference and Al-Qaeda, external interference by Iran and Al-Qaeda?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: There was external interferes.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Was this the principal cause of the difficulties?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: You have really got two things happening at once. You have got an attempt from both Iran and by Al-Qaeda to make their mark in Iraq, but you have also got the Sunni insurgency and you have also got the tension between Sunnis and Shias. So it is not wholly an external problem, but that did contradict to the instability of Iraq.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: It contributed, yes. Were these problems that -- all of them, that we could have anticipated and should have anticipated?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I don't think we could have anticipated everything that happened subsequent to the invasion.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: But broadly speaking?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I think one of the lessons that we have learned that we will apply in future is that you have got to move quickly to giving the Iraqi people a sense that they have greater control over the situation. Now, it is true that we were dealing with the Iraqi army that had existed under Saddam Hussein and politicians and bureaucrats who worked under Saddam Hussein, but it is also true, I think -- and we learned this lesson from other past conflicts -- that unless you can quickly involve the people of the country in a sense that they have or are about to get more control over the country, then you become very quickly an army of occupation rather than an army of liberation, and we never wanted to be an army of occupation.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Finally, before I hand over to the Chair, just the Cabinet mechanisms, you have referred to the ad hoc ministerial meeting that did begin to happen from 19 March, and, indeed, met almost daily, I think, until 10 April. That was an ad hoc ministerial meeting, effectively a War Cabinet, and I believe you attended it. Do you feel that that served a useful purpose and functioned well?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Yes, the War Cabinet, which met almost daily, and I attended a large number of these meetings but it also was happening at the time of the budget and other things that were happening, international meetings. So I attended as many as I could. Yes, it served a useful function, and, yes, it allowed the different departments and agencies to report on what they were doing. So we had a greater co-ordination as a result of it.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: But then a second committee was set up, which was the ad hoc ministerial meeting on Iraq rehabilitation. That began to meet from 10 April and it went to meeting right through at least until August. Was that also an effective ministerial committee of the kind that we hadn't had before?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I think we are learning lessons all the time here. I can't give you specific information about the success of that particular venture, but it was a necessary means by which we dealt with some of the problems that arose. What I can tell you is that we have learned a fuller lesson about the need for government to be organised for a situation where you are at war, and in this case at war with two countries, with Afghanistan and Iraq, and so you need structures of decision-making that can --

SIR RODERIC LYNE: But you, as Chancellor, didn't go to the meetings of the Ministerial Committee on Rehabilitation?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I think that would be the Chief Secretary. The Treasury has got two ministers, and if there were matters affecting public expenditure, it would probably be the best thing, at that stage, for the Chief Secretary to be at that meeting. I think he was present.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: He went on 8 May. The previous three meetings you had, the Foreign Secretary, the Defence Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, the Attorney General, but only Treasury officials. I wondered why the Treasury was only represented at official level on this ministerial committee.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I don't know.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: You don't recall?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: On that particular day, I am very happy to write to you to explain that, but normally a minister would want to attend.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: Right.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. I would like to ask some preliminary questions on financial aspects essentially before 2003, and after the lunch break -- I know Sir Lawrence Freedman will want to pick up the larger theme, but just to begin with, you have told us already this morning, Mr Brown, that the cost of potential UK involvement in action -- the central lesson at the time I think you told us was 2.5 billion, was not to be seen as a constraint on a decision whether to act or not. How far, though, was the potential impact on the public finances sufficiently a concern that it was something you needed to share, or was it something that the Treasury could contain within itself?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: No, we had to be clear with Parliament that we were setting aside money for this endeavour. So we made an original estimate that the costs would be 2.5 billion by 2006, because our planning period took us through to then. Then, having revised our estimate, it was 4 billion to 2006, and I think I'm right in saying that the eventual additional cost above the Ministry of Defence normal budget by 2006 was just over 4 billion. So that was an accurate assessment that was made. In November, I reported to the House of Commons that we had set up a Special Reserve. That was a billion pounds. That was for a year. So I was reporting a year ahead, the Special Reserve. In April, when I did the budget, I reported that that Reserve was now 3 billion to take us through the next period of time. In actual fact we spent about a billion a year additional money on Iraq for most of these years, and, in total, Iraq has cost the Treasury something in the order of £8 billion. £2 billion of these are for urgent operational requirements, but the total cost is 8 billion that we have found over these years to pay for the effort we made in Iraq on top of an also rising defence budget.

