The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
671.
Lord Jay
also told the Inquiry:
“… when
there is a crisis of the same magnitude as Iraq, which affects a
number
of
different departments, then the Treasury needs to look, not at the
budgets of
individual
departments, but at the overall need and to ensure that each
department
concerned
in the operation gets the funds that it needs to carry it out … But
it
doesn’t
seem to me at all sensible to be thinking of giving large sums of
money for
a military
operation, if you are not giving similar sums of money for the
diplomatic
support
that that military operation needs, and those need to be looked at
together,
and I don’t
think they were, and I think they should be in the
future.”419
672.
Mr Dodds
told the Inquiry that bids from the FCO were assessed with the
same
rigour as
bids from other departments:
“… our
starting position was that we would want the Foreign Office to …
look for the
potential
to reprioritise … I think our perspective would be that that wasn’t
… their
first
response to this sort of situation. I think there was an
expectation on the part
of the
Foreign Office that … the Reserve should provide them with new
money …
“But … the
Foreign Office had a … significant budget … and a significant
global
footprint
and I think it wasn’t unreasonable to be looking to the Foreign
Office … at
least on a
temporary basis, to move some resources … to support the activity
on
this high
priority [Iraq].
…
“Generally
speaking, they were able to successfully reprioritise, but … their
first
reaction
was to look for resources from the Reserve, but it was only after
they
were …
pushed back that they … then were successful in
reprioritising.”420
673.
Sir Suma
Chakrabarti told the Inquiry that Iraq was DFID’s largest
bilateral
programme
in 2003/04 (when DFID spent £209m, of which £110m was spent
on
humanitarian
relief and £99m on development activities), and DFID’s 10th
largest
bilateral
programme in 2004/05 (when DFID spent £49m, of which £21m was
spent
on humanitarian
relief and £28m on development activities).421
674.
The Inquiry
asked Sir Suma whether DFID had considered seeking
additional
funding
from the Treasury for Iraq.422
He told the
Inquiry:
“We had
discussions [with] the Treasury but it was quite obvious to us that
they
weren’t
going to give any more than they already had … They had put some
money
in upfront
[in March 2003, for humanitarian assistance], but, after that, they
said it is
time to
reprioritise.”
419
Public
hearing, 30 June 2010, page 54.
420
Public
hearing, 14 July 2010, pages 33-36.
421
Public
hearing, 22 January 2010, page 38.
422
Public
hearing, 22 January 2010, pages 38‑40.
556