North Wiltshire MP James Gray has criticised former prime minster Tony Blair in the wake of the Chilcot Report that was published last Wednesday, calling the Iraq War an "unhappy chapter in our history".

The report concluded that the United Kingdom chose to join the invasion of Iraq before all peaceful options had been exhausted and that Mr Blair had deliberately exaggerated the threat from Saddam Hussein.

Mr Gray criticised the Labour leader for his decisions that led to the Iraq War in 2003 and also his lack of remorse.

"The report is disastrous for Tony Blair and it vindicates my decision at that time," said Mr Gray. "We shouldn't have done it and we created an even bigger problem.

"There were huge mistakes made especially with what happened after the war was over. It was a disaster for Iraqi citizens and society and the chaos we have today is a direct result of that."

Although the report took nearly seven years to complete and publish Chilcot's findings, the North Wiltshire MP believes it was worth waiting for.

He said: "The end result was so firm and so worthwhile to wait for. It was not a whitewash as many people expected it to be and it analysed the evidence quite clearly."

The report also concluded that British soldiers were sent into combat with "serious equipment shortfalls", an issue which contributed to the loss of 10 servicemen based at RAF Lyneham when their Hercules plane was shot down over Baghdad in 2005.

Two years later, the bodies of servicemen and women of the British Armed Forces killed in Iraq and Afghanistan were repatriated to the base, from where they would be transported to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

"We cannot turn the clock back," Mr Gray added. "The people of Royal Wootton Bassett wanted to pay their respects to the serviceman who had paid the ultimate sacrifice by repatriating them. They were not concerned about the politics of it all or the report – they were just doing their jobs."