Gordon Brown admits Iraq regrets at inquiry

Gordon Brown insisted today that the decision to go to war in Iraq had been the right one and taken "for the right reasons" but said that he regretted some failures in planning for the aftermath of the invasion.

Beginning a day's testimony to the Chilcot inquiry, the Prime Minister said that as Chancellor he had not been involved in some key meetings in the run-up to the Iraq war.

He told the panel that he could not recall seeing a Cabinet Office "options document" from March 2002 which spelled out the path to war. Nor had he been aware that the Attorney-General was still undecided on the legality of the invasion only weeks before it went ahead.

He also said that he had never been privy to the contents of any private letters from Tony Blair to President Bush but received regular briefings from Mr Blair on on the progress of diplomatic attempts to head off the conflict.

His testimony before the panel was in sharp contrast that of Mr Blair, who was forced to slip into Westminster's Queen Elizabeth II conference centre by the back door to avoid hundreds of anti-war protesters gathered outside.

The former Prime Minister was jeered by relatives of dead servicemen after telling the panel that he had "no regrets" about the decision to go to war. He openly accepted that he had taken the decision early on that if America was to go to war, then Britain would have to join in.

By contrast, Mr Brown's car pulled up at the front of the conference centre, where there were only about two dozen protesters. Only one family member had asked to attend the hearing and 300 members of the public - a tenth of those who joined a public ballot for tickets to the Blair testimony.

Once inside, Mr Brown stuck closely to his text, telling the panel that he had always considered war to be a last resort and had focused his efforts on ensuring that if it had to go ahead, British forces would be properly funded.

"It was for me a hope right up to the last minute that diplomatic action would work," he said.

Mr Brown insisted that the international community had had no choice but to deal with the the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, who led an "aggressor state" and had ridden roughshod over numerous UN resolutions.

He said that regime change had been the result of the invasion, however, rather than its objective - as Mr Blair has since come close to arguing.

“Any loss of life is something that makes us very sad indeed,” Mr Brown said. "Nobody wants to go to war, nobody wants to see innocent people die, nobody wants to see their forces put at risk of their lives.

“Nobody would want to make this decision except in the gravest of circumstances where we were sure that we were doing the right thing. I think it was the right decision and made for the right reasons.”

Mr Brown acknowledged that there “important lessons” to be learned from the way the country descended into chaos following the invasion. “It was one of my regrets that I wasn’t able to be more successful in pushing the Americans on this issue - that the planning for reconstruction was essential, just the same as planning for the war,” he said.

However Mr Brown insisted that he had provided the funding needed for the conflict - despite accusations that the Armed Forces had been underfunded for years before being asked to fight two separate wars.

“I said immediately to the Prime Minister that the military options that were under discussion, there should be no sense that there was a financial restraint that prevented us doing what was best for the military,” he said.

“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.”

While Mr Brown acknowledged that it had shown the need for “proper structures of decision-making” within government, he nevertheless strongly defended the way that Mr Blair had conducted the conflict.

“I do say that everything that Mr Blair did during this period, he did properly,” he said.

Mr Brown insisted that he had been kept fully informed about developments in the run-up to the conflict and had been given six separate briefings by the intelligence agencies between March 2002 and February 2003.

“I was given information by the intelligence services which led me to believe that Iraq was a threat and had to be dealt with by the actions of the international community,” he said.

He said that, right up until the invasion, he had argued that Britain should only go to war in support of the Americans once the diplomatic route had been exhausted.

“What we wanted was a diplomatic route to succeed,” he said. “Right up to the last minute, right up to the last weekend, I think many of us were hopeful that the diplomatic route would succeed.”

He acknowledged however that he had not seen private letters sent by Mr Blair to Mr Bush in which, the inquiry has heard, he assured him that Britain would be there if it came to military action.

“I had regular conversations with Tony Blair and we talked about those issues but I do not have copies of those letters and I don’t know the exact conversation - and he wouldn’t expect me to,” he said.

“I didn’t at any point feel that I lacked the information that was necessary.”

Mr Brown said the Iraq war cost Britain about £1 billion a year, with the total bill to the Treasury totalling some £8 billion.

He insisted that all requests for military equipment for the invasion were granted - and stressed that the general defence budget was rising at this time.

The Treasury first drew up calculations about how much different options for military action would cost in June 2002, the inquiry heard. This was followed some three months later with a paper on the overall economic effects of any war in Iraq.

Treasury officials estimated that the price of oil would go up by 10 per cent and that the global economy would suffer a greater degree of volatility.

In the November Pre-Budget Report Mr Brown set aside £1 billion for possible military action in Iraq, having already made £500 million available to the Ministry of Defence for preparations for the war.

He said: “I said that every single request for equipment had to be met and every request was met. At any point, commanders were able to ask for equipment that they needed and I know of no occasion when they were turned down.”