THE CHAIRMAN: I would like to return in a moment, if I may, to the Special Reserve, but first, again picking up a point you made early on this morning, that you were not going to advise your colleagues that the financial considerations should determine either the scale of our military contribution, or, indeed, whether we should make it, if diplomacy failed.Sir Nicholas Macpherson, your Permanent Secretary,told us pretty much the same; that the Treasury wasn't in the business of advising, his case, ministers to support one intervention over another on cost grounds. On the other hand, the scale of the UK's commitment, whether the minimal engagement, if it would come to military intervention, or, as actually turned out, a major land contribution, the difference was very great. Was the concern about the broader economic consequences for the UK, the potential ones, something that you needed to get a grip on and understand and estimate in contributing to the eventual decision?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Yes, we had a paper in July. It may have been June actually, but it was around that period, where we looked at the cost of the various options that were being put forward by the Ministry of Defence, and I think in that paper it said I should talk to the Prime Minister about -- that I was going to talk to the Prime Minister about that. I made it clear to the Prime Minister that no option should be ruled out on the grounds that it was too costly, that we had to choose what the right military option was, the right option for our security, and if we were to be in a position where the diplomatic avenue failed, he should know that the Treasury would make allowance for whichever option was chosen. Then in September, we did a paper -- it could have been September/October -- we did a paper and that was on the overall effects of potential war with Iraq. We said the oil price was likely to go up by 10 per cent. We thought that the world economy would suffer a greater degree of volatility as a result of it and we looked at 10 all the issues that would arise in a situation where Iraq was not supplying oil to the world, but equally, at the same time, there was instability in the region. We concluded that the costs then of reconstruction would be something in the order of 45 billion. So we did work on reconstruction as well and took the view that this had to be shared as much as possible with the international community, and that was why we wanted the IMF and the World Bank involved. So these were the preparations that we made, but the first public announcement of setting aside money was in the November pre-budget report. We set aside 1 billion. By that time, I had already made available to the Defence Secretary £500 million for preparations, which included the purchase of necessary equipment in case we were to be at war. I think it came in tranches of 200, 200 and 100. We also set aside money for training that was to be available for extra training by the Ministry of Defence, and then every application made by the Ministry of Defence subsequently, I made it absolutely clear that every application that was made for equipment and every application that was made for resources necessary for the conduct of the campaign in 8 Iraq had to be met by the Treasury, and we created a system that was quick and fast-moving so that we could make sure the Ministry of Defence had the equipment they needed as quickly as possible.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. I would like to return in just a moment to the system of what are known as UORs, I think urgent operational requirements, and how it worked. Just before that, however, did the assessment of the financial impact, globally as well as nationally, of potential military action, clarify itself sufficiently before, in effect, the March period, or indeed a little before March, when it became more likely than not that military action would take place? Was there a sufficient handle on the financial and economic consequences by then?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Yes, I think so. I think we knew what was likely to happen, and, in fact, the oil price did go up by 10 per cent and spiked, but equally, it is reassuring to know that our estimate of the costs of the engagement in Iraq was proven to be accurate.The costs of reconstruction, again we made a pretty big estimate of what it was likely to cost and I think, again, we were proven to be right. As far as the effects on the world economy, we felt that these could be managed.

THE CHAIRMAN: Just before we turn to the Special Reserve and the UOR, we have seen the papers to which you referred about the assessment of the potential economic impact and, if I may say so, as a formal civil servant, they are impressive in their quality. What we can't find, and it may simply be this was
15 the habit of the time in the Treasury, there is not much minuting on the discussion of them or how they were handled in meetings or discussions. Is that just how it was?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I think in the case of the first paper it was about the military options, and I think it said in the first paper that I would want to talk to the Prime Minister about it and I did. So that was a conversation that I had with the Prime Minister. On the second set of issues on reconstruction, we were making estimates of what was likely to happen and that led to us the meeting on March 9th, when we looked at the difficult decisions that had to be made on reconstruction, and I agreed that I would prepare a paper that would be sent to the Americans to remind them that we had a view of reconstruction that appeared to be different from their view.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. You have mentioned already the provision in the pre-budget report of £1 million for Special Reserve. I think I have got two questions, if I may. The first is, you set the amount of the Special Reserve for defence purposes for respective military engagement at £1 billion in November, and then in your budget in April you raised that to 3 billion. Was there a concern that the pressures on the Reserve from all quarters in financial 2002/2003, was such that it would, as it were, threaten to bust the limit, hence the need to create a Special Reserve, or was there a different rationale?

