Afghanistan

Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, since before I left government service in 1991, I have been involved one way or another in Afghanistan, with all its complexities with outside forces. Because of time constraints, I shall make five very short points.

First, much of the criticism of the Afghani forces is unfair and wrong. In many provincial centres, civil leaders beseeched Afghani commanders not to fight the Taliban, to avoid the human and material destruction that would entail for their communities.

Secondly, did no one think that the 20th anniversary of their defeat was as important symbolically and politically to the Taliban as to the US and its allies, and that their determination to achieve victory by that date was as strong as the US’s to withdraw? So why the surprise that they moved so quickly?

Thirdly, when we are considering our responsibilities to Afghanis who helped our forces and NGOs, we must also remember the more than 100 BBC World Service staff in Afghanistan, on its Pashtun, Dari, Persian and English services. Whether they want to stay in or leave Afghanistan, they and their families deserve our protection.

Fourthly, as a long-term admirer of President Biden, I cannot be alone in being disappointed by his speech on Monday. Did he not remember the chorus,

“It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it


That’s what gets results”?


Fifthly, the only positive comments I have seen so far are from China, Russia and, predictably, the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Does that not tell us something?

In conclusion, I do not know whether I am more angry, horrified, upset or ashamed by what has happened and how it happened. To tell the truth, I am all of those and then some.

Syria: UK Military Action

Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale (Lab)]

My Lords, like everyone else in the House, I very much appreciated the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hague, and of course we all look forward to hearing him many times more on this and other topics.

When, in September 2014, this House debated air strikes against Daesh in Iraq, I said that these were very much more limited in scope and were being proposed much later than I would have wanted but that they were better than nothing. Well, here we are again. As many of us predicted, we are trying to extend the air strikes against Daesh to its whole footprint in the Middle East—in Syria as well as Iraq.

In the many lengthy debates in this House in 2003, I constantly maintained that three considerations—legal, moral and political—had to be involved in issues of military intervention. It was true then and it is true now.

On legality, we have UN Security Council Resolution 2249. Perhaps I may give a quick word of advice to the Government: do not be sidetracked by the legal validity of your mandate being questioned, because you will find that it probably will be. I speak as a lifelong UN supporter, but I tell noble Lords that no one now objects to the British interventions in Sierra Leone or Kosovo, where we did not have a UN resolution. In 2003, we had 16 Chapter VII resolutions to take military action against Saddam and everybody demanded a 17th.

Morally, is anyone in doubt about the evil of this death cult, which beheads and crucifies the innocent, throws gays off roofs, enslaves and rapes young women and kills all the old ones?

Politically, all agree that all diplomatic, humanitarian and political activities need to be pursued—they already are in Vienna and elsewhere, as the noble Baroness the Lord Privy Seal enumerated when she made her presentation of the Motion—as well as cutting off the sources of finance. I do not think we need the details of what is being done about that because undoubtedly our intelligence and other agencies are doing that worldwide as we speak.

However, without military intervention as well, none of these will succeed, so we need not fool ourselves. If the UK wants to be in on the political solution process, it has to play a full part in the military component of the struggle against Daesh, along with our allies, who have asked for our help. No one argues that air strikes alone are a complete answer, but that is not to say, as some are doing at the moment in the public domain, that their achievements will be negligible. Try telling that to the Kurds who were desperately defending Kobane or to those who recently recaptured Sinjar. In both these operations, air support was absolutely crucial.

There is much talk of lessons to be learned from our past. As a veteran of government service in 1990-91, when a year of my life was taken up by Iraq and the first Gulf War, as well as a parliamentarian and a member of the ISC in 2003, which saw the overthrow of Saddam, the biggest lesson that I draw from the past is: if you do not in good time confront evil in its heartland, evil will come to you in your heartland. I support the Government’s proposals.

Iraq

Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale (Lab)]

My Lords, it is with an enormous sense of déjà-vu that I speak yet again in this House about taking military action involving Iraq. Iraq first came into my life in 1990 with the invasion of Kuwait when I was in government service. It took over every waking moment of my life for more than a year. I learnt more about the horrific regime of Saddam than I ever wanted to know, before, during and after what has become known as the first Gulf War. I know, as did many others at the time, that we stopped at least 48 hours too early in that war. It was the soldiers’ decision of Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf, which was left to them by George Bush senior; we did not need to go to Baghdad but just stay in the south and let the Shia, rising already at our encouragement, get rid of Saddam. Because of that, the agony and slaughter of the Shia and the Marsh Arabs that followed was awful and leaves us all with bloodstained hands. To this day, it is why the Shia of Iraq will never trust the British or the Americans.

