One of the absurdities of this year’s ‘silly season’ has been another of Britain’s periodic bouts of Chilcot-bashing. When there’s a period of slow news, it seems, journalists remember that Sir John Chilcot was tasked six years ago with inquiring into what we all call simply ‘Iraq’; and that his report is not published yet. There follows a chorus of disapproval, and demands that something be done.
There is a substantial development: the threat of legal action against the inquiry by the families of some of the British forces killed in Iraq, explained on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on August 13 by their solicitor Matthew Jury, and by Reg Keys, the father of one of the soldiers who died. They aim to force Sir John into setting a timetable for publication. Like everyone else I have sympathy for these families, but I’m afraid this legal action can achieve nothing except even further delay.
A couple of days later, the Prime Minister, also on the Today programme, told Sir John he had ‘got to get on with it’, something I doubt was either necessary or wise. But I’m more concerned about subsequent comments made by some big legal figures.
First, on August 18 a letter from Baroness Butler-Sloss was published in The Times, in which she said:
I assume the evidence in the Chilcot inquiry is enormous and the task of writing the report a daunting one, but I fail to understand why the passages critical of witnesses could not be sent to them with a deadline for the replies if that is, indeed, the main reason for what appears to be an inordinate delay in completing the report.
Two days later Lord Lester of Herne Hill QC also wrote to The Times, saying:
I am puzzled about the reasons for the inordinate delay in completing the Chilcot inquiry. I acted as counsel for witnesses in the Crown Agents inquiry and the Scott inquiry. Both my clients faced serious criticism. In each case the tribunal ensured that they were given an opportunity to respond to the allegations against them within a reasonable time frame set by the tribunal. Both inquiries had the advantage of a legally qualified chair and of the assistance of counsel to the tribunal…
One reason for the inordinate delay in Chilcot’s case may be a lack of legal expertise about how to avoid being trapped by legalism and ensure that justice is not done to death.
Notice that both these letters assume Chilcot set no time limit for the ‘Maxwellisation’ process, in which those the inquiry is minded to criticise are shown portions of its draft report for comment before it is finalised and published.
Lord Lester went on the Today programme that morning, to say:
although I’m a peer, I don’t regard myself as part of [the] establishment
and to repeat his view that lawyers or judges might have ensured
justice is not done to death.
Sir John Chilcot, he said, is
completely out of his depth here
although in his next answer Lord Lester was candid enough to admit
I don’t know what Sir John has done.
After the classic line
You don’t have to be a lawyer to have common sense
which I’m not 100% sure was ironically meant, he went on
There has to be a timeframe. You have to be able to say, ‘Look, you’ve got three months to do it’, and then if the guy comes back and says ‘Sorry’ at the end of three months ‘I haven’t been able to finish it’, you may give him another two or three months. But there has to be discipline imposed…
Although he admitted judges and lawyers had not helped matters in one notorious case,
It happened with the Bloody Sunday inquiry where there was a very distinguished judge who allowed the inquiry to run on too long
nonetheless he insisted that as far as the Chilcot inquiry is concerned,
common sense and discipline … seems to be lacking.
The following day, August 21, it was the turn of the former Attorney General Lord Morris of Aberavon QC to have a go. He chose to make his written submissions in the Daily Mail, accusing Chilcot of
bureaucratic dawdling
and agreeing with Lord Lester that lawyers are what’s needed:
Another problem is that there was no lawyer on the panel. Chilcot himself is a civil servant, while the other members include a diplomat, a historian and an academic.
Moreover, he wrote:
it is unlikely that any judge would have allowed the process of Maxwellisation – whereby witnesses are sent letters allowing them to respond to criticism in any draft report – to play such a dominant and negative role.
Chilcot has elevated Maxwellisation into a central feature of his inquiry even though it is only a convention, not a legal requirement.
Lord Morris too then had a hearing on the Today programme, where like Lord Lester he said
I’m no part of any establishment.
No one ever seems to be, do they? You should, he said
give a reasonable time … to those who are criticised
but the time Sir John is taking, he said
is an unfair amount of time so far as the public are concerned.
