Syria: anti-Government Forces

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Swire]

My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary was tempted to list them during his interview on “The Andrew Marr Show” yesterday, but resisted doing so. As a former Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the hon. Gentleman will understand that the proper place for the Foreign Secretary to list them and state policy is right here in the House. He will be doing just that later this week.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

If the dreadful Assad regime is overthrown, as the Government wish, the Government will no doubt feel very pleased. However, how long will that pleasure last if the successor regime contains elements of al-Qaeda, which then gets its hands on the stocks of Syrian chemical weapons that are known to exist, and uses them against the west?

[Mr Swire]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point, although there are a lot of ifs in his question. The whole point of providing the additional aid is to bolster the opposition groups in Syria in order to prevent the country from sliding into the kind of anarchy that he describes.

Mali

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

To what extent do the Government believe that the insurgency in the north of the country has indigenous support, and to what extent, if at all, are outside Governments supporting the insurgency, as far as we can tell?

[Mark Simmonds]

From the information that I have, I can inform my hon. Friend that there is limited support from the population who live in the northern part of Mali for the terrorist activities taking place. The atrocities that are being committed are appalling, including not just the prevalence of sexual violence and rape, but the abduction of children and persuading them, through appalling means, to participate in the military conflict. Stoning, amputations and other participation in extreme sharia law are also taking place. That is not the main reason we are providing limited logistical support, but it starts to paint a picture of why most of the people in northern Mali are not supportive of the terrorist activities and Islamist atrocities, and, indeed, why so many of them—approximately 200,000—have left the northern part of Mali.

Syria

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

The European Union has also been engaged in trying to promote a political solution. For instance, the EU High Representative attended the Geneva talks in June. It is realistic, however, to point out that the diplomatic focus is on the permanent members of the UN Security Council and the Security Council as a whole. It is the work of nation states on the Security Council to try to settle our differences. In that respect, the EU has a more limited role, but there is a strong degree of unity across the European Union and the External Action Service strongly supports the actions we have taken.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Even though the Government are being so helpful to the Syrian opposition, have we sought to extract an undertaking from them that any store of chemical weapons discovered will be handed over for destruction so that it cannot possibly fall into the hands of al-Qaeda?

[Mr Hague]

Yes, we have very much made that point and my hon. Friend is correct to bring it up. We have made it very clear to the National Coalition that we would expect any future Government of Syria to join and to adhere to the chemical weapons convention and the biological and toxin weapons convention. In all the conversations we have had with the national coalition, its horror of the chemical and biological weapons that all the evidence suggests have been amassed by the Assad regime is very clear. I hope that one thing that will happen in a future Syria will be the destruction and disposal of those weapons.

Middle East

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

Yes, the hon. Lady makes a very important point. That is why we support the current efforts to bring in a ceasefire. I pay tribute again—I referred to it in my statement—to the efforts of the Egyptian Government over the last few days. This is a new Government with a new presidency and a new system of government. Our impression is that the presidency, the Foreign Ministry and other Egyptian agencies have worked together cohesively, talking both to Hamas and Israel to try to bring about a ceasefire. We have to support their efforts.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Does the Foreign Secretary agree that the greatest stride towards peace was made when President Sadat signed the treaty between Egypt and Israel? Does he share my disappointment at the recent statement by President Morsi of Egypt that the present situation constitutes an act of aggression solely by the Israelis?

[Mr Hague]

While that statement is different from what my hon. Friend or I might say about the origins of this, I hope that he will bear in mind the answer that I gave to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn) about the very constructive role being played by Egypt. My experience, and the Prime Minister’s experience, of meeting President Morsi suggested to us that he wants a peaceful future for his country, that he has not turned against the peace treaty with Israel, and that he knows the importance of building up the economy and society of Egypt and not having conflict on his borders. I think that we should give him the space and time in which to accomplish those things.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 30th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

We fund a variety of projects through our conflict pool to encourage the participation of women in the political process, through elections and education and through supporting particular women’s rights advocacy groups, and to assist in their work in the media. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office and DFID do that work collectively, and we do it multilaterally with other international agencies.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Did the Minister see the important article in The Sunday Times this weekend, which made it clear that after 2014 the Taliban will be targeting all the progressive steps that have been taken, and will he therefore seek to open the Government’s mind a little more to the prospect of trying to preserve those gains by supporting the concept of a strategic base in the area after 2014 for international security assistance forces?