Our next military intervention was in 1998. Yet again, we missed an opportunity to depose Saddam. Then came 2003. I said then, many times, that military action against Saddam was politically, legally and morally the right thing to do and I do not resile from one word that I said in this House and elsewhere. I will not rehearse the reasons for all of those things now because there is not time and they are all in Hansard anyway. But I want to make one point: ISIL is not a result of anything that happened in 2003. It is the harvest that we are reaping for not having armed the secular rebels in Syria at the beginning of the troubles there.

I have two points to make about action against ISIL now. First, there is talk about needing to have a UN Security Council resolution if we expand our activities outside of Iraq. I say only this to the Government, as a lifelong supporter and enthusiast for the UN: please do not get too hung up on getting another UN Security Council resolution. They are not brought down a mountain like holy writ: there is nothing holy about the UN Security Council if you think about its composition.

No one now questions Tony Blair’s actions in Sierra Leone and in Kosovo, both of which were taken without a UN Security Council resolution. In 2003, we had 16 UN Security Council resolutions, all under Chapter VII, which enable you to use military force to achieve them, and then we could not get the 17th. Everyone screamed that it was bad to be illegal and then called the 17th the second, which confused everything.

If I sound less than enthusiastic about what the Government are proposing, that is because, I have to say, I am a bit underwhelmed: it is not as much as I would have wanted, it is later than I would have wanted and it does not have the scope I would have wanted. Having said that, it is better than nothing.

House of Lords: Question Time

Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Leader agree with me that it is a rule of this House that, if a question comes from the Government Benches, it should go around the House? That was certainly always the tradition when I first came here. When, as now, two parties are in government, there should be a question from the Government and then questions from around the other Benches—not a question from each bit of the Government.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I hope that noble Lords who are regular attenders would agree that the way in which questions move around the House works pretty well. It is worth pointing out that over 50% of noble Lords who are the most frequent askers of questions are from the Labour Benches.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I accept the second two parts of the noble Lord’s three-part advice. As for the first part, I think he wants us to believe in fairy stories if he thinks that it was his eloquence that caused the Minister to accept his amendment.

[Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale]

I rise to support the amendment and, pace the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, I have never had anything to do in a representational capacity in a constituency in Scotland, since I am not an ex-Member of another place.

The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, will I know be very well aware of the crucial role that the Scottish Constitutional Convention played in the preparations for everything to do with the Scottish Parliament, although other noble Lords in this House are possibly much less aware of the convention and its very important role. The convention worked for some 10 years. It began in March 1989 and wound up very happily in a very celebratory meeting in 1999, when it wound itself up before the opening of the Scottish Parliament.

The convention hammered out a blueprint for the Scottish Parliament that was almost wholly incorporated into the White Paper and the Scotland Bill. The convention consisted of the Scottish Liberal Democrat Party and the Scottish Labour Party, as well as nearly all local authorities, trade unions and churches in Scotland—in fact, almost the whole of civil society in Scotland except the Scottish Conservative Party, unfortunately, and the Scottish National Party. I declare an interest here, of which I am very proud. I shared with the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, the honour to be one of the final two co-chairs of the Scottish Constitutional Convention. In 1995, the convention launched a document entitled, Scotland's Parliament, Scotland's Right, in which it laid out its blueprint for how a Scottish Parliament should be set up and should from then on proceed once the legislation passed through the Westminster Parliament.

On the electoral system—and this is where it is very relevant to this amendment—the convention said that there should be a new method of electing Members of the Parliament. It said that the Scottish Parliament should have 129 Members, 73 elected by the first past the post system in the existing Westminster boundary areas and 56 additional Members elected from a larger geographical area through lists prepared by political parties and other organisations. The additional Members would be elected to reflect a degree of proportional representation depending on the votes cast for each list. Those additional 56 Members were to include seven Members for each of the eight European regional constituencies.

I hope that, in paying attention to what that establishes as the system for choosing the Scottish MSPs and allying it to what my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock said about the complexity of the whole system in Scotland, noble Lords will agree that because of this system—which is unique in the United Kingdom—it is crucially important that the Boundary Commission for Scotland may take into account the constituency boundaries of the Scottish Parliament. In a way, it makes the situation quite different from the rest of the United Kingdom. I support the amendment.

[Lord McAvoy]

My Lords, I suspect that not for the last time in the debates this evening I take a different point of view from my noble friend Lady Ramsay of Cartvale. The relevance of that is to do with her comments on the record of the Scottish Constitutional Convention. She says that it is relevant to what we are discussing now because it has been quoted as an example or a way of working or because the information that came from it is relevant. I do not wear quite the same rose-tinted glasses in relation to that organisation. I did not intend to speak, but as usual I failed to resist my annoyance—no, that is too strong a word and I would not say it, or not in your Lordships' House—or my reaction to the jibe from the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, about the time that noble Lords are taking to revise and review the legislation. I hope that nobody on any side of the House is intimidated by these continual jibes. We are here to revise and, I hope, to improve the legislation.

