Catalogue description The Iraq Inquiry: the Official Records of the Public Inquiry

The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, announced on 15 June 2009 that an Inquiry would be conducted to identify lessons that could be learned from the Iraq conflict.

The Inquiry, chaired by Sir John Chilcot, was conducted by a committee of Privy Counsellors with a broad term of reference. It considered the period from the summer of 2001 to the end of July 2009, looking at the run-up to the conflict in Iraq, the way decisions were made and actions taken in order to establish what happened and to identify the lessons that could be learned.

The Inquiry took oral evidence over a number of months, with as many hearings as possible held in public. The first round began in autumn 2009 and continued into early 2010. After a break for the general election, the Inquiry resumed its hearings from 18 January to 2 February 2011, with private hearings concluding by the end of May 2011. Written evidence studied by the Inquiry included over 150,000 contemporaneous documents.

Governments decide the timings of inquiries. UK combat troops withdrew from Iraq in July 2009 and the then Government judged it was the right time to begin an Inquiry.

Sir John and his colleagues were not consulted on the Inquiry's terms of reference before their appointment.

The Secretariat supported the Inquiry Committee Chairman and the other members of the Inquiry in carrying out their tasks. That included a wide range of duties (from logistical arrangements to requesting papers and statements and preparing papers for the Committee's consideration) agreed by the Committee.

The Cabinet Secretary decided to nominate Margaret Aldred as the Secretary to the Iraq Inquiry and agreed the appointment with the Chairman of the Inquiry.

Both the Cabinet Secretary and the Chairman of the Inquiry agreed that the Secretary to the Inquiry should be a senior individual in the civil service ideally with previous involvement in Iraq issues.

The Chairman of the Inquiry was aware of the candidate's role in the Foreign and Defence Policy (formerly the Defence and Overseas) Secretariat in the Cabinet Office from November 2004, when he agreed the appointment. Given the professional standards of the senior civil service, he saw no potential conflict of interest with her appointment as Secretary to the Inquiry that would, in his view, affect the independence of the Inquiry.

The inquiry was published in July 2016 with a public statement by Chilcot.