Gordon Brown promised to take the analysis of intelligence and security out of Britain's political process today as part of learning the lessons of the Iraq war.

On a secret visit to Baghdad just 16 days before he succeeds Tony Blair as Prime Minister, Mr Brown announced Cabinet Office reforms and measures aimed at strengthening Parliament's intelligence and security committee.

The move, coming on the same day as the Conservatives renew their attempt to make the Government hold an all-party inquiry into the war, will be considered an attempt by Mr Brown to draw the sting of any future investigation and to demonstrate that there will never be a repeat of Downing Street's controversial use of intelligence in the run-up to the invasion in 2003.

Speaking in the Iraqi capital, the Chancellor, who is being carefully watched to see if he makes any major breaks with Mr Blair's foreign policy, said he did not regret the decision to join the US-led invasion but acknowledged that "we have lessons to be learned for the future".

"I have already said Parliament should have a more formal role in issues of war and peace but I think we can go further and learn from what's happened over the last few years," he said. "I would like to see all security and intelligence analysis independent of the political process and I have asked the Cabinet Secretary (Sir Gus O'Donnell) to do that."

Learning the lessons of Iraq is what the Conservatives say is the key reason for an all-party inquiry, led by senior Privy Counsellors, into the conduct of the war. Led by William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, the Tories are using an Opposition day debate this afternoon to force a vote on whether such an inquiry should take place.

Mr Hague has said that the purpose of the debate is not to set a precise date for an inquiry but to establish the principle that there should be one. Last November, the Government survived with a slim majority of 25 a vote to hold an inquiry similar to the Franks inquiry into the Falklands war.

"I don't think an inquiry can be indefinitely postponed as the Government keep trying to do," Mr Hague told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "It is very important, for instance, to find whether there are lessons that need to be applied to Afghanistan from what has happened in Iraq in the last few years."

Mr Hague criticised the Government's reluctance to hold an inquiry into the war while British service personnel are still in Iraq, saying that hearings must be held before the end of 2007 otherwise memories will fade and "emails are going to have disappeared". He said the inquiry would also explore how Britain should manage its relationship with the US.

But Mr Brown -- despite conceding that there were failures in the run-up to the war and apparently moving to fix them -- said: "The wrong time to even consider an inquiry is when you have to give all your effort to consider your troops on the ground."

During the debate on the same subject last year, Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, said that the Government had already held four inquiries relating to the war: two by Commons select committees; the Hutton Report into the death of David Kelly, the weapon's inspector; and the Butler Report, a further investigation into how the intelligence leading up to the war had been handled.

Ms Beckett also questioned the wisdom of challenging the conduct of the war while British forces were still in the theatre. But that argument was met with scepticism by the Conservatives, who have pointed out that inquiries were held into the war in Crimea in 1855, the Gallipolli landings in 1916 and the Norway campaign in 1940, all when British forces were in the field.

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