Intelligence and Security Committee

Debate between Julian Lewis and Bob Stewart

Monday 16th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

The question was often asked why it was that the intelligence services knew certain people had been radicalised and held extremist views yet were able to go on to commit attacks. The answer is that until people break the law they cannot be locked up. We really would be living in a police state if everybody with extreme views was followed 24 hours a day, which is the only way in which low-level and uncomplicated attacks can be prevented. There has to be evidence of attack planning. If not, some such things will inevitably slip through the net.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

My only point on this matter is to say that, having tried to follow people, it takes 24 people to follow just one person. Just think of all the people in this country who we suspect of harbouring evil thoughts against us and imagine how big our security services would need to be.

[Dr Lewis]

That is exactly the case. It would take only a few hundred people with extreme views to exhaust the resources of any reasonably sized security service in a modern democratic state, and that must never be the case. Instead, we should look at how many complex attacks have been carried out successfully and how many have been thwarted. As far as I am aware, no complex attacks have been successfully carried out on British soil since the 7/7 atrocities.

Moving on to the inquiry on privacy and security, this leads one to the question of where to draw the boundary between the wish to preserve the people’s privacy so their innocent communications are not examined and the need to develop leads that can be investigated further. I was a little surprised—I hope you will indulge me for a moment or two, Mr Speaker—to see a short item in The Times on Saturday about a protest by some of the privacy groups that had given evidence to the ISC on this question. It reads as follows:

“Civil liberties groups demanded last night that a parliamentary committee correct its report on the surveillance state, saying they had been deliberately misrepresented. The intelligence and security committee criticised the pressure groups over their opposition to GCHQ’s collection of bulk data on communications”—

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference

Debate between Julian Lewis and Bob Stewart

Monday 9th March 2015 Commons Chamber

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

I will do my best, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I always like to start on a point of agreement with the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) where I can, and I can certainly agree with him that whenever there is a major conference of this sort coming up, it is only fit and proper that it should be debated in advance on the Floor of the House of Commons. Therefore, he can always count on me to assist him from my very different point on the disarmament versus deterrence spectrum, and the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) can count on me to assist her, as I did on this occasion, to obtain the debate. I shall always approach the Backbench Business Committee for these debates, just as the hon. Gentleman has always assisted me when I wanted to have a debate about the importance of Britain’s strategic minimum nuclear deterrent. That, I am afraid, is as far as the points of agreement go.

In the brief time available I will take up a number of the differing suggestions and arguments that we have heard so far. “Who are we to criticise this, that or the other country for obtaining nuclear weapons if we persist in renewing ours?” I’ve got news for people who use that sort of argument: countries that are on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons are not going to take a blind bit of notice of exhortations or criticisms from the likes of us. When countries acquire nuclear weapons, it is the result of a hard-headed reading of their own strategic interests. They do not do it by reference to whether a peaceful democracy that has a minimum nuclear deterrent, as we do, decides to keep hold of it.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

What seriously worries me is the fact that Russia has declared that we are an enemy and also suggested that, if necessary, it will use nuclear weapons to pursue the problems it faces abroad. That worries all of us.

[Dr Lewis]

It certainly does, and to show the ecumenical nature of that concern, let me quote from a recent article in The Herald of Glasgow by a former Labour Defence Secretary, later the Secretary-General of NATO, Lord Robertson:

“Those people seduced by the SNP’s obsession with abolishing Britain’s nuclear deterrent should perhaps Google the Budapest Memorandum of December 1994. They would see there a document representing the deal struck when Ukraine, holding the world’s third largest nuclear weapons stockpile, agreed to give them up in return for solemn security assurances from Russia, the US and the UK.

These countries, with France and China as well, promised to a) respect Ukrainian independence and sovereignty in its existing borders, b) to refrain from the threat or the use of force against Ukraine, and c) to refrain from using economic pressure on Ukraine in order to influence its politics. Don’t these promises look good in the light of the carnage we see on our TVs every night?

Yet that is what Ukraine got in return for unilaterally disarming. Some bargain. And it is legitimate to ask this; would Crimea have been grabbed and Eastern Ukraine occupied if the Ukrainians had kept some of their nukes?”

Trident Renewal

Debate between Julian Lewis and Bob Stewart

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

It does indeed, and what really worries me is that because the intensity of the fighting has been so great, it is easy to imagine that it could spill over into a nearby country that is a member of NATO. If that happens, we would be at war with Russia. It is frightening to think what our summer would have been like if we had previously gone down the route of admitting Ukraine to NATO membership, sympathetic though we are. I remember that we stood by during the uprisings in central and eastern Europe that occurred when half the continent was under Russian control. We were very sympathetic to the Hungarians, and I remember with total clarity that we were terribly sympathetic to the Czechoslovakians, but nobody seriously suggested that we could go to war for those countries because of the geopolitical realities at that time.

