Iraq: Oil for Food Programme Inquiry (Hansard, 20 December 2004)

§ The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean)
My Lords, the Independent Inquiry Committee published an interim report on 9 August and a briefing paper on 21 October outlining its progress. We expect a further report addressing the management of the programme and the role of the UN contractors in January. In May, Mr Volcker said that he did not expect the inquiry to conclude its findings into the broader allegations of corruption by individuals and entities that did business with Iraq for at least a year. We expect the final report to be published.

§ Lord Howell of Guildford
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. However, even if Mr Kofi Annan has been unfairly pilloried and criticised, does she not agree that it is immensely important that the shadow be lifted from over the UN, and that both the report and the KPMG report authorised by the Iraqi Government should be made absolutely open and clear to the public? Does she agree that, unless we can do that, we will find ourselves constantly frustrated in pushing ahead with the necessary reforms of the United Nations of the sort that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and other distinguished internationalists have put forward and that we all support?

§ Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean
I agree, my Lords. I am very grateful to the noble Lord for what 1531 he said about the unfair criticism of the Secretary-General of the United Nations. The noble Lord is right. A second report is being undertaken by Ernst & Young into what has gone on at the Iraq end of this unhappy tale. Let me give him an undertaking from the press release put out on 16 November. It said: In the interests of transparency and credibility, full disclosure of evidence (including the UN documents available to it) relevant to its findings will be made when those findings are reported. At the end of the day, there will be disclosures and transparency without, to the best of the committee's knowledge, precedent for the United Nations or any international organisation". I hope that that gives the noble Lord the unqualified assurance that he sought.

§ Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, although it is clear that the allegations need to be thoroughly investigated as they raise some worrying problems, does the Minister agree that the issue has been and is being used in the United States as a way of denigrating the United Nations as a whole? Indeed, it was striking that, the day that the high-level panel report was published, there were articles precisely about the alleged involvement of Kofi Annan's son in the Oil For Food scandal all over the Right-wing American press. One imagines that the Government will do their best to ensure that the scandal does not cloud the important debate on the high-level panel report and the need to strengthen and reform the United Nations system.

§ Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean
My Lords, on the question of Kofi Annan, perhaps I can do no better than to quote my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, who said on 7 December 2004: Kofi Annan is doing a fine job in difficult circumstances. I appreciate his leadership very much and will be happy if he is allowed to continue with his job without criticism". We must wait for the outcome of the Volcker committee before we draw any firm conclusions. We concur with Mr Volcker that he should be allowed to continue and that we must not only determine what has happened in the past but, to avoid any shortcomings that there were in the programme, try to draw lessons for the future.

§ Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, is the issue not who breached the programme rules, but which civil servants in both the British and American Governments knew that the rules were being broken and refused to make recommendations to deal with those breaches of the rules?

§ Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean
My Lords, if we say that we must wait for the Volcker committee to report, it is right that we do that. As my noble friend implies, during the life of the Oil for Food programme, we and other member states became aware of attempts to breach the Iraq sanctions regime. In response, the United Kingdom Government took action in a range of ways according to the circumstances. Those included approaches to other governments and the United Nations Secretariat, and action brought through the UN 1532 Security Council to counter attempted corruption. Where we became aware, we tried to move, certainly so far as this Government were concerned. Serious as the matters are, I counsel my noble friend that we should await the outcome of the Volcker investigation before drawing any firm conclusion.

§ Lord Hannay of Chiswick
My Lords, does the Minister not agree that the most important thing in the matter is to apply the principles of due process, which are held in high value in the United States too? In this case, due process means the Volcker report, not a kind of lynch mob run by a number of congressional inquiries. Would she not also agree that those congressional inquiries might usefully devote their time to considering how the United States Administration enforced Iraqi sanctions, about which there have been a number of apparently well founded allegations in newspapers as respectable as the Financial Times?

§ Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean
My Lords, there have been a number of allegations. Noble Lords will recall from the time of the publication of the ISG report that more allegations were made in it. The noble Lord has suggested that we allow for due process. That is another way of putting exactly the point that I have been trying to make, which is that we must wait for the outcome of a report that everyone expects to be published in May next year at the earliest, although there will be an interim report in January. We should wait for Mr Volcker's committee to complete its work.

§ Lord Jenkin of Boding
My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that the initial investigation by the British firm of accountants, KPMG, unearthed what the senior investigator described as, the most sophisticated money laundering scheme", he had ever seen and that it could have involved as much as 20 billion dollars? Is it not therefore of the highest importance, as the noble Baroness said, that this investigation should proceed with no inhibition on the documents that should be disclosed, not only to get at the truth but to allow United Nations officials to clear their name and re-establish their credibility?

§ Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean
Yes, my Lords, I agree strongly with everything the noble Lord said.