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Suppose you had to decide whether hundreds, even thousands, of people should live or die. Or suppose you had to decide whether X should compensate Y by paying thousands, tens of thousands, or millions of pounds. Either way, you鈥檇 be adjudicating. And Tony Blair, like any dispute decider, 鈥渁djudicated鈥� the fate of soldiers, kids, mums and dads when he made his mind up about Iraq. Then his government adjudicated. Then, on 18 March, parliament adjudicated. Then, on 20 March, people began to die.

And now, just a few months later, there is another dispute. Did the prime minister and his ministers mislead parliament in the decision to

go to war on Iraq? And since any old adjudicator, any old decider of disputes 鈥� including those in the construction industry 鈥� has other people鈥檚 fates in his hands, how does he properly decide a dispute and the validity of a proposition? For that matter, are people like me, and umpteen other adjudicators, really equipped, to decide important building industry disputes? If not, and if it turns out a decision is wrong 鈥� hopelessly wrong 鈥� yet binding, then people like foreign secretary Jack Straw would call my decision 鈥渁 complete Horlicks鈥�.

Construction industry disputes always come with baggage. Long before it gets into the decider鈥檚 hands, the parties have taken positions on the worthiness, the deservingness, of the other bloke. Words like fake, fraud and charlatan abound. Adjudicator Blair鈥檚 mind was already filled by the so-called undisputed fact that Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator. His form since August 1990, when he invaded Kuwait, had been overwhelmingly bad. Blair didn鈥檛 go to that dilemma with an open, unbiased mind 鈥� he isn鈥檛 Superman. Nor did the people telling him the story. It is so easy to have not only parties that are utterly convinced of their 鈥渞ightness鈥� but to have an adjudicator who becomes infected, morally contaminated, by sympathy for one side or the other. He might not start out leaning one way or another, but it might not be long before

It is easy to have parties convinced of their 鈥榬ightness鈥� and an adjudicator who becomes morally contaminated by sympathy for one side or other

a lean sets in.

The prime minister was leaning before he started deciding. And the worry I have about low-level decision-makers like me is that I might fall for the side that makes the best case. Stop there. I meant what I said then. 鈥淢aking a case鈥� is what disputants in building disputes are nearly always doing. As an adjudicator, I don鈥檛 want you to 鈥渕ake鈥� a case. No, I just want the evidence. And do you know, it happens time and again that I don鈥檛 get the evidence. Instead I get a story. I get told what to make of the differences of opinion. My horrible suspicion is that our prime minister was only told stories by people who detested Saddam Hussein. For example, the evidence was that 鈥淚raq general intelligence was monitoring foreign embassies in Iraq鈥�, but it got changed into, 鈥渟pying on foreign embassies in Iraq鈥�. Similarly, the evidence that Iraq was 鈥渁iding opposition groups in hostile regimes鈥� became, 鈥渟upporting terrorist organisations in hostile regimes鈥�. That is 鈥渕aking鈥� a case. It is bending and spinning. It is distorting.