That brings us to Mr Hoon’s main preoccupation since becoming Commons Leader: how to combat voter alienation from the political process, about which he is deeply worried. He feels that MPs can’t win: if they spent all their time at Westminster, they would be accused of being ” absentee MPs” only interested in their constituents at election times. “If there is a necessity, Parliament will come back.” How can he justify what has been called an 80-day holiday by some newspapers? Mr Hoon says it is anything but that because, like many MPs, he will be active in his constituency. No one is going to prevent that happening, least of all me,” he says. Although the Commons is not due to sit until 10 October, it could be recalled in September -either to be briefed on terrorist attacks or to rush through legislation deemed urgent by the security services “At the moment, that is not the plan,” he says. But it is pretty hard to deal with people who are prepared to send suicide bombers into the heart of cities – whether that is in the heart of Baghdad or the heart of London.” Did Mr Hoon accept the verdict of the respected Chatham House think-tank that the Iraq war had made Britain more of a terrorist target? “I think we have always been a target I don’t think that it has changed that. These people have an agenda to destroy democracy, whether that is in Iraq, US or the UK.
That is why we have been warning since long before operations began in Iraq that people had to be vigilant because we were a target. In the aftermath of 9/11, there were serious concerns about the threat to the UK. It hasn’t suddenly arisen.” Mr Hoon is at the centre of the debate about whether the Commons should be recalled during its long summer break to discuss the terrorist attacks in Britain “It has happened on five occasions in recent years. “We told them we were coming back on Monday with our offer and we were very shocked by Friday’s announcement We are putting in our bid regardless,” he said. He said: “If and when the Government decides to float Qinetiq it will be in a way and at a time which would maximise the return for UK taxpayers.”However, the revelation over the windfalls is certain to lead to questions from MPs over the value for money the Government received when it sold off a one-third share to Carlyle.Carlyle, which has historic links to the family of the US president, is set make a profit of at least £170m on the investment of £42m of equity and £100m of debt it invested just over two years ago.
“With the benefit of hindsight, I don’t think we quite appreciated that the insurgents were prepared to stop people having clean drinking water, were prepared to shut down the power supplies and damage the future of Iraq’s economy “Maybe we should have. We were planning on making sure the Iraqi people had enough food, access to oil that would generate wealth to stimulate the economy, power stations, power lines, making sure water could be drunk All sorts of practical things that these people targeted. “I don’t think we appreciated the level of fanaticism and sheer anarchic violence that people were prepared to employ. I don’t think anybody else feels any differently.” Mr Hoon disputes the now widely held view that there was not enough planning for the aftermath of the war. “That’s a strange retrospective justification based on what is happening now. The truth is that there was more planning for the aftermath in Iraq than any other operation I can think of,” he says. So what went wrong? “What we didn’t do, I accept, was properly anticipate the level of violence people were prepared to use to oppose the creation of a democratic society.
