Following the first day of Claire Short MP, the former International Development Secretary, giving evidence to Sir John Chilcot’s Iraq Inquiry, Andrew Turner, the Island’s MP, has expressed his shock at some of the information that has emerged.

Mr Turner was one of 15 Conservative MPs who voted against the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. At the time he said that it was the most difficult decision he had faced since his election in 2001. Today he said:

“I am truly shocked at how this nation was led into war with Iraq. I was very sad that in 2003 I came to the conclusion that the Prime Minister was misleading Parliament. I simply couldn’t see that a proper case for the invasion of Iraq had been made, nor that waging war in Iraq was in British interests. During the recent weeks of the Chilcot Inquiry it has become clear – not least from Tony Blair’s own evidence - that he was hiding things even from members of his own Cabinet. We can see now that many MPs, from all parties, were conned.

“Claire Short’s damning evidence has made that even more apparent. 179 British soldiers died and we sustained over 5,900 military casualties in the conflict. Our armed forces deserved the Prime Minister to be scrupulously honest about the circumstances and the reasons for sending them to fight. There have been more than 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths and that has increased the terrorist threat against the UK.

“I believe that final decisions on the security of our nation must always remain with the UK and therefore I didn’t agree with Claire Short that we needed a second United Nations resolution to make the invasion legal. There are different views on that, but however they voted, MPs in all parties simply didn’t believe that a British Prime Minister would play fast and loose with the truth - deliberately exaggerating the threat - in order to take us into war; many colleagues are stunned at what is now being disclosed.

“By the time the House of Commons had the opportunity to vote, the troops and equipment had been deployed to the Middle East ready to invade. The real decision to invade had been taken months earlier. I had been a Member of Parliament then only two years – and it was the hardest decision I had faced. In fact even now, after nine years in Parliament, nothing has come close. Islanders wrote to me in their hundreds, supporting both sides of the case, I have never had such a large postbag on any subject. Of course then nobody knew then that the intelligence evidence had been ‘sexed up’ by spin doctors; that the case was being supported by ‘dodgy dossiers’ cobbled together from information on the internet; that doubts about the legality of military action had been withheld from the cabinet or that Tony Blair had already made it clear to George Bush that Britain would support military intervention.

“I never believed that Saddam Hussain could launch an effective attack on British interests in 45 minutes as was claimed. But even if that had been true, the Prime Minister should have told the truth to his cabinet, Parliament and most of all the British people.”

END Contact : Andrew Turner’s office 01983 530808