Sir Gus has been Cabinet Secretary for more than five years Tony Blair was “reluctant” to hold Cabinet discussions about Iraq because he thought details would be leaked, the UK’s top civil servant has said.
Sir Gus O’Donnell told the Iraq Inquiry that Mr Blair did not believe Cabinet was “a safe space” in which to debate the issues involved in going to war.
The number of informal meetings meant records of discussions were not “as complete” as he would like, he added.
Several former mandarins have queried the way Cabinet discussed going to war.
Sir Gus O’Donnell is the latest senior official to appear before the Chilcot inquiry as it completes its final series of public hearings.
He was the top civil servant at the Treasury in the run-up to the 2003 war before becoming Cabinet Secretary in 2005.
Sir Gus told the inquiry that the Blair government had fewer Cabinet meetings than his immediate predecessors and his successors as prime ministers because he took a “certain view” about what could be achieved through collective decisions.
Asked why this was the case, Sir Gus said he believed the prime minister had concerns about how watertight discussions in Cabinet would be.
“I think one of the reasons the prime minister was reluctant, at times, to take as many Cabinet discussions as possible was because he felt that they would become very public, very quickly,” he told the inquiry.
Sir Gus said Cabinet should ideally be a “safe space” in which ministers were listened to and could “openly challenge” policy but in the knowledge that discussions would remain confidential and that Cabinet would ultimately agree a “single position”.
“You have to understand why would he [Mr Blair] not go for these meetings and I think it was because we would have thought it was not a safe space.”
While Cabinet must remain the “ultimate” decision-making body, he said officials needed to be “ruthless” about leaks and other issues which eroded trust and meant sensitive issues could not be discussed freely.
Several Cabinet ministers, led by Robin Cook and Clare Short, were unhappy with policy on Iraq, Mr Cook resigning in protest on the ever of war, although a clear majority backed the invasion.
Sir Gus said Mr Blair preferred to work with “smaller” ad-hoc groups of ministers and advisers.
“The nature of formality was diminished. If you reduce the formality, you don’t have such good records of what happened and when you come to do audits, it is not as complete as any cabinet secretary would want it to be.
“By virtue of that, some of the people that are excluded from decisions can feel, just that, excluded and you don’t get the full contribution of everyone to a joined-up decision.”
Lord Turnbull, Sir Gus O’Donnell predecessor, has said the Cabinet “did not know the score” when backing the invasion as it had not seen crucial papers.
But, in his evidence, Mr Blair has insisted that there was frequent and robust discussion of Iraq in Cabinet and that he would be “astonished” if ministers were unaware of the military preparations than were going on in the summer of 2002.
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