EU: Free Trade Agreements

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livingston of Parkhead]

My noble friend is entirely right that the TTIP will bring a lot of benefit to consumers. When you get a convergence of standards, global models being made and lower tariffs, prices will come down and consumers will have more choice, not just in the UK or the EU but in the US as well. Certainly, we feel it is very important—Her Majesty’s Government have done a number of pieces of good work on this—to highlight the benefits that free trade will bring to consumers on both sides of the Atlantic. I absolutely agree with my noble friend that it is very important to highlight the positive impact that will arise.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

Does the Minister agree that it is a very encouraging sign that the US Administration are now pressing for fast-track authority for this agreement, as with the Pacific one, and that this is essential if the agreement is to go through in a reasonable amount of time? Will the Government do what they can to let their friends in Washington know that this fast-track authority is really important and to let our friends in Brussels know that this is a sign that the negotiation really is for serious?

[Lord Livingston of Parkhead]

Indeed it is. The timetable for TTIP is very aggressive, with the aim of completion by 2015, which would be almost unprecedented. I met with the US ambassador to the UK just before Christmas and we discussed TTIP at some length. Certainly, his enthusiasm for it is there, albeit that I recognise that not everyone in the American political system feels that way. However, we made that point very clearly. The Prime Minister said at the G8 conference that this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity and, understandably, I would not disagree with the Prime Minister on this issue.

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Friday 10th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, the European Union (Referendum) Bill to which we are invited to give a Second Reading today is a mercifully short one, but it is also exceptionally significant. It puts into play Britain’s role as a member of the European Union—a role that underlies much of the functioning of our economy and our capacity to influence and shape events in a rapidly changing world. To act in this way with our European Union membership is a high-risk strategy that has been ill thought through by its authors and is fraught with possible unintended negative consequences for this country. However, our task, as with every other Bill that comes before us, is to scrutinise the Bill rigorously and, where possible, improve it—not simply denounce it, tempting though that may be.

The Bill is also in many respects an oddity. First, take its proclaimed status as a Private Member’s Bill. That is surely more of a sham than a reality. Just about the only characteristic that fits its proclaimed status is that we are debating it on a Friday and will continue to do so as we work our way through its Committee and Report stages. However, I understand that the Bill was as good as whipped in another place and, if I am not badly informed, it is as good as whipped in this House. It has been openly suggested by Ministers of one of the two coalition parties that the Bill has their full support. That hardly makes it much of a Private Member’s Bill, even if it was introduced in this House by a distinguished Back-Bencher, the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, who has, with others, regaled us over the years with the odder aspects of our political life.

The oddities do not stop there. It is generally recognised as a convention of our unwritten constitution that our Parliament cannot and should not aim to bind the hands of its successors, but the sole purpose of this Bill is to do precisely that. It has no other purpose and will have no effect at all during the lifetime of this Parliament. Its object is to ensure that, whatever the outcome of the 2015 election, the die will have been cast. Once a precedent like that has been set, one wonders what there will be to stop any Government that can exercise a majority in the other place from pre-legislating commitments for their successor.

Another oddity is that only two years or so ago, when we dealt with the European Union Act 2011 and its 57 or so varieties of decision in the EU that would trigger a referendum in this country, we were assured with great intensity and certainty by the noble Lords, Lord Howell of Guildford and Lord Wallace of Saltaire, that once that Act was passed Britain would be at ease with its membership and there would be no question of needing any referendum outside the scope of that Act. What has happened in the two and a half years since then to justify reversing those assurances? It is not anything in Brussels, where no decision has been taken to trigger that Act. I suppose the answer must be the rise of UKIP and the attitude of a significant number of the Government’s supporters in another place who believe that, because they cannot secure a majority in Parliament for their objective of Britain withdrawing from the EU, some other means must be found.

The finally oddity is that the cry has gone up before we have even given the Bill a Second Reading that this House should not resist the will of the elected Chamber. Yet, if you come to think of it, every Bill that reaches this House from another place falls into that category. Are we therefore not to scrutinise or, where we consider it to be defective, amend this Bill? If so, there is not an awful lot left for us to do and the concept of a bicameral system would be junked.