[Alistair Burt]

How the use of forces will be made after 2014 is still to be considered. My hon. Friend has made this plea before. I would say in response to his point about the Taliban that one of the most significant events in recent weeks has been the public response to the Taliban in Pakistan, in support of the young girl Malala and her right to education. Bearing in mind the links between the Taliban in Pakistan and in Afghanistan, that assertion by the people of Pakistan of the importance of women’s rights and women’s education may be the best response we have yet seen to the demands of the Taliban, and a consideration that they may not be accepted by the people themselves, which would be the best guarantor of women’s rights in the future.

EU-UK Relationship (Reform)

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 18th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Mr Hollobone, thank you for announcing the batting order in advance. I have waited many years to find myself between a Bone and a Stone, and today I have achieved that poetic distinction. Having said that, I deeply resent the fact that my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) has just made the speech that I was about to make, particularly the remarks about my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom)—the Front Bench’s loss is the Back Benches’ temporary gain—and my hon. Friend the Minister, who worked extremely hard in opposition as the shadow Minister and richly deserves his belated promotion.

That great Eurosceptic Tony Benn would not thank me for saying that he has something in common with the arch-federalists, but I am afraid he does. Whenever Labour lost an election for being too extreme and left-wing, he would always say that the result of that election showed that the Labour party had had not enough socialism in its manifesto, rather than too much. That, I am afraid, is what we are experiencing with Europe at the moment: the worse it gets, the more federalist it wishes to become. History owes a debt of gratitude to the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), without whose intervention the previous Labour Government would have signed us up to the European single currency. That goes to show that everybody is good for something. It is only a pity that the modern Labour party does not subscribe as firmly to the blocking tactics that former Prime Minister employed so successfully, to the benefit of the country.

I do not mind looking back a little, because the longer one is in this place the more one sees the same things going round and round. Again and again, people such as my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) are derided as being in some way on the fringe of politics, as outlandish, extreme and wrong; they are then proven to have been right, and the people who were actually wrong always end up carrying on as if nothing had happened. I am a little concerned that our current Chancellor of the Exchequer seems to accept that there is a remorseless logic to fiscal union for the people on the continent. Fiscal and political union on the continent is not in Britain’s interests and we should oppose it. We should not allow ourselves to be drawn down that route. Our benefit lies in a system of free, interacting nation states within Europe.

--- Later in debate ---

[Emma Reynolds]

I did no such thing. Perhaps if he listened a little more attentively to what I said, the hon. Gentleman would not make such pointless interventions.

The EU remains the largest and richest single market in the world and accounts for more than half of our total exports. We export more to the German Länder of North Rhine-Westphalia than to China and India combined. We do more trade with Ireland than with the so-called BRICs—Brazil, Russia, India and China—put together. Without our exports to the EU and the rest of the world, the British economy would have gone back into recession a year ago.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Given the hon. Lady’s typically robust response to my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), are we to take it that the Labour party is not ruling out giving an in/out referendum to the British public?

[Emma Reynolds]

The hon. Gentleman seems to understand me better than the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone). Our position is that a referendum at this time would be a distraction from the Government’s priority of getting the economy back on track. The question about what our relationship with the EU will become is open now, given the nature of Mr Barroso’s speech last week, mentioned by the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash). We will see how that relationship develops in terms of what kind of political and fiscal union the eurozone states want to form.

European Union (Approval of Treaty Amendment Decision) Bill [Lords]

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr MacShane]

In responding to how the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) has introduced his amendment, one might as well say that the pound is the fault and the root cause of all our problems. In my Rotherham constituency, 25% of young people are without work. There is economic and social misery there, but do I attribute it to the fact that we have a certain currency? The notion that a currency causes bad Government policy is absurd.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Argument by analogy is never terribly wise, but when the analogy is between a single currency across different countries with different economies and a single currency such as the pound that applies within a single country with a single economy, that analogy is not only false, but completely risible.

[Mr MacShane]

I have respect and affection for the hon. Gentleman, but he might as well have said that when the US and Canadian dollar was the same, one country’s economic difficulties were caused by having the same currency when their social, taxation and economic policies were completely different. The same applies to when Britain’s pound and the pound of Ireland were exactly the same currency.

