THE Prime Minister laid the ground for a climbdown over the Iraq war inquiry yesterday after several senior figures denounced the decision to hold hearings behind closed doors.
The attack was led by former premier Sir John Major and the head of the last official inquiry on the war, Lord Butler of Brockwell, who accused ministers of putting the government's political interests ahead of the national interest.
Downing Str
eet sought to defuse the row by suggesting the government did not have a "theological" attachment to closed hearings and the inquiry chairman, Sir John Chilcot, would have a degree of discretion in how he conducted proceedings. But with a Commons vote next week on a Conservative motion calling for evidence to be heard largely in public, shadow foreign secretary William Hague said the government needed to make a "proper U-turn".
The danger for Gordon Brown is that Labour rebels might combine with opposition parties to inflict a repeat of the damaging defeat over settlement rights for Gurkha veterans.
In a rare political intervention, Sir John Major warned the inquiry risked being dismissed as a "whitewash" unless there was full disclosure with witnesses giving evidence on oath.
"The government's decision to hold the inquiry in private is inexplicable – not least in its own interests," he said. "The arrangements proposed run the risk of being viewed sceptically by some, and denounced as a whitewash by others. I am astonished that the government cannot understand this."
In the Lords, Lord Butler led an array of senior figures demanding the bulk of the proceedings be held in public to "purge the national feeling of mistrust". He said: "I reluctantly conclude the form of the inquiry proposed … has been dictated more by the government's political interest than the national interest."
Other peers to support the calls included Labour former defence minister Lord Gilbert, and Lord Anderson of Swansea, the former Labour MP who chaired the Commons foreign affairs committee into the war.
Meanwhile, in the Commons, the cross-party public administration committee rushed out a report calling for a rethink, saying: "It is the wrong kind of inquiry, decided and announced in the wrong kind of way."
A series of senior military figures have already called for open hearings. They include the head of the army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, his predecessor General Sir Mike Jackson and Major General Tim Cross, who was second-in-command of the authority charged with rebuilding post-war Iraq.
The Prime Minister's spokesman said: "The question of whether some of this might be in public has never been an issue of theology for us. I think it will be up to Sir John to consider how the precise format of the inquiry should be structured to ensure that the objectives are met."
But he stressed the government was determined to avoid a protracted public inquiry involving "endless lawyers", like the Saville inquiry into the Bloody Sunday killings.
