This from today’s DET:
CITY MP Margaret Beckett will give evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry today about her time as a member of the cabinet during the Iraq War.
The MP for Derby South served as Foreign Secretary under Tony Blair for a year from 2006, but was also a cabinet member for five years during the build-up to the invasion and the war’s early stages.
So far in the inquiry, witnesses have raised questions over whether there was a sufficient legal basis for the war and whether the cabinet was given a chance to properly discuss concerns.
Despite that, Mrs Beckett is expected to defend Mr Blair’s decision to invade Iraq and say that the cabinet was kept well informed about diplomatic negotiations and intelligence reports. Speaking before her appearance, she said: “I wouldn’t say that I didn’t have my doubts. We all had our doubts. We all had our worries and concerns.
“But I’m not someone who is going to pretend now that I didn’t make a harsh and terrible choice in the best conscience I could on the evidence that was in front of us.”
Mrs Beckett added that the overwhelming intelligence had been that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and that the UK had to act.
The inquiry, headed by Sir John Chilcot, has already heard from Derby-born MP and ex-Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, who told how the Treasury, led by then-Chancellor Gordon Brown, had starved the armed forces of cash during the years before the war.
