Top legal officer 'changed advice over Iraq invasion'

Britain's attorney general "materially" changed his advice on the legality of military action against Iraq in the final days before the invasion, the inquiry into the war was told yesterday.

Lord Turnbull, who was Cabinet Secretary at the time, said there were important differences between the final legal opinion Lord Goldsmith presented to the Cabinet and an earlier version he gave privately to Tony Blair.

"It was not, in my view, a summary of what had been produced 10 days earlier. It was materially different in some respects because of the passage of time. Certain things had changed," he said.

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Lord Turnbull also told the inquiry he believed at the outset Mr Blair had been a "regime changer" in respect of Iraq but had been obliged to try to go down the "UN route".

He said that in his initial advice to Mr Blair at the beginning of March 2003, Lord Goldsmith had said "you could make a case" for military action based on the fact that Saddam Hussein was in breach of his obligations to disarm under UN Security Council resolution 1441.

Lord Goldsmith added that it would be better to have a second resolution specifically authorising military action, but by the time he came to give his final opinion to Cabinet the attempts to get one had failed.

However his final one-page legal opinion, issued following pressure from the Armed Forces and the civil service simply stated military action was lawful.

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Lord Turnbull said members of the Cabinet had been unaware of the earlier version given to Mr Blair and none of them had challenged Lord Goldsmith's advice.

"I think he started reading it out. They said, 'Don't bother, we can read it ourselves'. That was it," he said. "I think what they needed was 'yes' or 'no' and that is what they got."

The concerns within Whitehall over the legality of military action were underlined by the first of the declassified documents to be released by the inquiry.

They include a letter dated March 5, 2003, from Sir Kevin Tebbitt, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence, calling for an urgent meeting of the "inner war Cabinet" to discuss the issue while emphasising the importance of the efforts to get a second UN resolution.

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Lord Turnbull said that the issue of Iraq had been discussed at length by the Cabinet following Mr Blair's meetings with George Bush at his Texas ranch in April 2002 and at Camp David the following September.

Only the late Robin Cook – who subsequently resigned over the war – directly challenged the policy of confronting Saddam, he said.

I have nothing to hide, says brown

Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday insisted he had "nothing to hide" as he faced mounting pressure to give evidence to Sir John Chilcot's Iraq Inquiry before the General Election.

Mr Brown, who was yesterday identified as one of the key Ministers involved in discussions about the war, told MPs he stood by decisions taken by the Cabinet over the conflict.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said the public was entitled to know his role in the Government's "most disastrous decision" before polling day.