How did we end up in Iraq and how can we avoid becoming involved in something so disastrous again?

That is the question the Public Administration Select Committee is pondering at the moment. Specifically, it is considering whether Parliament should be given powers to call in inquiry into the Iraq War to get to the bottom of all this, whilst the Government attempts to bury its head in the sand over the issue.

Some startling submissions were made to the Committee by senior MPs, including Sir Menzies Campbell, Douglas Hurd and Lord Owen, in a recent session. All those giving evidence seemed in agreement that the heart of the issue is the executive’s increasing stranglehold over Parliament. In the first instance, they agreed that Parliament should be allowed to call not just this inquiry but any future inquiry as it deemed appropriate, whether the government likes it or not.

However, those giving evidence were keen to stress that welcome as such powers would be, it would not be enough to prevent us from ending up in a similar situation again. The problems, the Committee heard, are firstly that such an Inquiry would always be too late, after the deed had been done, so to speak, and secondly, that such matters come down in the end to a vote, when MPs live under the control of the whips and party machinery.

Members of the Committee expressed the view that were it not for the power of the whips, the government would have lost the vote on the Iraq War. If this is the case, then welcome as an inquiry into the Iraq War would be, it is surely the power of the whips that needs to be looked at more closely should we wish to avoid becoming embroiled in another catastrophe such as Iraq.