Law Lord: Iraq invasion 'flawed'

The Scottish National Party (SNP) has repeated its call for a full inquiry into the Iraq War after one of the most eminent legal figures in the UK described the military intervention as a serious violation of international law and accused the UK Labour Government and US Bush administration as acting like a "world vigilante".

SNP Westminster leader, Angus Robertson MP, said that the remarks by a former senior law lord that legal advice given to the Labour government prior to the invasion of Iraq was fundamentally "flawed" was "damning and unequivocal" .

Lord Bingham, who stepped down in July, described the action by the UK and US as a "serious violation of international law". He said advice by the then Attorney General Lord Goldsmith failed to acknowledge a lack of hard evidence and it neglected to make clear that only the Security Council could authorise further action.

Mr Robertson, who returned from a visit to meet troops in Iraq last month, and questioned Gordon Brown on the subject in last week's Prime Minister's Question Time said:

"Lord Bingham’s intervention is damning and unequivocal, and completes the case for a full public inquiry into Labour’s illegal war.

"We are five years on from the most disastrous foreign policy decision of recent times, the effects of which will be with us for many years to come and we must now have an inquiry into why Labour took the country into an unlawful war on bogus information.

"The Labour government, with Gordon Brown's full support, took the UK into an illegal and immoral war.

"Our servicemen and women are doing the job they were ordered to do with extraordinary professionalism and courage, and we all support them. Lord Bingham’s intervention again raises the question: why they were sent into danger in the first place."

Background: PMQs 12/11/08

Angus Robertson MP, Westminster SNP Leader:

"President-elect Obama showed excellent political judgment by opposing the Iraq war, in contrast with the Prime Minister, who supported and funded it. Notwithstanding the excellent work of the troops on the ground in Iraq today, I ask: when will they come home and when will we have the inquiry into the war?

Prime Minister Gordon Brown did not answer either question.