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Well, the Special Reserve was created and I think we said it was to do with issues of security and to counter terrorism, and it wasn't created with an announcement that this was money we would definitely spend on Iraq, but it was created so that there was public recognition that we had set aside £1 billion.By the time it came to the budget, it was clear that this action would take place over a period of time, and in actual fact, the 3 billion represented, I think, a cost of 1 billion a year. In addition, of course, to the existing defence budget, which was also rising at that time, and I have to emphasise that, and I said that every single request that was made for equipment had to be met, and every request was met, and at any point the
10 military commanders were able to ask for equipment that they needed, and I know of no occasion when they were turned down for it.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Again, we might return to that a little later on, but just for the record, it would help me, I think, if we could have on the record what the terms of the Treasury's golden rule were and how far it came near in 2002/2003 and 2003/2004 coming under threat.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I think this may be misunderstood, but the golden rule was to be met over the cycle. It wasn't a rule that had to be met year on year. So if we had to borrow in one particular year, then that would be understood in relation to the whole cycle. But the golden rule was that current expenditure would be covered by taxation and that capital expenditure would allow for borrowing, and we were meeting the golden rule at that time, and it is only, of course, the global financial crisis that has made it difficult for us to meet that rule.

THE CHAIRMAN: One other point, if I may, on the Special Reserve and how it was presented. As you have just told us, it was described as being needed to meet the United Kingdom's defence and overseas needs in the fight against global terrorism, and in the budget report in April 2003 it was defined more specifically as for possible action in Iraq. We asked Sir Nick Macpherson why this had been described as the fight against terrorism. We raised this because we were interested to know whether it implied a sense that the fusion of the global terrorist threat and the Iraq problem had come together and he told us not.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: No, no, no. Look, we were doing counter-terrorism operations in other areas as well. There was generally an instability around the world. We thought that we had to make provision for it. We didn't specifically announce in November that this was simply Iraq; it was for Iraq and other purposes. By April, of course, when we had the budget, we were meeting -- at a time I think it was the first budget for 50 years that had happened when the country was at war.

THE CHAIRMAN: There is one other point I think it is important to establish for the record because of this terminological, not argument, but debate about was it about global terrorism, was it about Iraq, or are the two the same thing? It is only really in 2004 onwards that the incursion of Al-Qaeda into Iraq becomes a fact. Before that, you are not facing a terrorist threat as such. The mounting insurgency, yes, but that's the Saddam aftermath, and, I think, to get the chronology right, and have I understood it right, in November 2002, you have in view a counter-terrorist use for the Special Reserve. By April 2003, it is clear that the main body of it is for the Iraq operations, but none of that deals directly with counter-terrorism in Iraq, because that comes later in 2004.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: I hope I'm not misunderstood on this. I said right at the beginning I thought there were two instabilities that the world had to deal with in the post-Cold War world: one was terrorism by non-state actors, and the second was rogue states or, in the case of Iraq, I called it an aggressor state because of its action in Kuwait in particular, but also its war with Iran. What we were recognising in the Special Reserve, that there were two separate functions that had to be dealt with because of instabilities. By the time we came to April, we were clearly in conflict with Iraq and the vast majority of that money, perhaps all of it, was now going to be used for Iraq.

THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. I would like to turn now to the arrangements for funding the military operation in Iraq, in particular the period leading up to the invasion and perhaps immediately afterwards. You have described already the necessary and sensible approval system for expenditure ahead of and indeed during the operation. I would like to -- or rather, I think the Committee, as a whole, would like to come, after lunch, to the broader question of its relation to the overall defence budget, but just looking at the need for urgent operational requirements, which arise out of the actual military enterprise, the Treasury set limits on how much the MoD could spend on preparation and UORs, and from time to time, when a request was made, you raised those limits, incrementally.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: Can I put it the other way round --

THE CHAIRMAN: Of course.

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP: -- Sir John, if I may. We didn't set limits on the expenditure on UORs or on equipment.We made estimates about what they would need and said, "If you need more, you come back to us".So there was no limit set. There were allocations made to show that money could be spent immediately, but
I think -- you know, I have got the different urgent operational requirements that were agreed to and they were all paid, they were all paid. So it wasn't a question of there being a limit beyond which you couldn't go. At all times we said, "Here is money that is available now for the equipment needs you need to address. Once you have spent that, then we are prepared" -- and always were ready to and actually did deliver more.

 

 

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