When I went on holiday to Ireland as a small boy, we took our English sixpences, threepenny bits and half crowns, and the currency was exactly the same there. It is the decisions of individual countries that decide their economic future, not the currencies that they choose. There are many, many countries using the euro that we might be advised to copy in terms of economic output, exports, social investment and long-term strategic thinking, and many of those countries are governed by parties of the centre right—Conservative parties— although, of course, the Conservative party here has broken all political links with its sister parties in Europe.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I stand corrected, but George Soros leaves open that possibility of leaving, and by talking of Germany leading he presumably means the country putting vast amounts of German funding into saving the euro.

Others have also been looking at the future of the euro—which I think is doomed. There was an interesting article by Anthony Hilton in last Tuesday’s Evening Standard. He said that, in a sense, the euro is already dead, because a genuine currency has a number of features. It should be a medium of exchange, and some people are starting to mistrust it as a medium of exchange and want to be paid in other ways. Indeed, some economic advisory bodies are advising their clients not to accept especially long-term payments in euros, but to accept other currencies—sterling or dollars, for instance. That is understandable.

Currencies should be a store of value. Even Greek politicians, as I understand it, are buying gold because they do not trust the euro. Greek people do not want their euros to be devalued into drachmas overnight, so quite sensibly, they are buying gold. Trust in the euro as a store of value is dying by the day; so, let us wait a little. This could all happen very quickly, of course. It could happen over 10 days or over a year, but at some point a decision will be made that the euro is no longer going to function.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Is not the real choice that is going to have to be faced that the euro will be dismantled in an orderly way, or will collapse in a disorderly way? Is not the danger that we feel that we cannot be seen to be sabotaging this project, in which so many of our colleagues in the European Union have invested so much energy and treasure, and yet, by not speaking the truth about the matter, we are making more likely a disorderly collapse, rather than orderly dismantling?

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)]

The hon. Gentleman will answer that intervention through the prism of amendment 1, please.

European Union (Approval of Treaty Amendment Decision) Bill [Lords]

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 3rd September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I do not want to get drawn into a detailed debate about a comparative political analysis between the British and German approaches. Let me say briefly to my hon. Friend, first, that when Germany looks at her history, she has good reasons for looking to firm rules and strong institutions, such as the constitutional court. Secondly, it is not completely unknown for the House of Commons to vote by a large majority in favour of something that every opinion poll tells it the majority of the British public opposes, so I do not think we should get too hung up on there being some vast difference in democratic interpretation between the two nations.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Can my right hon. Friend explain to me and the House what exactly senior Ministers mean when they talk about the remorseless logic of fiscal integration? Do they mean that it will lead inevitably to political integration, and if they do, is it no longer the case that we regard the emergence of a single power on the continent of Europe as fundamentally not in the UK’s national interest?

[Mr Lidington]

What it means is that we accept that, as Conservative politicians have argued since the euro was created, for a single currency zone to operate successfully over a number of different national economies there would need to be a measure of fiscal and economic integration, so that those economic differences can be managed successfully and in a stable fashion in that currency union. It is for the countries of the eurozone to work out exactly which economic and political measures will be right for their particular circumstances.

Syria

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 3rd September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

Yes, we certainly keep our eyes on Yemen. Indeed, the Minister of State, Department for International Development, my right hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr Duncan), is currently on his way to the latest meeting of the Friends of Yemen in Riyadh, at which the Friends of Yemen will encourage relevant donations to help with the situation in Yemen.

We have taken all the action necessary under the asset-freezing decisions of the European Union in relation to 155 individuals and 55 entities. I am not sure that it is possible to quantify that in pounds, but if it is, I will write to the right hon. gentleman.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I know it is not an immediate priority, but has my right hon. Friend raised with the Syrian opposition the issue of the future of any chemical weapons stocks currently held by the Assad regime that might fall into the hands of the opposition?

[Mr Hague]

Yes, we have raised the very important issue of weapons stocks held by the Assad regime. I also raised it at the Security Council last week, and asked the UN Secretary-General to ensure that what is called the investigation mechanism is ready to be deployed if we have any reports of such chemical weapons being used or moved. Of course, a very strong warning has been sent by the United States and this country to the Assad regime about any possible use of chemical weapons. We have discussed the issue with the opposition as well.

EU Charter of Fundamental Human Rights

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 12th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Cash]

No, I do not. As a matter of fact, I have been very much personally involved in the Jubilee campaign, standing up for the rights of people in other countries who are being persecuted. Indeed, as the hon. Lady will know, I have also promoted the issue by forming the all-party group on water and sanitation in the third world. I stand absolutely 100% behind people’s rights in that regard. What worries me is when the whole thing is codified—as it is in the papers before us and the strategic plan—and interwoven with the universality matrix, and then buttressed by legal requirements. Therefore, when I hear the Minister saying, “Well, we will exercise the veto as and when it is appropriate”—if I can put it in generic terms—I simply do not believe that to be a realistic way of dealing with the issue.

