OPEN LETTER TO THE INFORMATION COMMISSIONER

							OPEN LETTER TO THE INFORMATION COMMISSIONER- REQUESTING A LEGAL
REVIEW OF THE FEASIBILITY OF JUDICIAL REVIEW TO CHALLENGE THE
MINISTERIAL VETO (31 JULY 2012) AGAINST DECISION NOTICE FS5041714 (‘IRAQ
CABINET MINUTES’)



Dear Information Commissioner



Introduction



I write this open letter in request that you review the legal case for challenging
the veto decision of Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, and the Coalition Cabinet
against Decision Notice FS5041714 (‘Iraq Cabinet minutes’), issued on 31 July
2012.



Section 53 (2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 states

‘A decision notice or enforcement notice to which this section applies shall cease
to have effect if, not later than the twentieth working day following the effective
date, the accountable person in relation to that authority gives the Commissioner
a certificate signed by him stating that he has on reasonable grounds formed the
opinion that, in respect of the request or requests concerned, there was no failure
falling within subsection 1(b)’.



The last review of the legal case for judicial review carried out by Timothy Pitt
Payne and his team after the veto imposed by former Justice Secretary, Jack
Straw in February 2009 concluded that challenging ‘reasonable grounds’ for
enacting the veto would be too difficult to prove and thus have little prospect of
success (‘In the Matter of Section 53 of the FoI Act 2000- Advice).

1
Since this initial review, significant change has taken place, including new
evidence and declassified material becoming available, through the Chilcot
Inquiry, bearing upon the Executive decision making context for the military
invasion and the location of Cabinet meetings within this context.

It is my argument that this new material, in conjunction with the pre-existing
documents, considerably enhances the possibility of building a successful legal
case for challenging the application of ‘reasonable grounds’ in the Grieve veto.



The reasoning of the Grieve veto



The core reasoning of the Grieve veto hinges on two extended extracts from Jack
Straw’s veto. These are;

‘Conventions on Cabinet confidentiality are of the greatest pertinence when the
issues at hand are of the greatest sensitivity. Exceptional cases create an
exceptional need for confidence in Cabinet confidentiality to be strong.

‘Serious and controversial decisions must be taken with free, frank- even blunt-
deliberation between colleagues. Dialogue must be fearless. Ministers must have
the confidence to challenge each other in private. They must ensure that decisions
have been properly thought through, sounding out all probabilities before
committing themselves to a course of action. They must not feel inhibited from
advancing opinions that may be unpopular or controversial. They must not be
deflected from expressing dissent by the fear that they may be held personally to
account for views that are later cast aside.

‘Disclosure of Cabinet minutes- particularly Cabinet minutes of such gravity and
controversy- has the potential to create these dangers, to undermine frankness of
deliberation and to compromise the integrity of this thinking space where it is
most needed. It therefore jeopardises a key principle of British government where
it has the greatest utility’.


2
The second extract states;

‘Accountability for this decision- as for any other Cabinet decision- is properly with
the Government as a whole and not with individual Ministers. Section 1.2 of the
Ministers’ Code puts a Minister’s duty to this convention as the first in the list of
principles of Ministers’ conduct and details the foundations of the doctrine clearly.

‘Collective responsibility requires that Ministers should be able to express their
views frankly in the expectation that they can argue freely in private while
maintaining a united front when decisions have been reached. This, in turn,
requires that the privacy of opinions expressed in Cabinet and Ministerial
committees, including in correspondence, should be maintained.

‘If permitted to demonstrate their degree of attachment to any given policy,
Ministers could absolve themselves from responsibility for decisions that they have
nevertheless agreed to stand by. Conversely, maintenance of the doctrine
multiplies the avenues through which the Government can be held to account.
Thus, every Minister in the 2003 Cabinet could legitimately be held to account for
the decision to use armed force in Iraq. The resignation of Ministers at the time of
this particular decision recognized and reinforced that principle. Disclosure of
Cabinet minutes undermines the convention. If documents indicating which
Ministers supported what particular policy were routinely to be disclosed, the
muddied chain of accountability that would result might leave no channel for
Parliament to hold the executive to account at all. Although Cabinet minutes do
not generally attribute views to individual Ministers, divergence of views can still
be clear and speculation over who made various comments would be inevitable if
they were to be released. Their disclosure could reduce the ability of Government
to act as a coherent unit. It would promote factionalism and encourage individual
Ministers to put their interests above those of the Government as a whole. Such
an outcome would be detrimental to the operation of our democracy and contrary
to the public interest.



