MEDDLING senior civil servants with ties to the Iraq war are behind “disgraceful” delays to the Chilcot report on the 2003 drive to invade, MPs heard yesterday.

Tory David Davis declared that “clues” surrounding the six-year wait pointed to a conflict between the inquiry and figures including Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood.

The framework of the £9 million probe is “wrapped up in a series of protocols which have criteria so broad that the veto on publication can virtually be applied at Whitehall’s discretion,” he warned.

Sir Jeremy was ex-PM Tony Blair’s principal private secretary for the entire period, Mr Davis added, but as head of the Civil Service her was now the “gatekeeper as to what can and can’t be published.”

Delays had also occurred because individuals had been allowed “lengthy legal consultation” over their part in its findings, he said.

“It cannot be right that those who are due to be criticised in the report can delay publication for their own benefit.”

The low turnout to debate a back-bench motion seeking an explanation for the six-year delay was branded an “indictment on our Parliament” by Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn.

Missing MPs were absent from “what ought to be an incredibly serious discussion and a process of very serious self-criticism of the failure of Parliament in 2013 and since then to hold to account those who took crucial decisions on our behalf,” he said.

Also highlighting the “acres of green space” in the chamber, Bradford MP George Galloway said of the delays: “I blame us — this is a poor excuse for a Parliament, if only members of it could more clearly see so.

“It is a poor excuse for a Parliament that sets up an inquiry, funds an inquiry and then says three parliaments on: ‘We might, who knows when, get the fruits of that inquiry’.”

Newport West MP Paul Flynn said Iraq was not a matter of history “for the loved ones of the 179 of our brave soldiers who fell. They still suffer a living wound that will never heal.

“I want to see the end of this. I want to see us get to the nub of the terrible mistake we made.”