I bring myself to the relevance of the Scottish convention’s record, to which my noble friend referred. Once again we had a situation where the great and the good got together and where everybody was all caught up in an atmosphere of being nice to each other and trying to work together for Scotland. I do not criticise that, as it was with the best of intentions, but in doing so they allowed the Liberals to sucker them because the Liberals gained more out of that system than anybody else. They gained an infamous list system—infamous is the right word—of electing MSPs in Scotland. It is not even just about electing them. These list MSPs, especially the Liberals, wander all over the Westminster and Scottish Parliament constituencies, plucking the cases that suit them for political purposes and ignoring the rest. Also, instead of concentrating on the regions which they supposedly represent, lo and behold, guess where they seem to spend most of their time? Again, this is especially the Liberals. It is in the constituency where they stood as a first past the post candidate. We should not let anyone get carried away, in my opinion, by the eloquent words of my noble friend Lady Ramsay of Cartvale because it is just not right.

I also tell my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock that I am still not quite sure about the primacy that his amendment would seek to give the Boundary Commission—advice or guidance on taking more account—because the Westminster constituencies are the true measures of how the commission should go about its work. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, made a relevant point. There are indeed many communities, or more communities than one, in a Westminster constituency. The one that I know best, Rutherglen and Hamilton West, has about five or six with the three core ones being, as I have said before, Rutherglen, Cambuslang and Halfway. I have to tell my noble friend that I am not convinced that the Scottish parliamentary constituencies are the real thing to take account of here. I remain to be convinced. I may come back in again once I hear from the noble Lord the Leader of the House, with the benefit of his experience, and my own Front Bench but at this stage I certainly reserve my position regarding my noble friend's amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McAvoy]

That is fine. I will answer the question. Let me make it clear that I have no intention of putting this to the vote. It is a probing amendment to find out why Orkney and Shetland is given this preferential treatment and Argyll and Bute is not. I will mention the Scottish convention briefly, because I am sure it will come up. The whole attitude at the time of the Scottish convention was to get consensus. In that mood of consensus, there was recognition of the need to get everyone on board with Orkney and Shetland getting two seats. Internally, I disagreed, but I am a democrat. I played my part within my own party to alter that and did not win. Overwhelmingly, folk were in favour of it. I know the noble Lord was not listening to that answer, but that is the answer, and I can justify it at any time. I am a democrat and will play my part within my own party. I am not one of life’s natural rebels, so I am not inclined to rebel. I would rather not encourage the wrath of the noble Lord, Lord Rennard. With that, I beg to move.

[Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale]

I must tell my noble friend Lord McAvoy, for whom I usually have a great respect and affection, that on this occasion I cannot support his amendment. I mentioned the Scottish Constitutional Convention earlier this evening. As the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, knows well, the convention considered the issue of Orkney and Shetland for a long time. It was considered for separate parliamentary representation in well debated and well considered discussions. The decision was to accord separate parliamentary representation in the Scottish Parliament for both Orkney and Shetland.

I do not pretend to know Orkney and Shetland well. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, knows—although he is not in his place—that I have had the enormous pleasure of visiting both Orkney and Shetland with my noble friend Lord Gordon of Strathblane and his family, and with the late First Minister of Scotland the right honourable Donald Dewar, when the noble and learned Lord and his wife accompanied us on an enjoyable, informative and educational political working holiday. To visit both these areas is to appreciate at once how different they are from one another and from mainland Scotland geographically, topographically, in flora and fauna, in history and socially. They are in effect two different countries, and neither of them is like Scotland as we know it. Indeed, without going too much into the historical detail, most noble Lords are aware that Norway was the mother country in the past.

That is why, allied to the physical difficulties in connections between these two, the convention was persuaded that they should have two separate seats in the Scottish Parliament. As I explained to the House earlier this afternoon, the convention worked for 10 years on hammering out a blueprint for the Scottish Parliament—one that was almost wholly incorporated into the government White Paper and then into the Scotland Act.