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‘The above- detailed prejudicial effects arising from disclosure occur even where
Cabinet is in unanimous agreement. If only information revealing agreement
between Ministers were released, it would soon become apparent that where
information had been withheld there must have been disagreement. The principle
of collective responsibility would be therefore again be undermined’.

These two extracts, upon which ‘reasonable grounds’ hinge, may be fine as a
general abstract theory of the convention of ‘collective responsibility’, but they
bear little resemblance to the actual Executive decision process by which these
decisions were made or to how Cabinet was drawn into this. Indeed, I shall offer a
selection of reputable factual sources which cast sufficient doubt on these
supposed ‘reasonable grounds’ to warrant a legal reassessment of the case for
judicial review.



Analysis of the factual sources for Executive decision making in the lead up to
the Iraq invasion of 19 March and an assessment of the reasonableness of the
Straw/ Grieve vetoes



In this part, my intention is to introduce a number of sources to build a picture of
the factual context of Executive decision making in the lead up to the invasion of
Iraq, including the role permitted Cabinet. This will be followed by a cross-
examination of the assumptions made in the two key extracts cited by Grieve’s
veto in light of these sources.



The Butler Report

I quote at some length the findings of the Butler Report on Cabinet’s role in
decision making on Iraq after April 2002;




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‘In the year before the war, the Cabinet discussed policy toward Iraq as a specific
agenda item twenty four times. It also arose in the course of discussions on other
business. Cabinet members were offered and many received briefings on the
intelligence picture in Iraq. There was therefore no lack of discussion on Iraq and
we have been informed that it was substantive. The Ministerial Committee on
defence and Overseas Policy did not meet.

‘By contrast over the period from April 2002 to the start of military action, some
25 meetings attended by the small number of key Ministers, officials and military
officers most closely involved provided the framework of discussion and decision
making within Government. One inescapable consequence of this was to limit
wider collective discussion and consideration by the Cabinet to the frequent but
unscripted occasions when the Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary and Defence
Secretary briefed the Cabinet orally. Excellent quality papers were written by
officials, but these were not discussed in Cabinet or in Cabinet committee. Without
papers circulated in advance, it remains possible but obviously much more difficult
for members of the cabinet outside the small circle directly involved to bring their
political judgement and experience to bear on the major decisions for which the
Cabinet as a whole must carry responsibility. The absence of papers on the Cabinet
agenda so that Ministers could obtain briefings in advance from the Cabinet
office, their own departments or from intelligence agencies plainly reduced their
ability to properly prepare for such discussions, while the changes to key posts at
the head of the Cabinet Secretariat lessened the support of the machinery of
government for the collective responsibility of the Cabinet in the vital matter of
war and peace.

‘…We are concerned that the informality and circumscribed character of the
Government’s procedures which we saw in the context of policy making towards
Iraq risks reducing the scope for informed collective political judgement. Such risks
are particularly significant in a field like the Iraq war where hard facts are
inherently difficult to come by and the quality of judgement is accordingly all the
more important’



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(Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction: Report of a
Committee of Privy Councillors, Chaired by Lord Butler of Brockwell, HC898, July
2004 pp146-148).

Lord (Peter) Hennessy, in an article for the ‘Independent’ newspaper, refers to
these findings of the Butler Inquiry on the role of the Prime Minister’s Office and
Cabinet room in the lead up to the Iraq invasion as ‘verging on the devastating’
(‘A systems failure at the heart of government’ 16/07/2004)



Jonathan Powell; ‘The New Machiavelli: How to Wield Power in the Modern
World’, Bodley Head, 2010

Jonathan Powell was Tony Blair’s Chief of Staff from 1994-2007 and, as such, was
intimately involved in policy making over Iraq. Below is his assessment of how
Cabinet fits in to Blair’s style of government:-

‘There is a good reason why the mandarins’ conception of Cabinet government
does not exist in reality; it would be a singularly bad way of making decisions. Any
discussion that involves twenty five people or more, many of them uninformed
about the subject under discussion unless their department is directly involved,
and with many of the right people whose voices should be heard not present, will
give you at best an unfocused political discussion of a subject. So Cabinet is the
right place to ratify decisions, the right place for people to raise concerns if they
have not done so before, the right place for briefings by the Prime Minister and
other ministers on strategic issues, and the right place to ensure political unity;
but it is categorically not the right place for an informed decision on difficult and
detailed policy issues.

