Gordon Brown: I didn’t cut cash for the army in Iraq war

The Prime Minister was attacked for glossing over the failure to provide the armed forces with sufficient equipment after the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

Mr Brown expressed his "regrets" over the Iraq war at the Chilcot inquiry as he moved to limit the political damage of Tony Blair's toppling of Saddam.

But the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, Susan Smith, said: "I just get a feeling that some of it is spin. I imagine he's genuinely sorry, but is it for political reasons that he said it?"

With the election just weeks away, he struck a markedly different tone from Mr Blair and stressed how "very sad" he was at the huge loss of life among Iraqi civilians and British personnel. However, he defended the American-British invasion, saying it was "the right decision for the right reasons".

He referred repeatedly to the "lessons learned" from the 2003 conflict, including the need to end his predecessor's "sofa government" decision-making and the need for proper post-war planning in the future. The Prime Minister repeatedly denied that he had cut funds from the Ministry of Defence, saying that it had a "rising budget" and that urgent operational cash demands were always met.

But Susan Smith accused him of avoiding tough questions. Her son, Private Phillip Hewett, 21, died when his lightly armoured Snatch Land Rover was blown up in Al Amarah in July 2005. After watching Mr Brown give his evidence in the inquiry chamber in Westminster, she said she was sceptical about his expression of sadness for the deaths of the 179 British personnel in Iraq. She also criticised his failure to directly answer questions. "It becomes hard work trying to find an answer in his answers.

"He's saying there's this much money here and there was that much money there. But he's not actually answering anything." Major General Patrick Cordingley, a former Gulf War commander, also said he felt "cynical" during Mr Brown's evidence. He said that urgent operational needs were probably met in full but the real issue was chronic underfunding of the military over many years.

During his six-hour grilling, Mr Brown rejected criticism that as Chancellor he had starved troops of vital equipment and funds. Stressing that "finance was no barrier" to the forces, he revealed that he first discussed funding military action in June 2002, nine months before the war.

But at one point he admitted that he had intervened to stop the MoD spending so much. He quoted from a letter written by former Treasury minister Paul Boateng that said defence ministers were guilty of a "complete lack of budgetary control".

In a move calculated to distance himself from Mr Blair, Mr Brown walked through the front door of the inquiry past a gaggle of protesters. Mr Blair was smuggled through the back entrance of the QEII conference centre when he gave evidence in January.

Mr Brown endorsed the decisions of his predecessor, saying: "I do say that everything that Mr Blair did during this period, he did properly."

But he courted charges of having it both ways when he claimed to have been left out of the most contentious discussions. He said he had not known that the Attorney General changed his legal advice at the last moment, nor had he seen Mr Blair's private pledges of war support to President Bush.

Mr Brown said: "I do understand the concerns of every relative." He said "my sympathies go out to people" and he would "do everything in my power to answer" their questions about their loved ones' deaths.

Outside the hearing, anti-war protesters held up a giant cheque for £8.5 billion, representing the cost of the war. But inside, the inquiry heard the latest total for the cost of the war was even higher — £9.2 billion.

Mr Brown said that having to foot the bill "did make life difficult" for the Treasury, but stressed repeatedly that he always gave the military the funds they needed for specific operations in Iraq and in Afghanistan. "At any point, commanders were able to ask for equipment that they needed and I know of no occasion when they were turned down," he said. Crucially Mr Brown said, while he regretted the failures by the Bush team, "I can't take personal responsibility for everything that went wrong."

He said he had written a paper for the Americans just before the war on the need to find international partners in reconstruction and financing. "Unless you can quickly involve people, you become an army of occupation rather than an army of liberation," he said.

In one tense exchange, inquiry member Sir Roderic Lyne repeatedly challenged Mr Brown to say if he had been aware of the promise made by Mr Blair in 2002 to President Bush in Texas. Mr Brown said: "I believed right up to the last moment that we, Britain, were trying to get a diplomatic solution." Sir Roderic said he wanted to know if the Cabinet was aware of Mr Blair's promises.

"I think it was obvious to me what the stakes were," said Mr Brown, emphasising that the diplomatic route was the first choice. Sir Roderic chided him: "I am just looking for a yes or no answer to whether he told you what he had told President Bush." Mr Brown said: "I was in regular touch with Tony Blair and I knew what the options were. I didn't know the exact conversations and he wouldn't expect me to."