The question of Orkney and Shetland was considered very carefully. Everyone in the convention was aware that there were important implications for other parts of Scotland by allowing special status for Orkney and Shetland. Such a major departure from what had been the Westminster practice of treating them as one constituency was serious but, in the end, that was agreed. In fact, when it came to the White Paper and then the drafting of the Scotland Bill, all the arguments had been so well rehearsed that there were no problems in agreeing to it. Surely that has to be an important lesson for this Government. Instead of the careful, painstaking, wide consultation that the convention provided, the Government are trying to rush this Bill through with no pretence at consulting the people of Scotland or anywhere else in the United Kingdom.

The noble Lord may point, but I have not been speaking for 20 minutes. That is the length of the debate.

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Baroness. When she said that the Bill had been rushed through, I was just pointing out we are on our 13th day in Committee.

[Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale]

The noble Lord anticipates my next point. The Benches opposite have the temerity to complain when we try to examine the detail in this Bill. That shows an arrogance that none of the participants in the convention, including the party of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, and my own, showed on this kind of issue.

That brings me to a second lesson for the Government, if I may give it to the noble Lord the Leader of the House. The first was about wider consultation. The second is about objecting to how the Bill is scrutinised. The Scotland Bill, which was a well defined, self-contained and constitutionally important Bill, came from a White Paper arising from almost 10 years of the widest possible consideration by the convention. It was dealt with in this House by two days on Second Reading, which is very unusual, 10 days in Committee and four days on Report. All 10 days in Committee went on after 10.30 pm, five of them until after midnight. The four days on Report all went on after 10.30 pm.

I was one of the three government Ministers who took the Scotland Bill through the House and I remember this very well. On the Conservative opposition Bench were the very much missed Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Drumadoon, known affectionately some of the time as the Mackay twins. What a difference there was in the way in which we negotiated and behaved towards one another from what we see now. As the Government, we did not accuse or complain about the many amendments and the long hours that the Opposition originated or about the mantra—

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords—

[Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale]

Just let me finish the sentence. The mantra that we kept hearing repeated, which I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, will remember, was that, although the Conservative Party had campaigned for a no vote in the referendum on a Scottish Parliament, it accepted the decision of the Scottish people and all the many amendments were, as it said, only “to make it a better Bill”.

[Lord Strathclyde]

Will the noble Baroness remind us how many clauses were in the Bill when it came to the House?

[Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale]

There were many clauses, but it was one Bill—one self-contained, sharply focused Bill on the Scottish Parliament, quite different from the hybrid Bill that we have in front of us.

I am not claiming that there was some kind of golden age in 1998 when we were in government and the Scotland Bill was being debated. Of course we got tired and we got angry with one another sometimes. However, we kept our cool and even accommodated in the timetabling of the Bill the late Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish’s love of salmon fishing by allowing dates when he could do that.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I suggest to the noble Baroness that one of the differences between the Opposition’s approach then and the approach of the Opposition today is that then their objectives were absolutely clear. It was also absolutely clear who was in charge of the Opposition.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale]

I think that both those things are clear about the Opposition today. Then, the Opposition were not supposed to be delaying the Bill, but my goodness they certainly took a very long time and went to very late hours in moving their amendments, which were all supposed to improve the Bill—changed days indeed, judging from the behaviour of the present Government. I suggest that it would do all noble Lords opposite a great deal of good to reflect on that. I oppose the amendment.

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, I will be brief. I agree very much with a great deal that was said by my noble friend in moving his amendment. The trouble is that we cannot support the amendment, although we think that he talked a great deal of sense about matters of important principle that have been raised before in Committee, which I am sure the Government have taken on board.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Ramsay for her contribution. The Leader of the House asked how many clauses were in the Scotland Bill. Perhaps he could remind us how many printed pages were in the Bill. I remind him that this Bill is now 301 pages long, many of them having been added during the last knockings in another place, and there will no doubt be a few more government amendments in this place, too.

On the amendment and why we on the Front Bench cannot support it, my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer said in the last debate that we supported the fact that Orkney and Shetland was to be a preserved constituency. The effect of my noble friend’s amendment would be to instruct the Boundary Commission in Scotland to treat Orkney and Shetland in exactly the same way as the rest of the country. The electoral quota would be applied to Orkney and Shetland. With an electorate of 37,000, Orkney and Shetland would have to be joined up with the mainland to form a constituency to meet the size of the electoral quota.

We have argued that there are cases in which special geographical and local features of an area require the Boundary Commission to think differently about how it will redraw constituencies. Island communities including the Isle of Wight, on which there was a strong view on all sides of the Committee, Anglesey, which has already been debated tonight, and Argyll and Bute, about which there is strong feeling across the House that it is not being fairly dealt with, merit such an approach. We on the Front Bench believe that Orkney and Shetland should obviously fall into this category. After all, the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 first preserved the status of that seat. I am afraid that we cannot support my noble friend in his amendment.