Will the Chilcot inquiry change anything?

(c) Marcus Povey

The Chilcot Inquiry intends to look at the UK involvement with Iraq for the period between mid 2001 and July 2009. That might sound broad and indeed yes, it is. These inquiries don’t cost upwards of two million pounds for nothing.

The findings of the report will enter into the tradition of post-conflict inquiries, joining the dubious ranks of the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday or the Franks inquiry into the Falklands. Gordon Brown initially favoured the Franks approach regarding privacy (rather a contradiction in terms), as a model for the Iraq inquiry but this was over-ruled in the interests of public transparency.

A protocol was established as a concessionary measure to ensure evidence sensitive to national security was not forced into the public domain. Voices within the media, predictably, pounced on this as proof that the whole commission is principally of symbolic importance and the resulting conclusions will be tailored to suit the government’s agenda.

In spite of this criticism, the press coverage of the inquiry’s first sessions has already notched a respectable number of column inches. ‘Blair’, ‘WMD’, ‘lies’ – we’re treading familiar ground and sessions have barely begun.

The government appears keen to foster the impression that the Chilcot report will ‘restore public confidence‘. An inquiry does not lead directly to public confidence and certainly the subsequent media digest of it won‘t either. There is a necessary intermediary channel which has been lost here between transparency and comment – communication.

First-hand absorption of the inquiry documentation by the public is likely to be negligible. Whilst the website is appropriately comprehensive, with links to video and transcripts of the public sessions, actually pursuing said link led me to a file of 112 pages. Fabulous. Wood for trees springs to mind.

The second goal of the report is to provide an informative resource were a similar situation ever to arise again. Not really a user manual so much as a ’how not to’ guide. Were the overall relevance of the report to the current decision making process (the operations in Afghanistan being an obvious example) made clearer, there might be a fighting chance of actually engagin the public.

In 2004, the government launched an inquiry into the effectiveness of government inquiries, helpfully headed ‘Government by Inquiry’. No irony lost there. Surely a system which has queried its own methodology requires some updating? The Chilcot Inquiry itself will not allay the public’s suspicions of foul play but such an ambitious project is a clever stalling strategy for the government to work out what will.