‘…The series of set piece attacks by retired Cabinet Secretaries and other senior
civil servants on the modern system of government in reports and speeches are
essentially the death rattle of the old mandarin class’.

(ibid. pp59-60)


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Disclosure Statement by the Cabinet Office and Legal Secretariat of the Law
Officers (June 2006)

This document is particularly important in revealing the context of landmark
stages in the Executive decision making process as it identifies landmark stages
between 01 and 19 March 2003 when the military invasion was launched.

I paraphrase its contents:-

07 March 2003- The Attorney General’s fuller legal advice issued which concluded
‘the safest course would be to secure the adoption of a further (Security Council)
resolution to authorize the use of force’,

11 March- ‘a number of meetings in Downing Street, some of which were
attended by the Attorney General. At one of these meetings, the Chief of Defence
Staff said he would need a clear indication of the legal position for the purposes
of his directive to members of the Armed Forces…he needed an unambiguous
black and white statement saying it would be legal for us to operate if we had to.
At the same Downing Street meeting, the Cabinet Secretary also asked whether
civil servants would also require a similar directive.

12 March- ‘The Legal Adviser to the Ministry of Defence wrote to the Legal
Secretary of the Law Officers, following up on the Chief of Defence Staff’s
comment on 11 March. In that letter the MoD Legal Advisor recorded that he had
informed the CDS that “if the Attorney General has advised that he is satisfied
that the proposed military action by the UK would be in accordance with national
and international law (the CDS) can properly give his order committing UK forces.

‘In addition, the Treasury Solicitor, as Head of the Government Legal Service,
indicated to the Attorney General that a clear statement of the lawfulness of
military action was required both for the military and for the civil service.

‘The Attorney General recognized therefore that he needed to indicate his clear
view as to whether military action would be lawful and that the Government
would need to set out its position publicly.


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13 March- ‘ …it was clear to the Attorney General that there was a sound basis for
the (US) revival argument in principle. (The Disclosure Statement also refers to
visits arranged for the Attorney General to meet Bush administration officials and
lawyers in the US on 20 February 2003 to discuss this). The question was whether
the conditions for the operation of the (US) revival doctrine applied in this case.

‘…he (the Attorney General) came to the conclusion that the better view was that
a further (Security Council) resolution was not legally necessary.

‘It was agreed during that discussion that it would be proper for the Legal
Secretary to confirm to the Ministry of Defence Legal Advisor that the proposed
military action would be in accordance with national and international law. It was
also decided to prepare a statement setting out the Attorney’s view of the legal
position and to send instructions to counsel to help in the preparation of that
public statement.

‘…following that discussion with his Legal Secretary, the Attorney general
informed Baroness Morgan and Lord Falconer at a meeting of his conclusion that
action would be lawful without a further resolution.

14 March- The Legal Secretary wrote to the MoD Legal Advisor confirming that
the Attorney was satisfied that the proposed action would be lawful.

‘…the Legal Secretary wrote to the Private Secretary to the Prime Minister seeking
confirmation (previously given orally) that “it is unequivocally the Prime
Minister’s view that Iraq has committed further material breaches as specified in
paragraph 4 of (Security Council) resolution 1441.

15 March- The Prime Minister’s Private Secretary wrote confirming this…

‘Drafts of the Attorney General’s written statement to Parliament were drawn up
(15-16 March) as was the fuller statement of the legal position contained in the
Foreign Secretary’s memorandum to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

(The Foreign Secretary published a report on Iraq’s non-compliance with
SCR1441- (not included in this Statement).


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17 March- The Attorney General made his written statement to Parliament
setting out his concluded view of the legal basis for the use of force against Iraq.

The Foreign Secretary submitted a memorandum to the Foreign Affairs Select
Committee…



Declassified memo (Iraq Inquiry) - 17 March 2003, Simon McDonald, FCO, about
a meeting between Foreign Secretary and the Attorney General on 13 March
2003

‘The Attorney General said to the Foreign Secretary that he thought he might
need to tell Cabinet when it met on 17 March that the legal issues were finely
balanced. The Foreign Secretary said that he needed to be aware of the problem
of leaks from the Cabinet. It would be better if the Attorney General distributed
the draft letter from the Foreign Secretary to the FAC (House of Commons Foreign
Affairs Select Committee) as the standard text of his position and then made a
few comments. The Attorney General agreed.

