Elizabeth Wilmshurst And The War In Iraq

EDM number 742 in 2009-10, proposed by Greg Mulholland on 27/01/2010.
Categorised under the topics of Iraq and Military operations.

That this House commends Elizabeth Wilmshurst, former Deputy Legal Officer at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, for her admirable conduct and the frank and sincere advice she gave at the Chilcot inquiry; notes that Elizabeth Wilmshurst and many of her colleagues believed there to be no legal basis for the Iraq War without further input from the UN Security Council; further notes that Elizabeth Wilmshurst described the Government's attitude towards Departmental legal advice as dismissive; praises her for having the courage to resign when her advice was ignored, confident that she was right; believes that this contrasts starkly with the attitude of senior Ministers who then pushed forward with the decision to invade Iraq, knowing that the Government's own legal advisers believed it would be illegal to do so; questions whether it is usual procedure for the Government to instruct lawyers to draft legal documents that contradict strong expert opinion; and hopes that in future proper effective measures are put in place to ensure Government policy is compliant with law and that this never happens again.

This motion has been signed by a total of 32 MPs.