[Bob Stewart]

I seem to recall in December 1994 that four nations—three nations and Ukraine—guaranteed the sovereign integrity of Ukraine in return for it getting rid of its nuclear weapons. It has got rid of its nuclear weapons, but we have not guaranteed its security.

[Dr Lewis]

Yes, and that should serve as a warning to us not to enter lightly into agreements that we have no intention of defending—I mean defending in the military sense.

It is just over 100 years since the outbreak of the first world war. I remember looking back in the archives of the inter-war period when a great debate was raging over whether or not it was safe to continue with the 10-year rule. I have mentioned it in the House before. It is highly relevant, so I will mention it again. The idea of the 10-year rule was that the Government would look ahead for a decade and see whether they thought there was any danger of a major war breaking out. If they did not see any such danger, they would cut the defence budget. That was rolled forward from 1919 right through to the early 1930s when it was eventually scrapped when Hitler came to power. It had a very damaging effect on our level of preparedness.

Lord Hankey, as he later became, was the Military Secretary of the Cabinet. In 1931, as an argument for scrapping the 10-year rule, he looked back to that summer of 1914 and said that far from having 10 years’ warning of the outbreak of the first world war, we had barely 10 days because of the rapidity with which the various alliances triggered each other into action. Suddenly, from nowhere, we have found ourselves drawn into a conflict with practically no notice whatever.

Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Debate between Julian Lewis and Bob Stewart

Tuesday 16th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

Absolutely, and by using concepts such as “the war on terror” as part of our counter-propaganda campaign we may indeed be scoring an own goal. But in discussing techniques for what we are doing in this place, believe me, there are not a host of radicals hanging on every word we use in this debate about the machinery that we should set up. Once we have set up the machinery, we can then go into the niceties of which expressions we use and which we do not. But let us be frank; this is a battle of ideas. It is a battle between barbarism and civilisation. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire and others can shake their heads as much as they like but were I to make, for example, a similar argument against racist and Nazi exterminatory ideology, they would not blame me for couching the argument in the terms of a battle of ideas. It is a battle of ideas; the people who subscribe to this extreme doctrine have declared war on our civilised standards of democracy and tolerance.

I always mention—it so appropriate and someone always forces me, or perhaps I should say, incentivises me to do so—what the late great Sir Karl Popper described as the paradox of tolerance in a free society. He defined it in the following terms: you should tolerate all but the intolerant because if you tolerate the intolerant, the conditions for toleration disappear and the tolerant go with them. I make absolutely no concession to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire or indeed to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). My right hon. Friend was talking about something slightly different—what we do when we are engaged in a battle of ideas—so I will give my right hon. Friend that get-out. But I make no concession to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire about using the phrase “a counter-propaganda battle.” That is exactly what it is. We used to wage it against fascism and Nazism and against communist ideology and extremism. This is the latest incarnation, albeit one that goes back to a time hundreds of years before those terrible and extreme ideologies came on the scene to terrorise mankind.

It is fully understandable that a Government’s first concern has to be with the end of the conveyor belt at which fully formed terrorists spring into action, either on what they call a “spectacular” scale by killing hundreds or even thousands of people, or what we on the Intelligence and Security Committee prefer to call the self-starter end of the spectrum. We use that rather than the “lone wolf” appellation for reasons similar to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden. But whichever it is, by the time we reach that end of the conveyor belt nothing can be done. I venture to say that even the best counter-radicalisation and counter-extremism programme will not prevent some individuals from getting on that conveyor belt and travelling all the way to the end. The question is how we isolate them from the majority and prevent them from infecting the majority.

In the amendment, my opposite number—and friend—the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles and I are trying to get something stronger in the Bill. For example, we are trying to add to clause 21 words about developing

“capacity to combat and reject the messages of extremism”.

I am terribly sorry but the word “combat” is in there; I make no apology for it. The clause says that a

“specified authority must, in the exercise of its functions, have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism.”

I think having “due regard” is a pretty weak obligation and, as the right hon. Lady said, much of the focus here is on the obligations of various organisations and authorities covered by the Bill towards individuals who have already been identified as being vulnerable, at risk or on the path towards radicalisation. But we need to do something else. We need to try to create an atmosphere and a climate that is totally hostile to the propagation of the basic extreme ideology so that it becomes increasingly difficult to find anyone who is on that path to radicalisation because the whole concept of the ideology is anathema to society as a whole, or will be by the time we have finished.