The Foreign Secretary stated that he would be appointing an official from the UK
UN mission in New York and one of his own hand-picked officials to the Attorney
General’s team drawing up the legal statement for Parliament on 18 March. The
17 March Cabinet meeting “would meet sometime in the morning. It will need to
approve the course of action proposed and to have passed across them the terms
of the Commons motion on Tuesday’.



Chilcot Inquiry- Oral evidence of Lord Turnbull, Wednesday 13 January 2010,
p.67 lines 1-10

Sir John Chilcot- “Was Cabinet on 17 March aware that there was a complex set of
finely balanced arguments which had been going on or did they simply listen to…

Lord Turnbull- “No, he presented- he said, ‘I have now reached my determination
on this thing and this is what it is”. I mean it contained the so-called revival

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argument. It was there. But the kinds of commentary about, you know, the
complexities and history were omitted”.



Cross examination of the Attorney General’s veto with the above factual
sources and an assessment of ‘reasonable grounds’



If we cross-examine the first extract from the Straw veto relied upon by Grieve in
the light of the critical sources cited above, the first question raised is whether full
Cabinet was seriously involved at all in the most important and detailed decision
making which initiated policy toward the invasion.

The Butler Report doubted whether members of the Cabinet outside of the small
circle directly involved were able to bring their collective political judgement to
bear on the major decisions and expressed concern that the informality and
circumscribed character of the Government’s procedures had reduced the scope
for informed collective judgement.

While Jonathan Powell rejected the Butler Report’s formulation of ‘sofa
government’ for this informal and circumscribed circle networked from the Prime
Minister’s Office, he corroborates that a small elite of central decision makers
who could come up with the right decisions was the Blairite policy management
style rather than the old mandarin concept of full Cabinet collective responsibility.

Thus, this notion of ‘free, frank-even blunt- deliberation between colleagues’ in
full Cabinet, engaging in fearless dialogue and ‘challenging each other’ is a not a
true reflection of what actually happened.

The first observation I make from the Disclosure Statement by the Cabinet Office
and the Legal Secretariat of the Law Officers is the complete absence from it of
any reference to Cabinet in producing important decisions. The decisions cited by
this document all emanate from the small, central power network set up around
10 Downing Street.


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If we examine carefully the sentence in the Straw veto;

‘They must ensure that decisions have been properly thought through, sounding
out all possibilities before committing themselves to a course of action’.

Now, let’s apply that to Tony Blair’s decision over 14-15 March 2003 to
unilaterally declare Iraq in further material breach of its treaty obligations under
UNSCR1441. When was that decision ever referred to Cabinet for its collective
deliberation so that it could be properly thought through and all the possibilities/
repercussions that may arise from it sounded out?

The decision- probably the most important in the UK’s trajectory toward war- was
made before the Cabinet meeting of 17 March when the truncated legal advice
was first presented.

Was it therefore subjected to collective Cabinet deliberation and the checks and
balances of power (a key principle of British government) on 13 March 2003? As
we have no access to the Cabinet minutes for that meeting we have no real way
of knowing but it is highly unlikely because any Cabinet deliberation of this Prime
Ministerial action would have had to be weighed against legal advice. This is
because such a unilateral measure- by which the Prime Minister arrogated the
power of the UN Security Council to himself- was highly questionable under the
terms of the UN Charter.

Another example; if we examine the Cabinet meeting of 17 March, it is very
difficult to conclude that Cabinet had properly thought through and sounded out
all the possibilities of the decision for military action it was asked to ratify when it
was deliberately denied the Attorney General’s full legal advice (on the
recommendation of Foreign Secretary Jack Straw).

The fact that the US revival argument was considered by the Attorney General as
the ‘better view’ of two (allegedly) equal and valid legal views made the choice of
this a political and not a legal decision. There was no legal imperative to deny
Cabinet advice on the alternative view from which it could have properly thought
through and sounded out all possibilities/ repercussions before committing itself
to a course of action.
11
The fact that this curtailment of legal advice occurred (in potential breach of the
Ministerial Code according to former Cabinet Secretary, Gus O’Donnell) seriously
undermined the convention of Cabinet collective responsibility, relied upon by
Straw and Dominic Grieve in their vetoes.