Lord Morris called for a statutory timetable, saying
the Prime Minister can pull the plug
and suggesting that perhaps some new team be sent in to inquire into whether some sort of interim report could be published. Somewhat laughably he said:
it’s Parliament ultimately that is the guardian of independence
whereas of course the inquiry’s independence from politicians in Parliament is one of the most important things about it.
Far more sensible than either of these respected silks was the non-lawyer Lord Owen, who spoke that afternoon on Radio 4’s lunchtime news programme The World at One. He also said the inquiry had taken too long,
but the main reason it has taken so long has been the withholding of evidence which the committee wanted and had every right to demand.
He rightly mentioned the inquiry panel’s demands to the government to see correspondence from Tony Blair to President Bush, adding that:
the delay that went on over that period was certainly 18 months, and it may have been a lot longer.
In his view:
very important evidence came out as a result of the committee holding very firm through 2012 and 2013, even to 2014, that they would not publish unless these papers came out; and eventually a compromise was struck.
Lord Owen also reminded us of the enormous scope and scale of the inquiry compared to the Bloody Sunday inquiry, which was run by a judge and fully lawyered-up, and ran for ten years although it was investigating the events of only one day.
You’ll recall that Baroness Butler-Sloss and Lord Lester assumed no Maxwellisation ‘deadlines’ had been set by Sir John Chilcot; and that Lord Lester suggested he ought to have set a renewable deadline of perhaps three months.
Well, the following week the former overseas development secretary Clare Short also went on to The World at One to discuss the inquiry process, in spite of being asked to keep it confidential. Her aim seemed to be to do some of her own Maxwellisation live on radio. But her interview made several interesting things clear: first, that she was indeed set a deadline of a few weeks to respond to Maxwellisation, some time ago; second, that having seen that part of the report which criticises her, she thinks it will be very long; and third, that she thinks many people may be criticised in it.
The criticism, she said:
seems to go right across Whitehall …
As far as Maxwellisation is concerned, she said that
there’s a time limit for everyone to comment
and so
the suggestion that Maxwellisation is causing all the delay, I don’t think is true.
She had been given a deadline, she said, of
a few weeks, and the deadline was a long time ago, and I think everyone was given that deadline… a long time ago.
This is of course a shorter, more disciplined timetable than Lord Lester suggested a lawyer with common-sense might impose. Clare Short went on to say
this suggestion that … people are endlessly being consulted, I think, is untrue.
The inquiry had written to her
with an absolute deadline to respond, and that was a good time ago… That suggestion that’s been endlessly put out, as though some people are playing the system, is false.
Clare Short’s interview on its own blew out of the water the assumption made by Lady Butler-Sloss, Lord Lester and Lord Morris that no deadlines were set at all. And on the very same day Sir John Chilcot issued a statement in which he made clear that:
Individuals have not been given an open ended timescale and Maxwellisation is not a process of negotiation. The Inquiry has remained in control of its deadlines throughout the process. In some cases, the responses sent to us required detailed and complex analysis which is taking time.
The Maxwellisation process is essential not only to the fairness but also the accuracy and completeness of our report. It has already led, for example, to the identification of government documents which have not been submitted to the Inquiry and which have in some cases opened up new issues.
The campaign of political and media chuntering against Sir John Chilcot is absurd; and it’s wrong for senior legal figures to have lent their voices to it. This is a vast inquiry, covering years of government policy, military operations and administration in occupied Iraq: a far bigger scope than that of the Bloody Sunday inquiry and bigger too than the Scott inquiry, which took three and a half years. A key figure in the inquiry, Sir Martin Gilbert, died this year after falling ill in 2012; and the panel apparently spent years in conflict with government, doing its job of uncovering documentary truth. Even what seems (in fact rather than imagination) to be a tightly controlled Maxwellisation process has apparently put Sir John on the trail of yet more undisclosed papers.
Sir John’s critics should shut up and behave on the back seat, so he can focus on the remainder of the journey.
Barrister and former government lawyer Carl Gardner blogs at Head of Legal. Click here to follow Carl on Twitter.