[Bob Stewart]

I have been listening to my hon. Friend talk on the subject of ideology. One thing that crosses my mind is that some of these gentlemen may well have no ideology whatever, beyond the fact that they think that it is a good cause and they are a jihadi and are suddenly big men in their community. They can swank around and say “I’m a jihadi and I’m going off to fight.” After all, did not one of them have “Islam For Dummies” in his bag when he left?

[Dr Lewis]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and the insincerity of some of those who do these sort of things is an important issue. It is important because if we succeed in making adhesion to the ideology something that nobody in the community would want to touch with a bargepole, it makes it much more difficult for anyone motivated by the desire to say “Look at me: I’m this glamorous figure and I’m going on jihad”, particularly if they know that the rest of the community would respond with “What are you saying? Are you mad? Why do you think we should admire you for saying that you are signing up to this ideology?”

A related point common to all these totalitarianisms is this: it is interesting to note how often everybody else gets wrapped up with the historic inevitability of whatever extreme cause it is or the God-given duty to follow it, but funnily enough, it is the people at the top who always seem to end up having supreme power over everyone else. Is it not convenient if someone is an megalomaniac to have to hand an ideology that justifies doing whatever the person wants to do in a society in which civilisation has broken down? As the famous philosopher Thomas Hobbes said, life would be “nasty, brutish and short” in such circumstances.

In reality, these extreme ideologies allow psychopaths and megalomaniacs to get to the top and exercise untrammelled power—but not, of course, for themselves. No, they are doing it because God has laid down that society should be run this way. I feel that, over many hundreds of years, our civilisation has torn down this edifice of extremism, and most of us feel that we will be damned—I use the word almost literally—if we do not stand up to prevent it from being re-erected in the heart of our own society or other societies.

Ukraine (UK Relations with Russia)

Debate between Julian Lewis and Bob Stewart

Thursday 11th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I did not intend to speak in the debate, but I was listening to it from afar and was stirred to come, hot foot, to the Chamber by the opening speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale). I therefore apologise if my speech, which will be short, is a bit disjointed.

I am clear on Russia’s strategic military aim. My good and hon. Friends have alluded to it already and we are all talking along the same lines. In military terms, it is at the very least to secure a land corridor to Crimea. Some Members, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth), have suggested that the aim is to go as far as Odessa, but I think that the immediate strategic aim is to get to Crimea. The Black sea is crucial as it is a warm water entry and exit point. In the 1950s, as everyone in the Chamber knows, Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders never believed for a moment that Ukraine would not be a part of the Soviet Union or Russia. Khrushchev gave it away because of that assumption.

As I mentioned in an intervention, 20 years ago, when I was chief of policy at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, I argued that we have to be very careful as we move eastwards. I was concerned at that time about the idea that the Baltic republics would become part of NATO, because militarily I find it very difficult to think of how to defend that situation, particularly when there is a Russian enclave to the west. That is a scenario we have already rehearsed in this debate.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I know time is limited, but I wanted to point out that the only way we can defend NATO countries that are out on a limb is by having tripwire forces. That would show a potential aggressor that, while they might occupy those countries, they would let themselves in for a very long war with other countries that would be able, eventually, to liberate them.

[Bob Stewart]

I totally agree with my hon. and very good Friend. That was exactly my role as a young officer in West Berlin—a British tripwire—in case the then Soviet Union decided to take over.

[Bob Stewart]

I am afraid I totally agree—some tripwire indeed. A big stumbling block, although I was not quite as big then.

[Dr Lewis]

You were in spirit.

[Bob Stewart]

I thank my hon. Friend.

I slightly disagree with those who say that Putin alone is the problem. Putin is Russian, and he represents a Russian point of view, and the Russian attitude towards Ukraine comes from history. I totally take the point about how Stalin dealt with Ukraine, but fundamentally Ukraine is a sort of glacis plate—to use the old term—to protect mother Russia. I also understand that a lot of Russians feel antagonism towards NATO, because sometimes, looking at it from their point of view, it appears to have been quite aggressive.

Over the past few years, Russian anxieties have been well stoked by western actions. As we have discussed, there has been talk of Ukraine joining NATO. I remember reading carefully through the EU negotiations with Ukraine, and there, in one of the sub-paragraphs, I saw a couple of lines about the EU sending troops to start exercises in that country. Nothing could have been a bigger red rag to the Russians. I got it from the House of Commons Library, and I am sure it was publicly obtainable.

I totally support our policy of trying to stop Russian expansion, but despite the sanctions, which, as we have demonstrated, are biting, I suspect that de facto Russia will gain its land corridor, either by negotiation or by agreement, to Sevastopol. That link from Russia to Sevastopol and the Black sea fleet will be on dry land at some point. We will have to recognise that as a fact of life.