Outcome of the European Union Referendum
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Maginnis of Drumglass (Ind UU)
My Lords, it has been an interesting and informed debate, which I will approach perhaps from a more factual perspective, in line with the approaches of the noble Lords, Lord Vinson and Lord Howarth of Newport. I have always detested referendums in so far as our democratic system evolved in a manner where it was intended that the United Kingdom will be led by knowledgeable and principled parliamentarians who are meant to be known and elected locally, not by polls conditioned from above by faceless party manipulators.
It was a risk and a folly that the Prime Minister and Government would cede that privilege to the conditioned prejudice of the masses rather than to reasoned and honest logic. It was even less justifiable that the Prime Minister offered this referendum merely as an incentive to sway the electorate at the time of the last general election. Now, inevitably, in the Brexit case we have the nonsense where the losers are clamouring for a rerun. What comes after that—and again after that?
Despite the fact that our Prime Minister neither made the right decision nor succeeded in negotiating a tangible alternative deal with our EU partners, let me say that I am quite ecstatic at the outcome. Yes, ecstatic in so far as the old morality, the “auld decency” with which I grew up and which I have tried to represent as a schoolmaster, as a soldier, as a businessman and as a parliamentarian, seems to be dying on the vine of political correctness and internal party convenience. We now have the opportunity of a lifetime to reform and to ensure that our Britishness is rejuvenated, and that we do not flounder from tactic to tactic but relearn the value of strategic thinking and planning before setting out tactics in motion.
I hope that we in the United Kingdom now recognise how we have let democracy slide by allowing law-making powers to pass to non-elected foreign civil servants we cannot kick out, and that this has happened without popular consent. Subsequent transfers of British power have been made by a series of stealthy EU steps deliberately disguised as technical changes. Undemocratic diktat at the expense of our national sovereignty lies—or lay—at the heart of the EU.
So before we overindulge in self-flagellation in relation to our decision, we should strive to find out how Europe came to this undemocratic state. We surely understand the complex personality of Commissioner Juncker, President of the unelected European Commission. This is the crook, cheat and self-confessed liar from a country the size of Norwich who for 20 years dominated Luxembourg politics, running the grand duchy as his personal fiefdom.
Herr Juncker used Luxembourg’s security service to blacken rivals while he lined his pockets by conducting lucrative sweetheart deals with multinationals. Under his premiership, the duchy reinvented itself as Europe’s secret tax haven on an industrial scale. He was eventually forced to resign after a scandal involving telephone tapping of political opponents. Such basic standards of government would disbar Herr Juncker from any public office in the United Kingdom. Yet what was Herr Juncker’s comment on becoming President of the Commission? “I don’t have to worry about mere Prime Ministers any more”.
Interestingly, our Prime Minister initially objected to him but found Mrs Merkel in his way and failed politically to stifle the dubious Luxembourger. In so far as Mr Cameron is no longer a major player, it is the same Mrs Merkel who now moves to give the said Herr Juncker his P45. Ironic.
I wish I had time to develop my argument, but the clock defeats me. Suffice it to point out—others may expand on this caution—that the political parties in the UK, like Juncker’s European Union, have become or are becoming the property of bureaucratic academics, many of whom have emerged after university from little more than glorified bag carriers to their elders onwards to elected appointments and to run the country. However decent they may be, they are too often lacking in real practical experience, so that we have become dominated by diktat, not democracy. Internal party manipulation dominates practical objectivity and common purpose—the Leader of the House will, I know, be able to put that in context.
Today, Prime Minister Cameron’s political mismanagement has been fortuitous and opportune in so far as it opens the way for reform here in Parliament. The return of “auld decency”, and strategic purpose rather than tactical U-turns, awaits. We neglect this opportunity at our nation’s peril.
House of Lords: Composition
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Stowell of Beeston
The noble Lord is absolutely right that it was in the House of Commons where the Bill failed and did not proceed. In light of that attempt having been made and not succeeding, this party in government has made it clear that it is not something that it wishes to attempt in this Parliament.
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass (Ind UU)
My Lords, the Secretary of State for the Home Department warned us about an increasing threat from dissident IRA, yet when I lobbied each Member of this House from Northern Ireland I learnt that not a single one had been contacted by either the Home Secretary or the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Does it really matter where we come from if we are treated in that fashion?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
The Government take seriously their responsibility to consult people about serious and important matters of policy, and that includes consulting Members of your Lordships’ House. I am sad to hear what the noble Lord said but this is usually something that we do very well indeed.
Syria: UK Military Action
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass Excerpts(9 years ago)
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Lord Maginnis of Drumglass (Ind UU)
My Lords, while it may be unnecessary for me to inform the House of this, I want to make it clear that although I have a deep reservation about the Prime Minister’s fixation on bombing Syria, I am not a “terrorist sympathiser”. My reservations derive from my own experience of terrorism, from my belief that to win against terrorists, whether that be Daesh or the Provisional IRA, one has to dominate the ground not just from a military perspective but in terms of liaison, of communication and of administration.
