Chilcot lays out roadmap for publication of Iraq inquiry

The chair of Britain’s inquiry into the Iraq war has defended the time spent on the investigation amid heated criticism from families of those killed in the war.

And he went on: “Since the autumn of 2009 the inquiry has held more than 130 sessions of witness evidence and received more than 150,000 documents”.

Chilcot said the process had “opened up new issues” and that he had written to lawyers acting for the families who had complained about the delay.

The other holdup, he said, is the “Maxwellisation” process in which individuals facing criticism in the report are given an opportunity to respond.

According to reports in a national paper, the inquiry, led by the retired Whitehall mandarin Sir John Chilcot, will heavily criticise senior figures beyond Tony Blair and the former prime minister’s closest advisers.

But Sir John, in his first statement since the controversy over the delay, contradicted Miss Short, saying Maxwellisation had not yet been completed.

The delay in publication has been a growing source of frustration for families of British soldiers who died as well as Prime Minister David Cameron, who has demanded a timetable for publication be set out “pretty soon”. It seems to go on and on and on.

Reg Keys, whose son Lance Corporal Tom Keys was killed in Iraq in 2003, said the families wanted the report to be “open, transparent and unflinching in its findings”. “I fear and think this means everyone’s to blame, no one’s to blame, we won’t get a proper diagnosis and it won’t be helpful in finding out what went wrong”.

After weeks of criticism Sir John said in a public statement that his six year inquiry has been delayed because some critical documents “have only been received this year” while others are still being declassified.

“By itself this is meaningless, and the Inquiry refuses to disclose to the families anything that would explain it further”.

Maxwellisation is a confidential process – both the inquiry and the individuals involved have made a commitment to that effect, which we still consider to be an essential part of ensuring fairness to individuals and intend to maintain.

“Like most, I’ve now passed the point of impatience and feel nothing short of abject annoyance with the seemingly endless delay on this report, mostly due to ‘the Maxwellization process, Wharton, a former Household Cavalry soldier, wrote”.

“All he has stated is that witnesses “have not been given an open-ended timescale” to respond to criticisms”.

In some cases, the response sent to us required detailed and complex analysis which has taken time. “The Chilcot report is about different issues, what we would be talking about in Syria is a limited air strike intervention in order to extend the campaign against Isil from Iraq and the need to cover Syria as well”. Maxwellisation was essential for the report to be fair, accurate and robust, he said. In its scope and length, this is an Inquiry mandate for which there is no precedent. It’s as big as War and Peace I understand.