The critical sources cited above strongly suggest that the ‘integrity of the thinking
space’ of full Cabinet was seriously compromised for these two meetings well
before my Freedom of Information request was ever submitted.

If we examine the second Straw extract relied upon by Grieve, questions emerge
from the critical sources about ‘accountability for a decision’ and whether it can
legitimately be attributed to Cabinet when full Cabinet was so minimally
responsible for the decision process from which policy was initiated.

Although Section 1.2 of the Minister’s Code may make Cabinet collective
responsibility a primary principle for any Cabinet minister, Section 1.1 exhorts all
Ministers to comply with international law and treaties. It must surely be an
untenable use of the Code to cite one of its provisions as a means of providing a
cloak for concealing potential breaches of others.

The confidentiality principle of Cabinet collective responsibility rests upon a
mutual requirement. This is that Ministers can participate in and express their
views frankly over policy decisions in order that a united front can afterwards be
maintained and confidentiality applied.

However, where the decision process is fragmented and largely located with an
informal, circumscribed power network around the Prime Minister’s Office, and
thus excludes a number of Cabinet ministers from participation, the tenability of
the confidentiality principle becomes much more questionable. Should Cabinet
ministers be expected to maintain a united front cloaked in secrecy when many
have been excluded from the landmark decisions in the decision making chain?

‘If permitted to demonstrate their degree of attachment to any given policy,
Ministers could absolve themselves from responsibility for decisions that they have
nevertheless agreed to stand by’.


12
Let’s examine this in relation to Tony Blair’s decision, over 14-15 March 2003, to
declare Iraq in further material breach of its treaty obligations. We have already
noted that there is no evidence that this decision- although one of paramount
importance- was ever put to Cabinet. If it was never put to Cabinet, ministers
cannot possibly be said to have agreed to stand by it (nor, therefore, absolve
themselves from responsibility for it).

‘If documents indicating which Ministers supported what particular policy were
routinely to be disclosed, the muddied chain of accountability that would result
might leave no channel for Parliament to hold the executive to account at all’.

How likely is it that this scenario applied to the Cabinet meetings in question? As
Lord Turnbull’s evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry shows, the US revival doctrine was
merely presented as the Attorney General’s choice of views and there was no
collective discussion over complexities or history.



The ‘chain of accountability’ was, in any event, sufficiently muddied by the ‘sofa
government’ policy management style adopted. For example, the Disclosure
Statement, in its recording of decisions from 12 March onwards, refers to the
‘proposed’ military action. What source of authority actually ‘proposed’ this
action? There is no reference in the document to Cabinet ever proposing the
course of military action at this time. The source remains a mystery and an
example of the ‘muddied chain of accountability’.

In terms of Parliament holding the executive to account, two issues particularly
emerge:

     a) Did the Prime Minister ever refer his decision of 14-15 March, unilaterally
        declaring Iraq in breach of its treaty obligations, to Parliament for
        accountability, given its controversial status in relation to the UN Charter?

        The answer must be no.



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      b) On 18 March 2003, Parliament was insufficiently aware of the inclusion
      of ‘all necessary means’ in the wording of the Executive resolution for
      military action to hold the Executive to account even though this wording
      was not employed in UNSCR1441. ‘All necessary means or measures’ is UN
      shorthand for authorizing military force whereas the actual wording of the
      resolution- ‘serious consequences’- was never given an explicit meaning.

The Straw extract alleges that disclosure would ‘promote factionalism and
encourage individual Ministers to put their interests above those of the
Government as a whole. Such an outcome would be detrimental to the operation
of our democracy and contrary to the public interest’.

I contend that the sources I have chosen show that the policy process was
fragmented and driven by a small centralized power network operating primarily
out of the Prime Minister’s office and incorporating an elite from Cabinet. This
incorporated elite was chosen because it could be trusted to make the ‘right
decisions’. The result, if anything, was to promote a corrosive kind of
‘factionalism’.

