Executive
Summary
basis,
including the full record of the discussion on Iraq in Cabinet on
five key occasions
pre‑conflict,
and policy advice to Ministers which is not normally
disclosed.
392.
Under UK
constitutional conventions – in which the Prime Minister leads
the
Government
– Cabinet is the main mechanism by which the most senior
members
of the
Government take collective responsibility for its most important
decisions.
Cabinet is
supported by a system of Ministerial Committees whose role is to
identify,
test and
develop policy options; analyse and mitigate risks; and debate and
hone policy
proposals
until they are endorsed across the Government.178
393.
The
Ministerial
Code in place in
2003 said:
“The
Cabinet is supported by Ministerial Committees (both standing and
ad hoc)
which have
a two‑fold purpose. First, they relieve the pressure on the
Cabinet
itself by
settling as much business as possible at a lower level or, failing
that,
by
clarifying the issues and defining the points of disagreement.
Second, they
support the
principle of collective responsibility by ensuring that, even
though an
important question
may never reach the Cabinet itself, the decision will be
fully
considered
and the final judgement will be sufficiently authoritative to
ensure that the
Government
as a whole can properly be expected to accept responsibility for
it.”179
“The
business of the Cabinet and Ministerial Committees consists in the
main of:
a.
questions which significantly engage the collective responsibility
of the
Government
because they raise major issues of policy or because
they
are of
critical importance to the public;
b.
questions on which there is an unresolved argument
between
Departments.”
395.
Lord Wilson of
Dinton told the Inquiry that between January 1998 and
January
1999, in
the run‑up to and immediate aftermath of Operation Desert Fox in
December
1998 (see
Section 1.1), as Cabinet Secretary, he had attended and noted 21
Ministerial
discussions
on Iraq: 10 in Cabinet, of which seven had “some substance”; five
in DOP;
and six ad
hoc meetings, including one JIC briefing.180
Discussions
in Cabinet or a
Cabinet
Committee would have been supported by the relevant part of the
Cabinet
Secretariat,
the Overseas and Defence Secretariat (OD Sec).
178
Ministerial
Code, 2001,
page 3.
179
Ministerial
Code, 2001,
page 3.
180
Public
hearing, 25 January 2011, page 11.
55