This is another example of the European Union engaging in European creep on a monumental scale. I am not against the individual defence of people in relation to human rights questions, and there are many things that crop up in the European strategic framework and action plan that I would strongly support in an individual context. What worries me is the universality, not only because of the panoramic view that is taken of all these matters, but because of the panoramic way in which it will be applied in practice, headed by the European representative. This is essentially a practical question.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Is it my hon. Friend’s assertion that, while he has no objection to a democratic country expressing strong views about abuses of human rights in other countries, democracies or otherwise, his real objection is that the European Union is seeking to take on this role without constituting a democracy in its own right?

[Mr Cash]

That is exactly the point. This is almost a jurisprudential question. It is not about fancy philosophy; it is about how we make decisions relating to individual, practical instances. My hon. Friend is entirely right to make that point. It is difficult to imagine that we will be able to make a choice, once the machinery is moving forwards. I shall give the House an instance from among the wide range of activities in the many pages of the strategic framework and action plan that has been adopted by the EU Council. By engaging in this proposal, we are effectively endorsing European creep. I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister says that that will not happen, and that we will have the opportunity to exercise the veto, but I just do not see this as a practical way of working.

The Council has adopted the measure, and we have demanded this debate on the matter for very good reasons. We want to examine exactly what the measure contains. There simply is not enough time, in the one and a half hours allotted to us, to go through the incredibly complex questions that arise from the matter or to deal with the interaction of the decisions and the impact that they will have on human rights law in this country or in others.

I shall give the House a flavour of what I am talking about. Anyone listening to or reading the debate might like to look at the range of matters in the action plan. I mentioned that it is divided into outcomes, actions, timings and responsibilities. It is divided into seven chapters, and it sets out a variety of external policy activities. This has been agreed by all member states. Seven headings cover 36 policy areas and 97 potential actions, and that deals with the matter only in the generic sense. When we reduce this to individual cases, we are effectively saying that the EU will have a supervisory responsibility, subject only to the caveat that we will be able to exercise the veto, as my right hon. Friend the Minister said. I do not see that happening, however, once the machinery has been set up.

This is very much like the External Action Service. Indeed, it is very much like the EU itself. I said in 1992, or whenever it was—it seems a very long time ago now—that once the Maastricht treaty had gone through, once the European governmental system had been created with all the qualified majority voting that went with it, once we had created the mechanism and endowed it with resources, and once we had increased and implemented its legislative capacities and functions, we would have constructed an enormous creature that was incapable of being restrained. That is exactly what has happened, with disastrous consequences.

To come back to the main issue, let me provide a few examples. In the first place, the action plan refers to

“Human rights and democracy throughout EU policy”.

For those who are interested, this is taken from a Library note dated 9 July. It is also referred to in the papers before us and it has been looked at by the European Scrutiny Committee. The plan refers to the need to

“Incorporate human rights in all Impact Assessment”,

and to

“Insert human rights in Impact Assessment, as and when it is carried out for legislative and non-legislative proposals, implementing measures and trade agreements that have significant economic, social and environmental impacts, or define future policies.”

I would like to know what is not included in that, and what the opportunity would be for any restraint on the use of such provisions in the strategic plan.

The plan also refers to

“Genuine partnership with civil society”,

and that

“Heads of EU Delegations, Heads of Mission of EU Member States, heads of civilian missions and operation commanders shall work closely with human rights NGOs active in the countries of their posting.”

I would be the first to support NGOs in their individual activities, but this is a mandatory requirement, going beyond what I would describe as voluntary activity. Then there is the need to

“Present EU performance in meeting the objectives of its human rights strategy in the annual report on human rights and democracy in the world.”

I would be on the side of all those campaigners when it comes to individual human rights matters. I see in his place the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who knows that I campaigned with him on issues relating to the Chagos islanders. Going further back, I was also involved with the issue of aboriginal rights in Canada. I could provide a whole list to show that I have been as much at the forefront as anyone else when it comes to campaigning against abuses of human rights. Where I differ, and why I object to these arrangements, is in respect of this overarching determination to get away from specific campaigns into this idea of universality, whereby I think we miss the wood for the trees.