Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Lord Harrington of Watford Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Commons Chamber

[Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)]

Having listened to all the arguments today, read everything about this issue over the past couple of days and listened to our constituents, it is easy for Members to form an opinion against taking action in Syria. There are many compelling arguments for doing nothing. Military action is expensive. We have all heard the argument that we should be building hospitals, not spending money overseas. People say that it is wrong on principle for the US to interfere in foreign countries. We are unsure of the consequences of action in Syria and, as many right hon. and hon. Members have said, of how it might extend to other countries. There is no exit strategy. The history of Afghanistan and Iraq looms large in people’s minds.

Those arguments all have strong merits and are compelling. It is certainly true that the British public have little appetite for further military engagement in the middle east. Because of the merits of the above arguments, I could not stand here and argue for full-scale intervention to force regime change or to bring about a western-style democracy. My instincts are that it would be great to do those things in theory, but that we should not do them.

Like all colleagues, I have received my fair share—or possibly more than my fair share—of correspondence on this matter over recent days. It has largely been against military intervention. However, a piece of correspondence from one of my constituents, Ian Peck of Hempstead road in Watford, summed up the crucial question: should there be very precise, selective action to prevent the further use of chemical weapons? Like Mr Peck, I believe that there should be such action following confirmation in the weapons inspectors’ report.

We have to accept that any action that is taken may have unintended consequences. As Danny Finkelstein—soon to be Lord Finkelstein—argued in The Times yesterday, at the start of most military actions that history has shown to be the right decision, there was no guarantee of any definite result. He cites Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis and Tony Blair in Serbia. On the grand scale, we could cite Winston Churchill in 1940, when he decided to fight on against the Germans without any clear idea of what would happen. We have to accept that there will be uncertainty. More importantly, although we cannot guarantee or fully predict the outcome of any action in Syria, we can assume with greater certainty that taking no action would allow Assad to continue carrying out chemical attacks on his own people.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a thoughtful speech. Does he agree that in this case we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t? If we do nothing, we accept that the Assad regime can use chemical weapons and destroy its own people, with terrible consequences. However, if we do something, we must ensure that we do not do so much that we get into another war from which we cannot extricate ourselves.

[Richard Harrington]

I agree very much with my hon. Friend’s sentiments. Many decisions in politics, war, business and many other spheres of life have similar damned if you do, damned if you don’t consequences. However, decisions have to be made.

As I have said, I could not stand here and argue for full military intervention. We should do everything that we can on a humanitarian level to support the people of Syria. I am sure that we would all agree that they are the overriding concern in any decision that is made today.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman’s contribution. He says that he would stop short of any further intervention. However, suppose that we attack Assad and our Tomahawks take out a number of facilities and do some damage, but he says, “Okay, we will dust ourselves down and carry on using chemical weapons.” What then? At what point do we take further steps?

[Richard Harrington]

I remind the hon. Gentleman that when the western allies attacked Belgrade with Tomahawk missiles, it took them eight months to get President Milosevic to do what they wanted. I accept that this is not definite. I wish that there was a way of doing it in a day or two. I agree that there is uncertainty. I believe that we all have a responsibility not to blindly follow party lines, but to consider for ourselves, according to our own conscience, what is best. I hope that my constituents will agree that, whether one agrees with intervention or not, this is a grave and important matter.

The truth in my case—this is a fundamental point—is that in my lifetime I have spoken to people who survived the holocaust in Nazi Germany as children and I have visited the sites of genocide in Rwanda, Darfur and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I feel that if there is any way in which through my vote in this House today I can do anything that may—I agree that it is a case of “may”—deter a ruthless dictator from gassing innocent children, it is my duty to do it.

It would be ideal to be able to predict the consequences exactly. In fact, it would be ideal if we could prevent dictators such as Assad from appearing anywhere in the world. Whenever my political career ends—I hope it is just Opposition Members who hope that that will happen sooner rather than later—I do not want to wake up one morning and see children similar to those we have seen in Syria lying on the ground as victims of gas and chemical weapon attacks and find myself thinking that there was something I could have done, however small, to make a difference. That is why I support the motion and why I will support a motion for limited action based entirely on the hope that it will deter Assad and other dictators from carrying out chemical attacks.