Robin Cook fights Evil

A total gem of a find on YouTube.

A flashback to February 1996, when the Arms-to-Iraq scandal took a turn for the worse for Conservative Government, after the long-awaited Scott Report was finally published.  The report was highly critical of the government, raising concerns over ministerial accountability, incompetence and public deception.  It picked out certain members of the Conservative party for particular misdeeds.  Scott had even described their slippery evasions when asked to cooperate with the research for the report - in colourfully venomous language. 

In the media, the Conservatives had already begun to try and declare it a victory, claiming that Scott had exonerated the Government.   In their press pack, they included dull sounding, inoffensive extracts from the report.  For now, they had successfully avoided media scrutiny.  Before the parliamentary debate, Tory MPs had been fully briefed on how to defend themselves against the findings.  The Scott Report was only made available to the Labour party through Robin Cook, then shadow foreign minister, who had been given only two hours, directly before the debate, to scrutinise the report under Tory supervision, where he was expressly forbidden to make any copies.  

Robin Cook and a team of researchers read the entire 1800 page report, then he walked into parliament, and battled the entire Conservative party single-handed for an hour.  

We miss you, Robin Cook.

Unfortunately only half of it is here.  Especially because Neil Hamiltion stands up a bit later, which is always good for a laugh.

John Major declared that a no vote would be a vote of no confidence, and an aye would exonerate the Governement.  The Government won 320-319.

Read the Wikipedia article

Read the House of Commons debate 26th February 1996:

• From the start
• From where it gets interesting
• From where the video stops

Read the horribly butchered extracts from The Scott Report

Read some shitty BBC On This Day thing.

If anyone could tell me where to get a PDF of The Scott Report, I would be very grateful.