In addition to these oddities and constitutional imperfections, the Bill has a number of other substantive defects. Does it really make sense to impose an artificial timetable and deadline of 2017 for the holding of an “in or out” referendum, some three years or more ahead of the event? I suggest not. For one thing, 2017 is a singularly poorly chosen year for such an exercise. In the first half of that year, France will hold presidential and parliamentary elections. In the second half, the Germans will hold national elections and, judging by last year’s precedent, it takes some time and much internal negotiation before they form a coalition. That same year, Britain will next hold the presidency of the European Union. These are as suboptimal conditions as one could devise for this choice of year, so there must be doubt that it is really a sensible way to proceed.

But the whole concept of setting a date so far in advance is surely deeply flawed, too. Would it not make more sense for the Government of the day first to secure the reforms they wish for in order to put the question on Britain’s continued membership to a referendum and then set a date? That is what was done in 1974-75. Does it not also make no sense to create such a long period of uncertainty for inward investors, on whose decisions the continued improved of the economy is so dependent?

Then there is the question to be put in the referendum. The authors of this Bill devised a form of words that the Electoral Commission judged to be flawed on the grounds of clarity and objectivity. More than that, the Electoral Commission submitted two formulations which it believed met those criteria, but the authors of the Bill brushed those aside and continued with their own. What on earth do we have an Electoral Commission for if we just ignore its advice? I was glad to see that our own Constitutional Committee shared my bafflement at this cavalier treatment of that advice.

There is also the question of the franchise, which has been referred to by other noble Lords. It is no doubt very welcome that Members of your Lordships’ House are to be allowed to vote on this occasion, but three important and much larger blocks of voters who will be critically affected by the decisions to be taken as a result of the proposed referendum are being excluded, despite the fact that this is not a vote for the duration of a five-year Parliament but a much longer period. The three blocks are: teenagers between the ages of 16 and 18, whose future job prospects and lives will be directly affected; the 1.5 million to 2 million British citizens resident in other member states, many of whom are disfranchised from our parliamentary elections due to the length of their residence but whose rights and status will be directly affected by this decision; and citizens from other EU member states resident in this country who can vote in our local elections and who will also be affected by this. Does the case for giving these categories the vote on this occasion not deserve careful consideration?

We surely need some threshold to be set for a referendum of this sort if its outcome is to be considered legally or politically binding. If either the turnout or majority for the result was to fall short of certain levels, it would be a travesty to argue—as the proposers of referendums are wont to do—that “the people have had their say”.

What, too, about the requirements for the provision of relevant, objective information to the electorate ahead of the vote? On this, the Bill we are considering is completely and astonishingly silent. Is it just to be left to government edict and the protagonists in the campaign to provide information—or perhaps disinformation? Or will a party with the majority in the other place after the 2015 election simply be able to impose its preferences in this respect? That surely would not do. That was certainly the view of our Delegated Powers Committee when it reported. Would it not be far better to set out in this Bill the way in which information should be provided ahead of a referendum vote on the economic impact of the decision, the consequences for individuals’ rights and status, and so on? Nothing is more distorted—

[Lord Trefgarne (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise for interrupting the noble Lord, and I will do so very briefly. I am listening very carefully to what he has to say—detailed arguments which will no doubt be redeployed in Committee. Could he indicate for how much longer we will have to listen to this?

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

This is not a time-limited debate, and I have not the slightest intention of replying to that interruption, but I am in fact getting rather close to the end. That will give pleasure to the noble Lord, and he would have spared us two minutes’ more time if he had not made that intervention.

It is essential that objective information should be provided, and the requirement for the provision of such information would best find its place in the Bill itself.

I apologise for having spoken at some length about the deficiencies of the Bill. I hope that its promoters will reflect carefully on the points that I and others are making before we reach Committee and Report on the Bill. This is far too serious a matter, with profound consequences for the future of this country, to be handled in the rather slap-dash and simplistic way that the legislation does in its present form.

