Situation in the Red Sea

Debate between Alec Shelbrooke and James Gray

Wednesday 24th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[James Gray]

Both my hon. Friend and my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) are seeking to involve me in a debate about a matter that happened some 10 or 15 years ago and is well beyond the scope of the debate. My point is not about whether or not striking against Syria was right, wrong or indifferent, but about the fact that we in this House chose not to do so. The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), was absolutely right to say that not doing something is often as bad as doing something.

We in this House had a shortage of information—my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) knows a lot about these things, and I am ready to admit that I do not—of briefings, of secret intelligence and of legal advice, but we chose to take that decision. It seems to me that, in the extremely dangerous world that we live in, we will see an awful lot of these decisions taken in the months and years to come. The way in which matters were handled this time shows that the pendulum, which had swung from the divine right of Kings in the middle ages, whereby the King decided on his own, to the time in 2003 and 2013 when we allowed this House to vote, albeit not necessarily sensibly, has swung back to precisely where it ought to be—namely, that if this House votes on something, it is, by that means, diminished. We cannot then hold the Government to account; we cannot come back and say, “You, Mr Government, have got that wrong,” because we voted for it. And if we had voted for it, the Secretary of State would surely say, “But you voted for it!”

Our whole purpose in this House and this Chamber is to scrutinise what the Government have done, hold them to account and, if necessary, remove them when they do the wrong thing.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[James Gray]

Well, I am trying to wind up, but yes, of course.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

My hon. Friend mentioned the world becoming a more dangerous place. We have known throughout the history of the NATO alliance that deterrence is one of the best ways to keep the peace. That is why we have the continuous at-sea deterrence: nobody knows where or when it may be used. To further his argument, if we want to keep the peace, is there not far greater deterrence in a decision being taken immediately rather than with 24 or 48 hours’ notice?

[James Gray]

I am not certain that my right hon. Friend, whom, incidentally, I congratulate on his knighthood, has quite grasped the subtlety of the point that I was trying to make, which was not so much about the substance of defence but about the way in which we take decisions in this House.

The point I was making was that if we vote on something, as happened to the Labour party over Iraq in 2003, it then becomes extremely difficult to criticise the Government for what they do subsequently. It is right that we should scrutinise the Government, but we should not vote on these matters. We should have huge debates, statements and votes after deployment, but the moment that we allow ourselves to be forced into whipped votes before deployment, we are, by definition, emasculating this House. It is quite wrong from the point of view of defence and from the point of view of parliamentary scrutiny. We demand the right to scrutinise the Government, and we can do that only if we do not vote on the wars.

Ukraine

Debate between Alec Shelbrooke and James Gray

Tuesday 11th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and I completely agree with him. We must not underestimate the scale of the atrocities that are being committed, which are war crimes. Many Members of the House have served in the military, and many have been in the battlefield. They are trained to the laws of the Geneva convention and the laws of the battlefield, as are many people in Russia—certainly the Russian leaders will know those laws. There are consequences to breaking them, and I am proud that we are putting funding, investment and resources into the International Criminal Court to bring those who do so to court. I know that whatever we do will have support across the House. We have to say that it does not matter who someone is, from a squaddie to a general—if they have committed a war crime, we will find them and send them to prison. If they do not believe that, they should remember that we are still sending former SS officers who are almost in their hundreds to prison today.

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

The Russian doctrine of escalate to de-escalate almost certainly means that when the rats are cornered—and the rat Putin and his rat-like friends are cornered right now—they will lash out. That is almost without question. I hope the Minister is right in thinking that that will not necessarily be a nuclear lash-out—I think that is unlikely, although we must be ready for it—but there are many other ways he could lash out, including with cyber, chemical and biological weapons, or economic weapons. That might involve covert operations beyond Ukraine, not necessarily in Ukraine itself. What preparations has the Ministry of Defence made? I do not want details, which the Minister will quite rightly not tell us, but I hope the MOD is making careful preparations for all sorts of hybrid warfare that may now occur, including in places other than Ukraine.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

My hon. Friend raises points that we have spoken about many times in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and he will be aware that chemical, biological, hybrid and cyber warfare are certainly in our military planning and strategy, as indeed are nuclear weapons. Huge amounts of resources go into cyber capability and other such areas. Indeed, part of the memorandum that the former Prime Minister signed with Finland and Sweden was to give support in those areas if they were to be attacked. Overall, I assure my hon. Friend that all those issues are discussed in the round. I could not comment on specific operational capabilities, but I hope I can reassure him that those issues are treated just as seriously.