Yorkshire MP Benn calls for lessons to be learned on UN
Mr Benn was a Home Office minister at the time of the vote on the war and later played a leading role in attempts to rebuild Iraq in his role as International Development Secretary.
Speaking in the Commons, Mr Benn said there were “many of us who do not regret the fact that Saddam Hussein is no longer in power”.
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Hide AdMr Benn said that one of the “wider lessons from Iraq is that we need a United Nations that is capable of giving effect to the responsibility to protect, so that brutal dictators who murder and terrorise their own population can and will be held to account”.
Haltemprice and Howden MP David Davis suggested the Chilcot report revealed a “lot of evidence” that Tony Blair had misled the House of Commons in the run up to the war.
He said: “The aim was regime change, not WMDs [weapons of mass destruction]
“That fact, and the fact that, as Sir John Chilcot says, Blair’s commitment made it very difficult for the UK to withdraw support for military action, amount to a deception and a misleading of this House of Commons.”
Mr Davis voted in favour of military action in 2003.