The Guardian view on the Chilcot delays: it just gets worse

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/21/guardian-view-chilcot-delays-just-gets-worse

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Everybody now wants the Chilcot report published. David Cameron does. And Nick Clegg. Ed Miliband too. Add Tony Blair, the anti-war movement, the Scottish nationalists, the Greens and the MPs from all parties who have forced a debate on the issue in the Commons next week. Don’t forget the relatives of the dead, the wounded and even those who, rather prosaically but usefully, think the report will be a valuable tool in the service of better government in the unfortunate event that Britain ever faces another dilemma like the Iraq war of 2003. In the face of such unanimity, the continuing delays are outrageous.

The only person who appears, on the surface at least, to be in no great hurry for immediate publication is Sir John Chilcot himself. That’s because the Iraq war inquiry chairman wants to do things properly. That is an entirely honourable approach. But he faces three immense problems in proceeding in this manner. It is clear from Sir John’s latest letter to the prime minister that he thinks there is no way he can short-circuit any of them. As a result, the report will now not see the light of day until after the general election. It’s a disgrace.

The first problem is the scale of the inquiry. Chilcot’s remit, as set out by Gordon Brown in 2009, is extremely wide. The inquiry covers much more than “merely” the decision to go to war itself. It covers the build-up to the decision, the taking of it, and the consequences. That means the inquiry has had to cover not just a few weeks, but a period of many years. It also involves the work of many departments – Downing Street, the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence, the armed forces, the security and intelligence services and the law officers among them. The upshot is that the draft report is said to extend to more than a million words and to many hundred of pages. The second problem is the way that the law and practice of tribunals and inquiries have evolved. Half a century ago, Lord Denning could be commissioned to inquire into the Profumo scandal and could more or less make his own rules. By contrast, the Chilcot inquiry has to follow the tighter (and fairer) rules that have developed since the Salmon commission in 1966 looked at such processes. Especially since the inquiry into Robert Maxwell’s business dealings in 2001, these rules mean that an inquiry must warn people who are going to be criticised in the final report and give them the opportunity to challenge the draft findings. The Chilcot committee started to do that in the autumn, and was continuing even in recent days.

Put these two problems – scope and procedure – together and you get the current debacle. On the one hand there is an apparently immense report, making judgments about dozens of individuals and departments, all with a personal and an institutional interest to defend. On the other hand there’s the drafting and redrafting process which has to take account of each response and align it with every other draft and response. One witness has compared the current process to an enormous Rubik’s Cube. A better comparison might be trench warfare. As a means of solving a problem, the current process is a disaster. It is massively intensified by the third big problem, which is the passing of time. The Iraq war inquiry was essential. But it was most essential in 2004, not in 2015. David Cameron is right that the Labour government should have set up such an inquiry long ago. Instead it initiated much more limited investigations under Lord Hutton and Lord Butler. Neither provided the necessary national catharsis. Indeed it soon became clear that there were even more questions to answer. These included the attorney general’s legal advice, the so-called Downing Street dossier, and the Foreign Office’s second WMD dossier.

The original delays, plus the inquiry’s own delays, have combined to produce and now to intensify consequences that are both lamentable and shaming. The probity and judgment of individuals, departments and political processes, and the system and culture of government and accountability are all under question. The longer we wait, the worse the effects and the less complete the ultimate catharsis. It is no way to run an inquiry, no way to run a government and no way to run a country.