I am concerned that where the United Kingdom was once the exemplar in co-ordinating allies with a common objective towards a common cause, we are relegating ourselves merely to “other” status. I have not heard a word from the Government about our relationship with the Peshmerga, for example, or about any efforts that we could make towards reconciling our friends among the Turks and the Kurds. Why not? When the Peshmerga drove Daesh out of Sinjar, was there any viable initiative to establish any sort of cordon sanitaire in that region, so that we might begin to restore even a modicum of order and administrative opportunity to day-to-day life in that area? When we invaded Iraq and then virtually abandoned it to Nouri al-Maliki, to manipulate under the direction of the Iranian mullahs’ regime, did we shoulder any of our assumed responsibilities?
Let me give an example regarding intelligence. I have been berating our Foreign Office for months on its ability to secure the safety of refugees in Camp Ashraf, and now Camp Liberty. On 12 October this year the Foreign Office wrote to me saying:
“I am pleased that certain positive steps are being taken by the Government of Iraq to improve … conditions at Camp Liberty. We continue to support the United Nations”,
and so on. This was supposed to reassure me. That was on 12 October and 18 days later, as noble Lords will know, a mortar attack on Camp Liberty—permitted by the Iraqi regime—killed 26 men, women and children. Need I say more?
More bombing, whatever its collateral damage may be, cannot be justified if we are merely sustaining dubious Administrations such as those of Assad and al-Abadi. Let us recognise that if we could round up every member of Daesh today, that organisation would be replaced by another within weeks. Do any of us remember al-Qaeda? I have not the time to even touch on the reality where the Russian bomber flying alongside ours would have totally different short-term and long-term objectives. When we know who our allies are, we can clearly envisage alternative Administrations in Syria and Iraq. Maybe then, but now is not the time to fly our planes into the diplomatic fog that we have appeared to develop.
House of Lords: Membership
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Tunisia and European Council
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Taylor of Holbeach
We should listen to the question from the Cross Benches.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I object to the noble Lord’s description of us not making a moral contribution to this crisis, because we are. As I said, we are playing our part in the rescue of those who are at risk at sea and are making a very large contribution by way of aid to the countries where people are affected by war or by other things that cause them to seek to move to Europe. We are playing a strong part. As I said, we have a point-of-principle disagreement on the resettlement of people who have made that crossing, but we are doing quite a lot in the resettlement of people from countries such as Syria before they actually make the crossing.
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass
My Lords, has there been a precedent for raising a domestic issue of the European Council in common with a Statement on an international terrorist tragedy, such as in Tunisia? Is that not strange? I can understand why government would want to cloak the impact of what has happened in Tunisia, but as somebody who has lived cheek by jowl with international terrorism for almost three decades, I suggest that we would not have mixed up a domestic issue with the Omagh bomb, the Ballygawley bus bomb or the Enniskillen Armistice Day bomb. Why on earth have we chosen now to take this tragedy—and I feel the injustice of that tragedy—in the way we have rather than talk about the positive, concrete steps that we might take to bolster a Government in Tunisia who are not in favour of the sort of terrorism that we see elsewhere in the Middle East?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
The Prime Minister was due to give a Statement to the House of Commons today about the European Council, as he customarily does following his attendance at a European Council meeting—that being something that he is obliged to do. He decided, quite rightly in my view, that he should also make a Statement about the terrible events in Tunisia. This will not be the final occasion when the Government make a Statement to Parliament about our response to the most recent terrorist attacks. One reason why it was felt appropriate to combine the two is that clearly we are at the initial phase of responding to the events of last Friday. The most important and urgent thing that we are trying to do is to support the families affected by this despicable act. That is what the Prime Minister has sought to do in describing how the Government have responded. As I say, as things unfold, I am quite sure that others from the Government—my other ministerial colleagues—will make Statements as they see appropriate.
Iraq
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Maginnis of Drumglass (Ind UU)
My Lords, it has been interesting to listen to the voices of experience today after having listened to the speculation coming from the Government over the last two or three weeks. It really is pathetic that we are using terms—I go straight to the head of the Government—such as “no feet on the ground”, on which comment has been made already. If we go in and bomb these dreadful terrorists who will use civilians as cover, we will kill civilians. Whether it be in Afghanistan or anywhere else, when you bomb, the people you kill turn out to be civilians. That is the propaganda war lost for a start—lost at home and lost abroad. The one thing that I should like to see very clearly enunciated today is that, if we are going to do our duty, as we did not do in the past, we should do it fully with our military involved at every stage. You cannot have Special Forces without supply and resupply or Special Forces holding ground reinforcing the rule of law.
It has been hurtful for many of us to hear the problems that we left in Iraq. Let me be blunt: our Foreign Office did not do itself a great favour in terms of being able to monitor what was happening in Iraq that got us to the stage we are at today. What has it been doing in all those years? We have been supporting Nouri al-Maliki, who was unapologetically anti-Sunni and unapologetically in thrall to the Iranian regime. Of course, we are all in thrall partly to the Iranian regime now.
