WHY THE FAMILIES SHOULD SEE BLAIR IN COURT

THE report makes clear there are a number of possible grounds for legal action against Blair by the families of the 179 people killed in the Iraq war. But I believe it is Blair’s flagrant abuse of intelligence that gives them the best option.

For it was his unequivocal statement that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that could be launched in 45 minutes which finally persuaded Parliament to support the invasion of Iraq.

It was that statement, based on seemingly uncorroborated evidence, that gave rise to the appalling suffering these families have endured.

In Parliament on September 24, 2002, Blair declared that the intelligence on which he based his 45- minute assertion had been accumulated over four years and was ‘ extensive, detailed and authoritative’.

Yet what seems clear is that Blair was taking raw or untested data that suited his political purpose, but which had not been subjected to even a basic assessment process, and claiming it as firm evidence.

At that time, of course, the UN had a weapons inspection team on the ground in Iraq and their advice was that it was likely that Saddam Hussein had terminated his WMD programme some years before.

AS Prime Minister, Blair had a moral responsibility to test the intelligence exhaustively – yet the report reveals he and his cohorts signally failed to do so. In my long military career I have never once accepted intelligence laid in front of me without spending a great deal of time and effort ascertaining its integrity.

It would have been an abdication of my responsibility not to do so. If I had gone to war on flawed intelligence, suffered unnecessary casualties as a result, and subsequently lost the war, then I would rightly have been court martialled.

Responding to the Chilcot report, Blair has already issued a statement saying that he believes it will now lay to rest allegations of bad faith, lies or deceit on his part.

For the Iraq families, I believe it will do no such thing. In my view, there is so much evidence of misfeasance (the wrongful use of authority) in public office, dereliction of duty and undue negligence by Blair and his team that the Iraq families would be entirely justified in taking legal action against them personally.

It is no accident that they have chosen the same firm of lawyers who brought justice in a 2013 civil case for the families of those killed in the 1998 Omagh bombings by bankrupting two of the bombers.

There has to be an element of retribution over the way we were taken to war. We need to hold people in public office to account, or our democracy will continue to suffer catastrophic failures such as the invasion of Iraq in the future. The war was unjust and unjustifiable. On January 9, 2009, I publicly called for the impeachment of Blair over Iraq. At that time our MPs did not have the moral courage to act. Today, reflecting the anger of the people of this country who have been so betrayed by him, let us hope they will now do so.