LIVE: Lord Boyce at the Iraq inquiry
Rolling coverage as Admiral Lord Boyce, former chief of the defence staff gives evidence to the Chilcot panel for the second time
3.24pm: They are back now. Boyce says the "just-in-time" approach to procurement followed by the MoD is a mistake. It plays "havoc" with the planning, he says.
On 19 March a large number of soldiers had to wear green uniform, not desert uniform, he says.
3.09pm: Here's a summary of the main points so far.
Boyce accused Gordon Brown of starving the Ministry of Defence of funds. Dealing with the chancellor was like dealing with a "brick wall", he said. He made this point after saying that, although Tony Blair would sometimes agree to an MoD request, "actually getting it delivered is a different matter altogether". He was asked for an example, and this is how he replied.
Particularly on the money side. "Don't worry, you can have all the money you want, go and see the chancellor." And then a brick wall there. In the round. I'm not talking about this operation.
Although Boyce said in that answer that he was making a general point about MoD funding, he went on to say that trying to get money out of the Treasury for the war became an "impediment to fast progress"
We had caps and restrictions all the time, that we then had to break through. For example, on the urgent operational requirements, there was a cap ... Drawing money out of the Treasury is like drawing blood out of a stone anway. That just provided another impediment to fast progress.
Boyce has revealed that he repeatedly asked Blair for an assurance that the war would be legal. "I made it clear to the Prime Minister in January 2003 (once we had started to deploy our forces), that I would require an assurance of the legal base of the conflict. This was reiterated more than once in the following weeks, and formally and explicitly in March," he said in his witness statement. (See 2.17pm.)
3.04pm: They're having a short b! reak. I' ll post a summary in a moment.
3.02pm: Sir John Chilcot says Lord Bach, the minister for defence procurement at the time, was expressing concerns about the quality and accuracy of information being provided about the equipment available to soldiers.
2.56pm: Sir Lawrence Freedman asks about equipment. Boyce says that one area of concern was gas masks. But by the time the war started virtually everyone had been able to check their gas masks.
Freedman challenges this. He refers to another note declassified today, a one-sentence extract from minutes of a meeting on 19 March 2003 (the day the war started) saying that just 3% of gas masks had been checked.
Boyce says he thinks the same minutes shows that, by the time soldiers went into action, only 0.5% of soldiers had not had their masks checked.
Freedman says he is not sure about this. He says soldiers have told the inquiry that they were worried about not having functioning gas masks.
2.55pm: I've just been having a look at one of the documents declassified this afternoon, the note of a briefing that Boyce gave to Blair on 15 January 2003 about the planning for war. It includes these two paragraphs.
Worst case. The PM wanted to know what the CDS thought was the worst case scenario. After much discussion about destroying the oil instrastructure, use of WMD and hunkering down in Baghdad and fighting it out, it was felt that the worst case scenario was inter-Nicene [sic] fighting between Sunni and Shiah, as well as the Kurds/Turks/Iraqis.
Aftermath. This led on to a general discussion on aftermath, with the PM asking what the Iraqi view on it was. CDS stated that the thinking on this issue was "woolly" at this stage, with work only just beginning. The PM stated that the "Issue" was ! aftermat h - the Coalition must prevent anarchy and inter-Nicene fighting breaking out.
2.53pm: Boyce says that poor asset-tracking was a problem. He suggests that the problem still applies today.
2.47pm: Boyce says that the Treasury did not give him all the money he wanted. He makes it clear that he is talking generally, not in relation to the war. Blair would assure him that he could have everything he wanted. Then he would go to see the chancellor, and he would be "up against a brick wall".
2.45pm: Boyce says that contributing a large land force helped the British to influence American thinking. This included challening the American idea that they could just "trash the joint".
2.41pm: Freedman says that Tony Blair, in his memoirs, says he was always in favour of Britain contributing soldiers. (An alternative option was to make a smaller contribution to the invasion, using just air power and sea power.)
Boyce says that "of course" the army wanted to be involved in a war. Soldiers are trained to fight. At the time they were providing cover for striking firefighters in the UK. Soldiers would rather be fighting, he says.
2.39pm: Sir Lawrence Freedman asks Boyce why the military chiefs were so keen to contribute a land force to the invasion.
Boyce says that the MoD assumed that, if there was a war, large numbers of British troops would be deployed on the ground in the aftermath anyway.
2.25pm: Lady Prashar asks about a revelation in one of the documents declassified this afternoon, a note from Geoff Hoon's office written in May 2002. Hoon said that he had found out that "a UK officer at Tampa" had told the US government that "the UK would provide an armoured division for action against Iraq". Hoon was "surprised" by this because it had not been agreed by minister.
Boyce says he does not know who made this promise to the Americans. N! o one wa s in a position to do so at that point.
Another note declassified today, from Boyce's office to Hoon's office says someone might have been speculating, based on what the British contributed during the first gulf war.
2.17pm: I've just been reading Boyce's witness statement. Two points stand out.
Boyce says he repeatedly asked Tony Blair for an assurance that the war would be legal.
I made it clear to the Prime Minister in January 2003 (once we had started to deploy our forces), that I would require an assurance of the legal base of the conflict. This was reiterated more than once in the following weeks, and formally and explicitly in March once it became clear that it was probable that coalition forces would invade once political approval was obtained.
Boyce says he advised Blair that the UK contribution would have to be reduced by two thirds by the autumn of 2003.
My advice also was that the UK contribution would need to be scaled down by about two-thirds by the autumn; and therefore that it was of vital importance to get other countries to provide significant force level contributions for Phase IV as soon as possible after the fighting phase.
2.10pm: Boyce says that in 2002 he repeatedly told his US counterparts that regime change was not UK policy. He says he understands that this was the prime minister's position.
Even in March 2003, Boyce did not think that regime change was the policy objective, he says.
2.06pm: Sir Roderic Lyne asks if Boyce was involved in any discussions on Iraq policy before Tony Blair went to Crawford in April 2002.
Boyce says he was not planning military action at that stage. If anything, the opposite was the case. The MoD was saying that it was not planning for an Iraq invasion! .
But, after Crawford, the MoD did start planning for military action.
2.03pm: Lord Boyce is giving evidence now. He has produced a written statement, which is on the inquiry's website, alongside three other written statements and a large batch of declassified documents.
2.01pm: This morning the inquiry released eight newly-declassified documents. They are on the inquiry's website. I haven't had the chance to read them yet, but I'll post anything interesting that I find.
1.51pm: Lord Boyce is giving evidence to the Iraq inquiry this afternoon. He was chief of the defence staff from 2001 until 2003 and, as head of the armed forces, he is the best person to know whether the military was ready for war.
He gave evidence to the inquiry in December 2009 - you can read my live blog of the hearing here - and he was fairly blunt about ministers not letting him start ordering equipment in good time because they wanted to keep their plans secret. This hearing is due to go on from 2pm until 5pm, and the inquiry may well be asking him for more detail about this, as well as about other aspects of the planning.
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