When the Crisis in the Conservative Leadership in the House of Lords first developed, unattributed briefings in numerous newspaper articles made it clear that that leadership would attempt to use reform of the second Chamber to harry, delay and block legislation.

But if parliamentarians had been invited by the Government to approve two further enhancements, building up from an initially defensive posture, through threat of action, to a determination to mount attacks into Iraq itself by air and ground forces, the timing of our deployments could have been delayed, as they nearly were because of the Conservative Leadership Crisis that overlapped with the Cabinet decision about the further increase in our commitment.