Fury as Brown says Iraq war inquiry will be held in secret

A LONG-AWAITED inquiry into the Iraq war will be conducted behind closed doors by a panel hand-picked by Gordon Brown and will not report until after the general election, sparking fury from families of soldiers killed in the Gulf.

The investigation into the conflict will also not be able to apportion blame, the Prime Minister has revealed.

The promise of an Iraq inquiry has been seen as a move by Mr Brown to reassert his authority after his leadership came under fire.

But the announcement of a secret inquiry was met with howls of protest from anti-war campaigners, opposition members and some Labour politicians.

The decision to hold a secret inquiry also triggered fury from some of the relatives of the 179 soldiers killed in the six-year conflict.

But Mr Brown tried to quell fears that the inquiry would be a government cover-up, insisting that all British documents and officials involved in the decision will be made available to the panel. It is expected to take until next summer to conclude and will be modelled on the Franks Inquiry that followed the Falklands War.

Mr Brown told the Commons: "The inquiry will, I stress, be fully independent of government.

"The scope of the inquiry is unprecedented… The committee of inquiry will have access to the fullest range of information, including secret information."

But he added: "The primary objective of the committee will be to identify lessons learned. The committee will not set out to apportion blame or consider issues of civil or criminal liability."

The Prime Minister's statement was met with protests outside Parliament.

Rose Gentle, whose son Gordon was killed in 2004, said: "What's the point of an inquiry behind closed doors? No family would be happy with that. We don't want any more lies."

Conservative Leader David Cameron seized on the secretive nature of the inquiry and the timing of the conclusions after the general election, warning that people would conclude that it was "fixed".

The Conservatives last night warned that they could "tear up the terms of reference" of the inquiry if Mr Cameron becomes prime minister after the next election.

Sources close to the Tory leader said the party would review progress of the inquiry if they come to power.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said that an inquiry was needed to allow the British public to understand why a mistake had been made in their name.

"I am staggered that the Prime Minister is seeking to compound the error, fatal to so many of Britain's sons and daughters, by covering up the path that led to it," he said. "To rebuild public trust, the inquiry must be held in public."

And the SNP Westminster leader, Angus Robertson, said that the country needed to learn from the "worst UK foreign policy decision in living memory and this can only be done through a full and open investigation – that this inquiry will take place in private is totally outrageous and entirely inadequate".

Labour MPs also attacked the secrecy. Midlothian MP David Hamilton said there needed to be a "day of reckoning" which could only come about through a public inquiry.

"The truth must come out. At the end of the day the general public need to know the truth," he said.

Scots-born MP Gordon Prentice was also disappointed. "I had hoped for a new politics of openness after last week," he said. "I'm not prepared to accept a secret inquiry into Iraq and I want the Prime Minister to think again."

Panel includes mandarin, historians and peer

A PANEL chaired by a retired civil servant and made up of historians, a cross-bench peer and a former diplomat will take on the huge task of determining what lessons can be learned from the Iraq war.

Those on the panel include chairman Sir John Chilcott, a former head official at the Northern Ireland Office, who led the government's inquiry into wire-tap evidence. However, his close links to the intelligence community have in the past raised concerns about his impartiality.

Sir John was also on the panel of the Butler Inquiry into the non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He is the only Privy counsellor among the group. The others will take the oath before the inquiry begins. Sir John will be joined by military historian Sir Lawrence Freedman. The professor of war studies has previously praised Tony Blair's attempts to influence US foreign policy in the run up to the war.

Sir Martin Gilbert, an expert on Winston Churchill, is another historian to join the panel. His expertise is in the history of Israel and the Holocaust.

Former ambassador to Russia Sir Roderick Lyne, who has acted as adviser to BP, which has major interests in Iraq, is another member of the panel.

Cross-bench peer Baroness Usha Prashar is the only woman on the panel. She also chairs the judicial appointments commission.