EU: Balance of Competences Review

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

There have been a number of contributions: from, in the United Kingdom, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Demos, city councils, the Northern Ireland Executive, UN agencies and the TaxPayers’ Alliance, for example; from countries such as Bulgaria, Macedonia, Switzerland and other countries outside the European Union; and from the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee and the House of Lords EU Committee. We have had a wide range of contributions in relation to this first set of reports.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, does not the Minister agree that, as in the wording of her original reply to the noble Lord, Lord Spicer, the key word is “objectivity”? I declare an interest as the chair of a group that has submitted material to the balance of competences review. It was the need to achieve such objectivity that resulted in the extremely negative reaction that the first published documents of this exercise provoked, which has been echoed today by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson. Will she stick to objectivity right the way through the exercise?

[Baroness Warsi]

I accept the fact that there are strong feelings, passions and views on this subject on all sides of the argument. However, it is important that when the British people get an opportunity to decide—and I sincerely hope that noble Lords will support the Bill tomorrow to allow the people of Britain to have that say—it is done on the basis of objective evidence; on an analysis of where the EU helps and where it hinders, and what is the best deal for Britain.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

My noble friend will of course be aware that freedom of religion and belief is one of the six priorities for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Indeed, it is a personal priority of mine and something into which we have put additional resources and energy since my appointment at the Foreign Office. We are dealing with this matter on a number of levels through both the Human Rights Commission and our support for Resolution 16/18, which determined, among other things, tolerance towards minority religions. We have also instigated and chair a political track to this process. The first meeting was held at the beginning of this year and the second at the UN General Assembly in New York in September. We are proposing that a conference on freedom of religion and belief should be held in the United Kingdom next year.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, will the Minister perhaps say a word about the resources available to the High Commissioner for Human Rights? I understand that the Government have in fact found an extra £500,000 voluntary contribution—a matter on which I am still waiting for a reply from the noble Baroness, following the debate in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, some weeks ago. What are the Government doing at the UN to ensure that the resources for the High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2015 and 2016 are not constrained and reduced, as they currently are? Are we supporting an increase in those resources?

[Baroness Warsi]

I apologise to the noble Lord for the delay in responding. I did in fact sign the letter on Saturday so I know it is on its way to him. It may be on his desk this morning. In relation to funding, the noble Lord will be aware that as well as making our contribution to the UN general budget, which is about 5%, we make voluntary contributions to OHCHR of about £2.5 million a year. On top of that we make additional voluntary contributions, which can be anything between £2.5 million and £4 million. We were the seventh largest donor to the office during 2012. The 2013 figures have not yet been published but I assure the noble Lord that we are incredibly aware of the pressures on OHCHR in terms of its funding and that we do feel that it should be properly resourced. However, that does not stop us from making quite strong representations for better budget management. We are asking OCHCR to do more but we also think that it should do more with the money that it has.

Ukraine: Demonstrations

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

The noble Lord will be aware that we have been acting through the Eastern Partnership, which includes the European Union as a whole and six countries of eastern Europe. I, too, pay tribute of course to our noble friend Lady Ashton, who is on her way to Kiev as we speak. There is a meeting today between President Yanukovych and three former presidents to try to find a way through the current protests. We of course wish the noble Baroness well, on behalf of the European Union, in trying to find a solution to this matter. I repeat that the door is open for Ukraine and it is for Ukrainians to decide in what direction they want to take their country.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, will the Minister confirm that should—heaven forbid—force be used again against these peaceful protectors, the British Government will press the European Union to impose targeted sanctions on all those, up to the highest level, who bear responsibility for using such force?

[Baroness Warsi]

Along with our European Union partners, we will of course keep all measures before us as to how we respond to this. We understand that at the moment there are still many thousands of protestors on the streets. It is important at this stage that the Government establish a positive dialogue to find a way through this without an escalation of violence.