The elite at work can be exemplified in the Memo drawn up by Simon McDonald
of a meeting between the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw and the Attorney
General, Lord Goldsmith. Both Straw and Goldsmith, one a Cabinet the other a
non-Cabinet minister, were members of the elite network. The purpose of the
meeting was a pre-emptive planning of the agenda of 17 March Cabinet meeting
so that the ‘right decision’ would result and this could be choreographed in timing
with Sir Jeremy Greenstock’s withdrawal of the second resolution from the UN
Security Council and the Parliamentary vote for war on 18 March. In order to
achieve this, not only did the Foreign Secretary advise the Attorney General to
curtail his legal advice depicting only the ‘better view’- the US revival doctrine. He
also produced from his own office a ‘fuller document’ of the legal advice he
wanted conveyed in Cabinet to effect the right outcome on 17 March 2003 and
to satisfy the relevant Parliamentary scrutiny body, the Foreign Affairs Select
Committee (chaired by a Labour MP) of the case for war on 18 March.


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Furthermore, he moved to influence the officer appointments to the Attorney
General’s team drawing up the legal advice going to Parliament.

(For these reasons, I believe Jack Straw to have been entirely compromised by
conflicts of interest when he became the ‘accountable person’ exercising the veto
over my FoI request in 2009).



Conclusion



In the preceding sections I have submitted my reasons for reviewing the legal case
for a judicial review of Dominic Grieve’s veto over Decision Notice FS5041714.

It is my view that the new material which has become available through the
Chilcot Inquiry, in combination with previous sources of information, makes it
entirely viable to re-examine the case of ‘reasonable grounds’ in exercising the
veto.

With due respect to Timothy Pitt Payne, I think that his conclusion in 2009 about
‘reasonable grounds’ no longer holds;

‘The basis for the Ministerial certificate, as set out in the statement of reasons,
was that the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighed the public
interest in disclosure. In my view it cannot be said that this is an unreasonable
view for the Minister to have reached. The Tribunal had referred to the gravity of
the decision to go to war in Iraq, as being a factor favouring disclosure. The
Secretary of State’s response to this, in the reasons for his certificate, was that the
intrinsic importance of the decision made it all the more important to maintain
Cabinet confidentiality. I do not consider that either the Tribunal’s view, or the
view taken in the certificate, can be characterized as intrinsically unreasonable. In
my view there is no realistic prospect of persuading the court that the Minister
reached an unreasonable view’.



15
Although this re-examination would not be about the Straw veto, it still has
relevance because of the reliance the Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, who had
no direct involvement or experience of the decision making process in question,
has upon it.

In the light of substantially new material emerging from the Chilcot Inquiry about
the extent and nature of Mr. Straw’s role in the Iraq invasion decision making
process since Mr. Pitt Payne penned his advice on a judicial review, Mr. Pitt
Payne’s thoughts upon Jack Straw’s ‘personal interest’- or conflict of interest- in
the veto should also be re-examined, in my view;

‘Finally, could it be said that the certificate was unlawful because Jack Straw, the
minister in question, had a personal interest in being one of the members of the
Cabinet in March 2003? I do not consider that this argument has a reasonable
prospect of success either. Issuing the certificate is not a judicial function and is
not therefore subject to the same rules as to the avoidance of actual or apparent
bias. In any event, the opinion set out in the certificate is not the opinion of Jack
Straw alone but is the collective opinion of the entire Cabinet’.

While judicial rules ‘as to the avoidance of actual or apparent bias’ may not be
engaged, a potentially significant conflict of interest would have a bearing on the
viability of the ‘reasonable grounds’ case.

Arguably, the veto exercised by Dominic Grieve on behalf of the Conservative-
Liberal Democrat Coalition is on weaker grounds as they have no first-hand
knowledge or experience of the decision making process leading or the Cabinet
meetings in question. It is a second hand veto which stands or falls on the
reasoning put in place by Jack Straw in February 2009.

Both the Decision Notice in question and Grieve’s veto make reference to the
exceptional nature of this case. It is exceptional to the extent that there is no
more serious public policy issue than the question of the probity and, indeed,
lawfulness of how a country is taken to war by its Government. That is the reason
why this judicial review matters so much, in my view. There are still questions to
be answered about whether the whole decision process involved was a serious

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abuse of power and whether the Section 53 veto (and the convention of Cabinet
collective responsibility) is being used to snuff out legitimate investigation of
these questions. Only a judicial review can now unlock this conundrum.

Unfortunately, I am unable to pursue a judicial review currently because I fall foul
of the legal aid eligibility rules and cannot fund it from my own resources. I ask
that you carry out a new examination of the legal case for judicial review.



With kindest regards



Chris Lamb (Dr.)

22/08/2012




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