Frederick Wilmot-Smith: It's the findings that count for Chilcot, not the time it took to write

Sir John Chilcot has, since June 2009, led an inquiry into the Iraq war. He finishes the report next month, for publication in the summer. Many people say this is too long.

Chilcot has been accused of being incompetent, a government stooge, in the pocket of Tony Blair, and so on. Is the truth more prosaic?

The principal reason for the delay is that the inquiry’s scale is vast. Chilcot was asked to investigate nine years of sensitive foreign policy; he has taken nearly seven years. The Bloody Sunday inquiry took 12 years to investigate the events of one day.

The delicacy of the topic has also held things up. The report must, for example, go through declassification and national security checking.

More than a year was spent wrangling with officials over the publication of Cabinet minutes and correspondence between Blair and George W Bush.

The “most critical” Cabinet minutes can be published; the inquiry may also publish “gists” of the Blair/Bush correspondence, which, Chilcot insists, are “sufficient to explain our conclusions”.

Finally, Chilcot adopted time-consuming procedures. The process of “Maxwellisation”, for instance, where those criticised in the draft inquiry report were afforded an opportunity to respond, has taken two years.

The label derives from disgraced media mogul Robert Maxwell, who brought a court case alleging that the process was legally required. He lost, meaning there was no obligation for Chilcot to go through this procedure.

Chilcot suggests that fairness requires Maxwellisation. Just as journalists should seek a comment before publishing allegations made against an individual, the argument goes, people should be given an opportunity to respond to allegations made against them by an inquiry.

Chilcot also claims that it has contributed to “the accuracy and completeness of our report.”