United Nations: Secretary-General

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

Of course, I would be delighted to see a woman in the position of UN Secretary-General. Indeed, this House has produced some fantastic international appointments in the past—we have only to look at the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, to see what amazing work she is doing on the international scene. However, I come back to what I said at the outset: it is important to have a transparent system and to make sure that we get the best possible candidate for the job, who may well be a woman. It is important also that we maintain consensus during the process, because UN reform is a difficult enough subject without the Secretary-General having to do the job when he does not command the support of the General Assembly.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, can the noble Baroness tell the House that the Government will do their best to prevent what is called regional pre-emption—that is, the presumption being established ahead of time that a particular region will provide the next Secretary-General? That, of course, narrows the candidate list enormously. If the Government were to push hard against that with other influential members, that would count. Will she also consider the possibility that, on this occasion, we might try to broker a gentlemen’s agreement between the five permanent members that none of them will exercise a veto at the next election?

[Baroness Warsi]

The process that the noble Lord mentions involving the concept of a regional rotation has of course happened in practice, but the UK has never endorsed the idea of a formal rotation. We believe that every region should have the opportunity to put forward a candidate—no region should be denied that. The noble Lord will be aware of the speculation as to which region that will be next time round. Going back to the issue of consensus, it is important that the discussions between the P5 take place in accordance with protocol in a way that builds consensus so that we do not end up with public splits which could damage the process.

Commonwealth

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Luce’s initiative in holding this debate could not be better timed in that it enables this House to look at the wider issues and future development of the Commonwealth, as well as addressing some of the short-term matters arising in connection with next month’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Sri Lanka. Too often in the past, those short-term issues have obscured the need for us to take a clear-eyed view of the role that the Commonwealth should play in the overall picture of Britain’s external relations. Too often also, successive British Governments have approached a heads of government meeting with either a spirit of damage limitation or excessive expectations. Neither of those approaches is a good guide to long-term policy-making.

The first step in taking that wider view is to rid ourselves of two misconceptions. The first is that the Commonwealth is in some way an alternative for this country to its membership of the European Union. It is no more that now than it was when the Macmillan and Wilson Governments concluded in the 1960s that it was not a viable alternative. Indeed, it is even less so than then. So far as I can see, not one Commonwealth Government wants Britain to leave the European Union and most would deeply deplore it, as the Australian Government—not the most enthusiastic supporter of Britain’s original membership back in the 1960s—made clear in a recent submission to the Government’s balance of competences review. Looking ahead, we should surely conclude, just as the French have done over the Francophonie, that this is not an either/or choice but a both/and one.

The second misconception is the tendency for Britain to take a proprietorial view of the Commonwealth. We may have founded the organisation but it does not belong to us, any more than it does to its other members. When we talk about the Commonwealth as being a soft-power asset for Britain, which I believe it is—and which I am sure the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, will find it to be—it can only be so to the extent that it is a soft-power asset for all its members.

Has the Commonwealth expanded too far? I do not believe so. It was right to respond positively to the membership bids by Mozambique and Rwanda. The Commonwealth of the future should not be regarded simply as a prolongation of an imperial colonial past. If one day in the future a democratic, human-rights observant Myanmar were to wish to join, I hope we would welcome it with open arms. We must certainly not abandon the hope that one day Zimbabwe, too, will want to—and will be able to—rejoin.

In what way should we be trying to strengthen the Commonwealth? I certainly do not believe that we should give up the aim of making the Commonwealth a more effective guarantor of the human rights of its citizens. That aim was checked at the last CHOGM meeting in Perth. The holding of the next meeting in Sri Lanka will certainly not strengthen its credibility, but we should persevere in the effort in the medium and long term. We need to build up that network of professional cultural links, which are such an important part of the Commonwealth’s value to its members.

In that context, the Government’s immigration policy, which seems to be having a disproportionately discouraging effect on the movement of professionals—it is certainly doing so in the field of higher education, where large drops are occurring in the intake of students from a number of the larger Commonwealth countries—surely needs to be reviewed. There is a contradiction between the Government’s support for the Commonwealth and the effect of their immigration policies. Surely, too, we should be expanding further the grant of Commonwealth scholarships in this country and not limiting them to its developing members.

