The Report of the Iraq Inquiry

78. In October 2009, Baroness Scotland, the Attorney General, agreed to waive LPP

in respect of legal advice given to Government up to the commencement of military

action on 20 March 2003. Baroness Scotland also confirmed that she was content for

witnesses called by the Inquiry to give evidence, notwithstanding the Law Officers’

Convention, on an exceptional basis.

79. In June 2010, following the Inquiry’s request for the declassification of Lord

Goldsmith’s draft advice of 14 January 2003 on the legal basis for military action,

Sir Gus O’Donnell wrote to Sir John Chilcot setting out the Government’s position.

Sir Gus advised that the Government had decided to declassify the draft legal advice,

but emphasised the exceptional nature of that decision, and that it reflected the

exceptional and unusual circumstances of the Iraq Inquiry. He stated that the legal basis

for military action might be considered to hold a unique status and emphasised that the

Government’s position remained that there is a strong public interest in protecting both

the convention that neither the advice of the Law Officers, nor the fact that they have

been consulted, is disclosed outside government, and the principle of LPP.

80. Sir Gus asked the Inquiry to publish his letter on its website in order to clarify

publicly the grounds on which the decision had been taken, and the Inquiry did so.

The Inquiry accepts the Government’s position that there is a strong public interest

in protecting the principle of LPP and the Law Officers’ Convention. The Inquiry also

recognises the exceptional nature of the Government’s decision to declassify legal

advice on the basis for military action. The Inquiry accepts that there is a distinction

between legal advice on the decision to take military action, which we agree has a

unique status, and legal advice on the numerous issues that arose during the course

of the UK’s joint Occupation of Iraq, and the continued presence of UK troops in

sovereign Iraq.

81. The Government subsequently agreed to the declassification of a number of other

documents from the pre-invasion period to which the Law Officers’ Convention applied.

82. In a letter to the Inquiry dated 9 June 2014, the Attorney General’s Office confirmed

that, without prejudice to the importance of the convention governing the disclosure of

Law Officers’ advice, it would consider requests for permission to publish material drawn

from Law Officers’ documents relating to the post-invasion period on a case-by-case

basis. It would do so on the basis that the Inquiry agreed that the use of direct quotation

from the documents should be the minimum necessary to enable the Inquiry to articulate

its conclusions.18

83. On that basis, the Inquiry sought and received permission to make reference to

a number of further documents covered by LPP and the Law Officers’ Convention.

18 Letter Wilson to Hammond, 9 June 2014, ‘Iraq Inquiry – Law Officers’ Convention’.

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