Hello and welcome to this special episode of Inside Briefing, the podcast from the Institute for Government.

I'm Catherine Hadden. It is 20 years since the US and UK went to war in Iraq. That decision taken by President

George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair remains both the most controversial and consequential

American and British foreign policy decision of the last quarter of a century. Its aftershocks

and its legacies are still felt throughout the Middle East and in the politics and priorities

of Washington and Westminster. Just over a year after the war began, Robin Butler, a former

cabinet secretary, published his review of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, better known

as the Butler Review. The weapons were never found and the debate about the decision to go to war

has never ended. Butler's review, which came after the Hutton inquiry and before the Chilcott

inquiry, was a key milestone. So to mark the 20th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War,

to look back at the key findings of his report and to ask how government has changed since

and whether lessons have been

learned. I'm delighted to be joined in the IFG studio by Robin Butler, Lord Butler. Thank you for being

with us. It's a pleasure. Robin, let's start with the report. Did you have any doubts about

taking it on? Well, my wife did. I was in Mexico when I was asked to do it. We'd visited the site of Teotihuacan,

and it's outside Mexico City. And we were in the car on the way back. We had a guide. His phone

rang, and he looked a bit puzzled and said, I think this must be for you. It's from 10 Downing Street.

And it was Jonathan Powell. And he started by saying, Robin, your country needs you again.

And he asked me whether I would take on the chairing of this review. At that point, the transmission

cut out. And so I wasn't able to say yes or no. My wife urged me

not to take it because she said it, she thought it would be a poison chalice. But partly, I suppose,

out of vanity, but partly out of curiosity about why the intelligence seemed to have gone so

...