The Commonwealth has many achievements behind it, not least the remarkably effective stand that it took against apartheid in sport. I would be confident that it has many more ahead of it, so long as it does not compromise its values, and that it will remain for the foreseeable future an indispensable part of Britain's international relationships.

EU: Northern Cyprus

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

I cannot comment on my noble friend’s specific request, although if there is any ongoing work in the area of food, I will certainly write to him. As he will be aware, many of the rights and obligations that came with membership of the EU do not apply to the north of the island, but the EU has been working with representatives from the north to make sure that programmes are put in place for eventual reunification and membership of the EU.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, can the noble Baroness tell us how many Turkish Cypriot citizens are members of the European institutions—the Commission, the Parliament, and so on? If, as I suspect, the answer is zero, does she not agree that it is odd that people who are regarded as citizens of the European Union cannot be recruited to its institutions?

[Baroness Warsi]

The noble Lord is aware of the ongoing challenges in the area. I presume that he is correct, but if he is not, I am sure that I will write to him with details of how many citizens from the north of the country are members of European Union institutions.

I come back to the basic point in this matter. The way to resolve these issues in the long run is by achieving a settlement. There is some hope for that. As noble Lords will recall, the current president, Nicos Anastasiades, was one of the few politicians who was supportive of the Annan plan during the 2004 referendum. There is therefore some hope that negotiations will resume and will proceed in a positive way.

West Papua

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, I, too, pay tribute to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, for tirelessly raising this issue in this House and thus doing something to remedy the paucity of the comment that one gets about this pretty worrying situation.

I declare a previous interest: from 2001 to 2009, I visited West Papua—which for the purposes of this debate, as the noble and right reverend Lord said in his introduction, is taken as comprising the two Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua—annually as a member of an independent panel set up by BP to offer the company advice on what can loosely be described as the performance of its corporate social responsibility in connection with the development of a large natural gas field situated under the waters of Bintuni Bay in the Bird’s Head region of West Papua, and a liquefied natural gas plant on the southern shore of the bay.

This panel, headed by former US Senator George Mitchell, visited Papua every year. We had talks with government and parliamentary leaders and NGOs in the capitals of the two provinces, Jayapura and Manokwari. We visited the sites for meetings with BP and its contractors and we held what the Americans would call town hall meetings in each of the 10 or so directly affected villages neighbouring the sites. We then discussed our findings with Indonesian Ministers and international agencies such as the World Bank in Jakarta, and presented the company with our recommendations. While I would not claim to be a genuine expert on West Papua, I have some familiarity with the region and its problems.

It is certainly extremely welcome that the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, has initiated this debate. That there have been and still are abuses of human rights in West Papua, mainly committed by members of the Indonesian armed forces and police, is really not in doubt. But because of what I regard as the Indonesian Government’s misguided policy of banning visits to the provinces by international journalists and NGOs, too little is known about these abuses, their nature and the background to them. Where secrecy prevails, rumour and allegations flourish, which is why I regard the Indonesian Government’s policy as misguided.

One part of the background that needs to be borne in mind is the massive size of West Papua and the sparsity of its population. They may be the poorest provinces of Indonesia but they are also the least populous. Those areas where the most abuses have taken place—the two provincial capitals, the mountainous regions along the international boundary with Papua New Guinea, and the area around the huge copper and gold mine being operated by Freeport-McMoRan at Timika—are often separated by hundreds of miles of trackless jungle from other, largely peaceful parts of the two provinces.

To address the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, about faith relationships, another dimension is the peaceful coexistence across most of the provinces of communities of Catholics, Protestants and Muslims. In the villages around Bintuni Bay, it was normal to find Catholic and Protestant churches and a mosque in the same village.

As one of the Muslim imams said to us when the panel talked to him, “Please do nothing to disturb the amity in which our communities have lived for many centuries”. That was sage advice, and the Indonesian Government, often beset elsewhere in the country with acute interfaith tensions, would do well to heed it.

