The Situation in the Gulf

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I am sorry, but I disagree with the noble Lord. The fact is that the Government did act. As I have already said quite succinctly, the fact that we did engage early on, in terms of assets in the region, prevented the impeding of the passage of a British-flagged commercial vessel, “British Heritage”, on 10 July. If the noble Lord feels that keeping diplomatic channels open is not a valid way of ensuring that we bring tensions down, then I again disagree with him. We have had a dual-track approach on this, ensuring that we can bring tensions down. The deployment of a large number of military assets into the Gulf, particularly around the Strait of Hormuz, which is a very small shipping channel, without fully exhausting diplomatic channels, would have been the wrong way to go about this.

Despite the political backdrop of Brexit, the Government continue to operate. The noble Lord shakes his head: perhaps he is casting doubt on my own efforts. I assure him that as a Minister of State at the Foreign Office, I and many other Ministers from the Ministry of Defence and other colleagues continue to ensure that we represent British interests to the best of our abilities. We will continue to work with Iran to ensure that tensions are decreased, to engage through diplomatic channels and to exercise our right to ensure that any vessel, British flag carrier or otherwise, is provided the protection it needs to ensure it can navigate the Strait of Hormuz. To say that we took our eye off the ball is inaccurate and I do not agree with the noble Lord.

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord has just listed a series of diplomatic initiatives taken with Iran over the last few days and the last few years and said that Iran had behaved in an unacceptable fashion. Is it not the case that not a single one of those initiatives had any success whatever? It has been a complete and utter blank. To say, “Well, we needed to exhaust diplomatic initiatives before we did anything else”, is simply absurd in the light of the record we are facing today.

The Minister has also made the most momentous revelation today in the House, which is that we have only one frigate in the Gulf and will be able to maintain only one frigate in the Gulf, because when “Montrose” is relieved she will not be replaced. That is an absolutely devastating indictment of this Government’s record in defending our shipping interests around the world. When I was in the MoD we had 17 escorts: I think we now have 13 and the number is going down. It is a quite disgraceful record. My noble friend Lord West is absolutely right about this and it is about time that the Government did something about it.

This is a very troubling, alarming situation. We find ourselves, quite extraordinarily, in a military confrontation with Iran into which we have walked without any idea at all what we were doing. There was no planning at all, no one seems to have given any thought to what the consequences might be of an aggressive enforcement of Syrian sanctions on Syria’s trading partners—not least Iran—and we find ourselves in a shambles. The Government are good at running a shambles, we know that, and this is a particularly dangerous one. In my view, the only thing we can do in these difficult circumstances is to concentrate our naval resources, as far as we can, through the use of the convoy system, but we must urgently build, and not just build, but buy, more escorts for the Royal Navy, with a full range of capability—anti-submarine, surface-to-air and surface-to-surface, because the Minister has revealed today that gunboats were responsible for this latest incident. The surface-to-air must include a ballistic capability, because the Iranians have ballistics. It is a very worrying situation, and we need to respond with great urgency to deal with it.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, a number of Back Benchers still want to speak. Will the noble Lord please pose a question?