The Report of the Iraq Inquiry

452. At Mr Rycroft’s request, the FCO later provided additional comparators for GDP

growth and new figures on infant mortality agreed with DFID.203

453. Mr Rycroft drew on the FCO response to recommend text for inclusion in Mr Blair’s

speech.204 Mr Rycroft made no reference to the reliability of the data.

454. Some of the material provided by the FCO and Mr Rycroft was incorporated into

the speech, in which Mr Blair described Iraq as:

“A country that in 1978, the year before he [Saddam Hussein] seized power, was

richer than Malaysia or Portugal. A country where today, 135 out of every 1,000 Iraqi

children die before the age of five205 – 70 percent of these deaths are from diarrhoea

and respiratory infections that are easily preventable. Where almost a third of

children born in the centre and south of Iraq have chronic malnutrition.

“Where 60 percent of the people depend on food aid.

“Where half the population of rural areas have no safe water.

“Where every year and now, as we speak, tens of thousands of political prisoners

languish in appalling conditions in Saddam’s jails and are routinely executed.

“Where in the past 15 years over 150,000 Shia Muslims in southern Iraq and Muslim

Kurds in northern Iraq have been butchered, with up to four million Iraqis in exile

round the world, including 350,000 now in Britain.”206

455. Mr Blair concluded:

“If the international community does not take note of the Iraqi people’s plight but

continues to address it casually this will breed terrorism and extremism within the

Iraqi people. This cannot be allowed to happen.

“Remember Kosovo where we were told war would destabilise the whole of the

Balkans and that region now has the best chance of peace in over 100 years.

“Remember Afghanistan, where now, despite all the huge problems, there are three

million children in school, including for the first time in over two decades one and

a half million girls, and where two million Afghan exiles from the Taliban have now

returned …

203 Fax Owen to Rycroft, 14 February 2003, ‘PM’s Speech Question’; Fax Owen to Rycroft, [undated],

‘Iraq: Prime Minister’s Speech’.

204 Minute Rycroft to Prime Minister, 14 February 2003, ‘Iraq: Scotland Speech’; Minute Rycroft to

Prime Minister, 14 February 2003, ‘Iraq: Scotland Speech – additional points’.

205 The figure of 135 per 1,000 appears to have been taken from Ms Short’s letter of 14 February to

Mr Blair and not the material supplied by the FCO. Ms Short’s letter made clear that the figure referred

only to central and southern Iraq and quoted a figure of 72 per 1,000 for the north.

206 Scoop Independent News, 17 February 2003, Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Glasgow Party Speech.

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