What can be done to avoid the human rights abuses that take place? Part of the solution lies in better training for, and tighter control over, the Indonesian military and police. I look forward to the Minister responding to the point that was made by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, about the training that we give them, the effect that it has and whether we have any evidence that it is actually producing better performance. Just as important as that is to make a living reality, not just a paper reality, of the regional autonomy that Indonesia has granted to its provinces. Raising the living standards and the access to healthcare and to education of indigenous populations, which are among the poorest in the world, is another.

Above all, the Indonesian Government need to demonstrate respect for the cultural particularities and identity of indigenous Papuans. These are real and based on centuries of history. Any attempt to homogenise the provinces to a kind of Indonesian norm, or to encourage substantial inward migration from other parts of Indonesia, would inevitably raise tensions and lead to the sort of incidents at which human rights abuses have occurred and are still occurring. As the example of East Timor showed, a policy of repression is only too likely to be counterproductive; it is far better to pursue the objective of reconciling Papuans to their continuance as a part of Indonesia by generous policies of regional autonomy and economic development. To be fair, these are the proclaimed policies of the Administration of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, but too often in the past practical application has diverged from these admirable objectives.

What role should Britain play in all this? We should certainly not just snipe from the sidelines when allegations of human rights abuses are brought up, although we should not turn a blind eye to them. We should also do our best, I suggest, through our aid programme, the provision of training and scholarships and the enlargement of responsible inward investment—such as I believe BP has provided in the Tangguh project, which is now undergoing rapid expansion—to create the conditions and the capacity-building that will encourage Papuans to believe that a peaceful and prosperous future is not beyond their reach. I hope that the Minister can say something about the way in which the Government are playing a positive role in West Papua, both now and in the future.

Syria and the Middle East

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, the opportunity to debate events in the Middle East could not be more timely or more necessary. I fear that this will not be the last occasion on which those words or their equivalents will be uttered, given the near certainty that we face a long period of instability in the Middle East region. The rumbles of thunder from Tahrir Square last night are a reminder of that.

While it may indeed be true, as a number of commentators have observed, that Britain’s capacity to wield influence in the Middle East is on the decline, and while it is certainly true that our capacity to exert influence there by acting alone has all but disappeared, we should not ignore the uncomfortable reality that the Middle East has a continuing and perhaps growing capacity to influence us, whether in respect of our energy security, the threat of terrorism, the rising flow of refugees and asylum seekers or the risk of spreading hostilities on Europe’s doorstep. Neither complacency nor hand-wringing inertia is likely to be the best way to promote and defend our national interests.

I will focus my remarks on three topics: the civil war in Syria, the prospects for negotiations with Iran following its recent presidential election, and that well known oxymoron, the Middle East peace process. During the two and a half years since Syria began its slide into civil war, no party has emerged with any credit, and none has achieved any of its objectives in a sustainable way. While the regime of Bashar al-Assad has hung on by the skin of its teeth, it has lost all legitimacy and has committed horrendous war crimes, for which one must hope that it will one day be held to account. The insurgents, while controlling substantial parts of the country, have not yet rid themselves of the Assad regime, have not achieved a convincing degree of unity and have not reassured minorities that they would be secure in a post-Assad Syria. The insurgents have also undoubtedly committed a number of human rights abuses themselves.

The international community has been prevented by a series of Russian and Chinese vetoes in the UN Security Council from fulfilling its responsibility to protect Syria’s civilian population from a regime that has seen fit to bombard them with Scud missiles, cluster bombs and, in all probability, poison gas. It is frankly a sorry story, and one that should discourage us from thinking that more of the same policies will bring about results. Having listened to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro speaking about good and evil—about which I am sure he is a better judge than I—I still assert that what the Assad regime, father and son, have done to Syrian civilians is evil.

