FORMER BRITISH defence secretary Geoff Hoon has rejected charges that spending curbs imposed by prime minister Gordon Brown, during his time as chancellor of the exchequer, damaged the British army’s ability to fight the Iraq war.
However, changes to accounting rules ordered by the treasury in early 2003 did affect the ministry of defence’s ability to order helicopters that were subsequently needed in Afghanistan, he implied to the Iraq Inquiry.
His carefully worded evidence will come as a relief to No 10 Downing Street, which had feared that Mr Hoon, who led an abortive coup against Mr Brown earlier this month, might openly criticise the prime minister.
The former defence secretary said he had believed on his arrival in the ministry of defence in October 1999 that the department was not “fully funded”, and had to rely on “efficiency savings” to meet its budgets. However, he accepted a point made by a member of the inquiry team, Laurence Freedman, that the ministry, by then already paying for British forces in Afghanistan, did not believe from April 2002 that it would have to pay for a second conflict out of its budget.
Mr Hoon said he had “exploratory exchanges” with Mr Brown about paying for a possible Iraq invasion before the summer of 2002, though an agreement that allowed the MoD order equipment was not reached until September of that year. There had been, he said, no problems about reaching this agreement, but difficulties had emerged subsequently about the costs of paying for the maintenance of equipment.
He said he had repeatedly told then prime minister Tony Blair that the army needed six months of preparation if it was to be ready to join the Americans, and had “argued the case” for advance planning. But, he said, Mr Brown and then foreign secretary Jack Straw both argued strongly that being seen to prepare for war would damage British efforts to get support in the United Nations.
He said the government decided to contribute ground troops to the invasion if it needed to go ahead at the end of October 2002, subject to the failure of UN efforts to force Saddam to accept full weapons inspections. Some army commanders wanted, he said, to be involved in the invasion because they believed they would be taking part in the subsequent peacekeeping and it would be “better to be in from the beginning”.
The UK had three options in 2002, he said: to let the US use British military bases; to offer air and sea transport, or to contribute troops, which, he said, he then believed was “a big ask” because of the Afghanistan commitment.
Meanwhile, the Iraq inquiry released a letter written by then attorney general Lord Goldsmith in which he complained about a television interview given by Mr Hoon, where he said the UK would be able to use force in Iraq without a new UN resolution.
This, said Lord Goldsmith, had put him in a difficult position because he had not offered a legal opinion to the cabinet at that point, adding: “I see considerable difficulties in being satisfied that military action would be justified on the basis of self-defence.”
Lord Goldsmith later did give legal clearance for the invasion.
