•
DFID told
the Inquiry that it spent “about £28m” on staff secondments to the
CPA
and
associated security costs between mid-2003 and 28 June
2004.654
•
Other
departments will have incurred costs in relation to the salaries of
their staff
seconded to
the CPA.
1117.
A number of
witnesses told the Inquiry that reconstruction during this period
was
not
constrained by a lack of funds. Mr Andy Bearpark, the CPA’s
Director of Operations,
told the
Inquiry:
“… we [the
CPA] were not in any way resource-constrained in terms of amount
of
money. We
may have been very constrained in terms of our ability to spend
the
1118.
Mr Blair
echoed this view in his biography:
“We had
enough money, effort and people to have rebuilt Iraq within a year
of
conflict’s
end.
“What
happened was that the security situation deteriorated
…”656
1119.
Mr Blair
continued:
“… a bigger
pre-planned effort and a massive civilian reconstruction programme
would
have filled
an early vacuum. It would have been an immediate jobs programme
for
unemployed
Iraqis. But … it would be naive in the extreme to believe that this
in itself
would have
stopped the violence, the origins of which were profound and
political.
“With a
manageable security situation, any shortcomings [in the
reconstruction effort]
could
quickly have been overcome …”657
1120.
Sir Suma
Chakrabarti told the Inquiry that Iraq had been the “number
one
recipient”
of British assistance in 2003/04.658
He agreed
with the Inquiry suggestion that
this was
sufficient to do a “high-quality” job in southern
Iraq:
“… so long
as we had also got the money that the Coalition Provisional
Authority
was meant
to allocate as well to the southern region. That was more of the
problem.”
1121.
Looking beyond
the CPA period, Mr Benn told the Inquiry:
“…
ultimately it wasn’t about the availability of money. There were
very considerable
sums that
the Americans put in; this was in 2003/04 the biggest DFID
bilateral
654
Paper DFID,
14 April 2005, ‘Development Assistance in Iraq’; Letter Cabinet
Office to Aldred,
13
September 2011, ‘Iraq Inquiry: Request for Further Information on
Funding’.
655
Public
hearing, 6 July 2010, page 66.
656
Blair
T. A
Journey.
Hutchinson, 2010.
657
Blair
T. A
Journey.
Hutchinson, 2010.
658
Public
hearing, 22 January 2012, pages 12-13.
194