The statement: 'It was entirely proper for us to withhold information'

This is Jack Straw's statement to the Commons following the revelations in Elizabeth Wilmshurst's resignation letter.

This is Jack Straw's statement to the Commons following the revelations in Elizabeth Wilmshurst's resignation letter.

Mr Speaker,

Let me take the two parts of the question in turn: first, circumstances surrounding Ms Wilmshurst's letter to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's Legal Adviser, of 18 March 2003.

Elizabeth Wilmshurst was one of the deputy Legal Advisers at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. As is now well known, she submitted her resignation on 18 March 2003 because she disagreed "that it [was] lawful to use force against Iraq without a second Security Council Resolution to revive the authorisation given in SCR 678".

Given that difference of views, her resignation was an honourable course to take and in accordance with the Civil Service Code.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office received a number of requests for the text of Ms Wilmshurst's letter under the Freedom of Information Act, after it came into force on 1 January this year. These requests were initially refused, mainly because much of the content of Ms Wilmshurst's letter contained personal data, the disclosure of which would have contravened the first Data Protection Principle under section 40 of the Act.

Following the publication in The Guardian on 23 February of a number of quotations from the letter, we took the view that disclosure of this information would no longer contravene the first Data Protection Principle. We therefore disclosed the letter yesterday.

Two sentences were, however, omitted by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from the document because their content concerned the provision of legal advice in relation to the use of force against Iraq.

Regardless of whether these references were accurate, this information was covered by exemptions in the Act which apply to confidential legal advice (section 42(1)), the formulation or development of government policy (section 35(1)(a)); and some was also covered by exemptions for ministerial communications (section 35(1)(b)) and law officers' advice (section 35(1)(c)).

It was entirely proper for the Government to withhold information under these provisions of the Act. Indeed as the minister responsible for taking the Freedom of Information Bill through the House, I can recall no suggestion from any side that the Government's legal advice should not be exempt from disclosure.

Let me now turn to the second aspect of the question, the Attorney General's opinion on the legality of military action in Iraq. This whole question is covered extensively in Lord Butler's report on Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction, paras 366-387, and I commend those paragraphs to the House. Ms Wilmshurst gave evidence to the Butler inquiry, and the substance of her position, then as now, is covered in paragraph 376 of the report. In the light of Saddam Hussein's failure to comply with his very clear obligations in respect of UNSCR 1441 of November 2002, the UK, US and Spain tabled in February 2003 a further draft resolution in the UN Security Council posing tough but attainable tests for Iraq. This gave Saddam Hussein the final opportunity to demonstrate compliance offered by Resolution 1441.

I attended a series of ministerial Security Council meetings in the early months of 2003, the last on 7 March 2003. Not a single member of the Security Council disputed that Saddam had failed to comply with his obligations under SCR 1441 and preceding resolutions.

The Attorney General made clear in his written answer of 17 March 2003 his genuinely and independently held view that military action in Iraq was lawful on the basis of Saddam's breach of the existing UN resolutions. As he said then, authority to use force against Iraq derived from the combined effect of UN Resolutions 678, 687 and 1441. A large majority in this house supported on 18 March 2003 the Government's motion before the House to support military action against Iraq in view of its clear breach of obligations under UN Resolutions.