Gordon Brown could give evidence to the Chilcot inquiry on Iraq before the general election, it emerged yesterday.
Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions he told the Commons that he had written to Sir John Chilcot saying that he was happy to give evidence at any time.
Under current plans Mr Brown, who was Chancellor at the time of the war, had been scheduled to appear after the election.
But with others who were ministers at the time, including Jack Straw, Geoff Hoon and Tony Blair, making their appearances before the poll, there have been growing calls from the Opposition parties for Mr Brown to give evidence now.
He has insisted it is a matter for the inquiry, but told MPs yesterday that he was happy to give evidence on all the issues that have been raised.
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His comments came the day after Mr Hoon accused him of not providing the military with the funds they needed before the 2003 invasion.
Mr Hoon told the Iraq inquiry that the Treasury under Mr Brown, who was then the Chancellor, also cut budgets after the war with the result that orders for new equipment, including additional helicopters that could have been used in Afghanistan, had to be cancelled.
Mr Hoon said: “I suppose it’s reasonable to assume that, had that budget been spent in the way that we thought it should, those helicopters would probably be coming into service any time now.”
When he became Defence Secretary in 1999, Mr Hoon said there was a belief that the MoD had never received the budget it required but that he was rebuffed when he asked the Treasury for extra money.
“There was quite a strong feeling that it [the military budget] was not fully funded,” he said. “Part of the way it was funded was by a commitment to serious efficiencies. I think everyone accepted that was a pretty challenging target.”
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Six months after the invasion, the Treasury ordered the MoD to “make rather difficult cuts” after realising that the introduction of new accountancy rules had led to higher spending than expected.
He claimed that Tony Blair caused further delay to equipment orders by refusing to allow active war preparations in case they jeopardised diplomatic efforts to secure a United Nations resolution to justify the invasion. As a result of the delay, some equipment failed to reach the front line in time for the start of the war in March 2003, Mr Hoon said.
“Some got to theatre in time, some did not,” he said. “There were certainly complaints about desert combats. Quite a lot of soldiers went into action in green combats and they didn’t like it. Some soldiers did not have the right boots.”
Mr Hoon, who led an abortive coup against Mr Brown’s leadership this month, told the inquiry that he had been assured that enough enhanced body armour was available for all frontline forces at the time of the invasion. Mr Hoon also disclosed that the first he knew of the claim that Saddam Hussein could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes was when he read it in the Government’s intelligence dossier published in September 2002.
He asked his officials, who told him that this referred to battlefield munitions, not long-range missiles, and consequently he “did not think much more about it”.
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He said he did not know that some of his own department’s weapons experts had concerns about the claim’s validity. He was unaware of the controversy the claim caused when it was published because he was out of the country at the time.