The longer the civil war continues, the worse the outcomes are likely to be for all concerned. Signs of regional instability spreading beyond Syria’s borders are there for all to see, in particular in the Lebanon. It is in that context of abject failure that one needs to judge the Government’s decision to prevent any extension of the EU’s arms embargo on Syria. I think that they were entirely justified in doing so. The analogy is not so much with Bosnia in the 1990s but—as the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, said—with the Spanish civil war of the 1930s, when the democracies, Britain and France, imposed an arms embargo while the dictators, Germany and Italy, poured in arms and soldiers. Now, Russia and Iran play that role, and Russia is preparing to send to Syria the S300 weapons system, which will have major regional destabilising results. The Spanish story did not end terribly well, and nor would an extension of the EU’s arms embargo on Syria have done so.

Since the decision was made to drop the EU arms embargo, a debate has raged in this country—and in this House this afternoon—over whether or not to arm the insurgents. The debate has focused on that issue almost to the exclusion of all other aspects of the Syrian crisis, when we should surely be taking a wider look at the challenges we face. Amid all the denunciations of arms supplies, the gold medal for hyperbole and opportunism must surely go to the Mayor of London. Not all the arguments deployed against supplying arms seem terribly convincing. Will refusing to supply weapons make us less vulnerable to terrorist attacks in future? I doubt it. Will the likelihood that some of the weapons will fall into the wrong hands put us directly at risk? Our soldiers in Afghanistan are not being killed by arms that the West supplied in the 1980s but by improvised explosive devices. Is enabling the insurgents to hold their ground better against Assad really contrary to our interests? I doubt that, too.

Here, then, are three elements of a wider strategy, which we might consider pursuing. First, we should put much more effort and emphasis into the earliest possible convening of a negotiating conference and seek to underpin that conference with a robust UN Security Council resolution based on the ideas of Kofi Annan and Lakhdar Brahimi for a transition. Secondly, instead of haggling with the Russians over whether Assad’s forces have already used sarin and other poison gases, we should concentrate on preventing any further use of it by tabling a UN Security Council resolution requiring Assad to admit UN chemical weapons inspectors and give them unfettered access to any sites where past or future allegations of use are made. Thirdly, we should seek to agree with the Russians and Chinese that none of the five permanent members of the Security Council would send any weapons or ammunition to Syria during the period up to and including the negotiating conference—a self-denying ordinance that could be extended if all parties were negotiating a transition in good faith. This would underline the crucial role of the conference in future decisions about the supply of weapons.

On Iran—I hope that the Minister will fill the lacuna in her opening statement about that country when she replies to the debate—it is no doubt wise to be cautious about overstating the significance of last month’s presidential election. We have yet to see what sort of negotiating hand the new President will be given by the supreme leader, but the fact that an election with genuine elements of democracy occurred and was accepted in place of the travesty of 2009 must surely be welcome, as must be the shift from the raucous populism of Ahmadinejad’s public pronouncements. So when negotiations with the 3 plus 3 resume, there could be a genuine opportunity—and it could be just about the last one on offer as Iran’s nuclear programme advances.

That grand master of modern diplomacy, Henry Kissinger, advocated that, in negotiations with obdurate adversaries—he was, of course, talking about the North Vietnamese—it worked better to put a substantial package of compromises on the table rather than to proceed with an incremental approach of small steps, which is what the 3 plus 3 have tended to deploy up to now. That would seem sage advice at the present juncture with Iran. Should we not now be ready to accept that Iran can continue with a programme of low-level enrichment so long as intensive international monitoring through the IAEA’s additional protocol, and probably other special inspection mechanisms, are put in place? Would it not be wise for us to encourage the US to open up in parallel a direct channel of communication with the new President of Iran?

In conclusion, and very briefly, I shall say a word about the Middle East peace process. However discouraging the auguries, this is surely no time to subject the new US Secretary of State, who seems to be rolling up his sleeves with a will, to a deluge of cynical disparagement, as so many commentators are doing. Rather, we, too, should be thinking of ways in which to help the process forward. Should we not be thinking of imaginative ways in which Israeli settlements on the West Bank could remain within a Palestinian state and Israeli Arab citizens could find a more secure place within an Israeli state? It is a long time since any new element was introduced into that longest running dialogue of the deaf, and I wonder whether it is not time to think a bit wider than we have done hitherto.