The Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war has descended into chaos because its subjects have been allowed to seize control of its timetable, a former director of public prosecutions has claimed.
Writing in The Times, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven stepped into the growing row over the report with a warning that there was “no legal justification for this crawl”.
The independent report into Britain’s role in the 2003 American-led invasion and its aftermath was initiated in 2009 by Gordon Brown. It has cost £10 million and taken six years so far. Sir John Chilcot, the panel’s chairman, has blamed the delay on the need to give witnesses time to respond to criticism, a process known as Maxwellisation.
Lord Macdonald, who served as DPP from 2003, when Tony Blair was prime minister, to 2008, said that the decision to offer a right of reply was “perhaps only fair” but warned that it should not mean “gifting the prize of control over the inquiry’s timetable to its subjects”.
Doing so, he said, was akin to “proffering a bounty bound to be grasped by anyone with a past calculation to hide” and was “a recipe for the chaos that’s now unfolding”.
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The Liberal Democrat peer, who previously described Mr Blair as a sycophant who used deceit to persuade parliament to support the Iraq invasion, said the subjects of the inquiry should be investigated, not indulged.
He said that there should have been a strict timetable for witnesses to respond to criticism.
His intervention came at the end of a difficult week for the inquiry panel, with lawyers and politicians lining up to criticise their approach. Sources close to the inquiry hit back, reportedly accusing the British establishment of trying to depict them as incompetents as part of a concerted effort to force publication before the report was ready.
That did not stop David Cameron from restating his deep frustration at the delay yesterday. “People want to know the truth, they want this inquiry out, and so do I,” he said. He argued that the families of the 179 British military personnel killed in the conflict needed “closure”, as did the entire country.
Sir Menzies Campbell, the former Lib Dem leader, told the BBC that his sympathy was ebbing away. He called on Sir John to reveal how many witnesses were given time to respond to criticism and to impose a deadline for their responses. They should be reminded that there was a “legitimate public interest, which they ought to observe in bringing their contribution to the inquiry to a close as soon as possible”.
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Lord Owen, a Labour foreign secretary in the 1970s, defended the inquiry, arguing that the main reason for the delay was the “withholding of evidence which the committee wanted, and had every right to demand”.
Lord Morris of Aberavon, who served as attorney-general under Mr Blair, described the delay as a disgrace and urged parliament to give the prime minister a mandate to “pull the plug”.
A spokesman for the inquiry said: “Sir John and his colleagues understand the anguish of the families of those who lost their lives in the conflict.
“They take the responsibility they were given extremely seriously, and understand the need for government, parliament and the public to see their report as soon as possible. Sir John and his colleagues have worked, and will continue to work, throughout the summer. A timetable for completion of the report will be provided once the Maxwellisation process is complete.”