When in this House, again and again, I and others warned about what was happening and what Nouri al-Maliki was up to, we were ignored. It is only one year since his forces went into Camp Ashraf and slaughtered 52 unarmed refugees. What did our Government do? They made excuses and said, “It was not al-Maliki’s forces that did it”. I am afraid that we know different. If noble Lords will excuse any repetition, in terms of getting our terminology right, let us have a proper evaluation as to what we are going to do to restore law and order. We have managed to get rid of al-Maliki now. Even the Government admit that he was rubbish, to put it mildly.
However, it is too late. Have we got any guarantees from al-Abadi as we rearm him in terms of his attitude to the Sunni tribes? Have we looked as we rearm the Peshmerga? Have we looked at our relationship with Turkey? Let us remember that that is the erstwhile PKK. What are we doing internationally to ensure that our friends for many years—almost 100 years in Turkey’s case—are protected, and are part of and are aware of what we are up to or is this going to be another flash in the pan? Is this going to be another waste of young men’s lives? I hope not. I lived through 28 years of terrorism. I know what terrorism is. I know how our forces operate and how they should be supported. It has not happened in the past. Let us hope that we will have a guarantee today that it will happen in the future.
Patrick Finucane
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I understand exactly what my noble friend is saying and the force with which he says it, with all the experience and knowledge that he has in his personal background and the part that he has played in Northern Ireland. He is right in saying that none of us could hear the Statement made by the Prime Minister without being deeply shocked and dismayed by what has happened—the level of collusion and the cover up that took place thereafter.
He said that it was a national shame and he is right, but part of dealing with that is to confront it by having the review that we have taken, publicising it and apologising for what happened. There is also the second point, which I think my noble friend was referring to, about what has changed and how to ensure that these things do not happen again. The background within which the security services operate is so entirely different from that existing in the late 1980s when there was no legal framework against which they operated.
RIPA 2000 created a proper legal and policy framework within which to gather intelligence. There is now therefore an unambiguous framework which puts all work relating to agents on a statutory footing and is designed to prevent the same mistakes and abuses being made today. RIPA is also underpinned by a range of non-statutory frameworks and codes of practice which set out clear processes for the day-to-day management of agents by relevant agencies. Managers, the PSNI and the security services are required to ensure that staff comply with this legislation. The Statement referred to the PSNI now being the police force with more scrutiny that any other in the world. I think that that is right.
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass
My Lords, as somebody who has been fortunate to survive 10 murder attempts by the Provisional IRA, I find this isolated apology quite ridiculous. The reality is that the Finucane family were an IRA family. I illustrate this by saying that when I made that allegation publicly and was being sued for libel, the family retracted and paid my legal expenses. Let us not therefore fool ourselves about the “Godfather” Finucane who was killed. If there was connivance, let me say that all of us who served through the heart of the Troubles in Northern Ireland served in such a way that it was impossible to have a secret. Why were there 10 attempts on my life? Why was the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, shot? It was because there was conspiracy.
I point out that less than 1% of all terrorist suspects involved in proactive security force operations were killed by the security forces, and that 99% of cases ended in arrest. There were no incidents of unlawful killing in a Special Branch-led operation in Northern Ireland, and the security-force response was totally human-rights compliant. Let us not forget all those years of terrorism and become compelled by a single incident which may in fact—and I will not deny it—have involved conspiracy. If one sought justification—and I do not justify it—it was not without a godfather. Godfathers were responsible for so many murders in Northern Ireland, it should not be forgotten.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, brings his own particular view of these issues. Indeed, Sir Desmond looked at the accusation that Patrick Finucane was a member of PIRA, and on the basis of the evidence that he saw he concluded that he was not. I know that that was not the entire point that the noble Lord was making, but the Government have nothing to add to Sir Desmond’s conclusions on this point.
I am bound to say that the question of PIRA membership is not in this case particularly relevant. The point that was made in the Statement and as a result of the review is that the state should not have been involved in Patrick Finucane’s murder. It is on that basis that the state has made the apology.
House of Lords: Working Practices
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Maginnis of Drumglass
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, on initiating this debate, although one has to wonder whether the overall system of government that I found when I first came to Parliament almost 30 years ago has been damaged beyond repair. Our Chamber cannot look at itself in isolation. I was introduced to a system where Ministers were responsible for departmental outcomes, and when a Minister got it wrong, a resignation was considered necessary and appropriate. Members of Parliament, by and large, had come from business, the professions, the mines, the factories or the armed services and had previously done a real job, developing the skills and experience to which the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, referred, and which would seem essential if one is to act in the nation’s interest.
Parliament functioned on the basis that the law of the land was based on something that we now seem unwilling to acknowledge and articulate: moral values and common law. Perhaps I am a wimp for daring to use such unsophisticated language, but my sole comfort is that it is here in this Chamber that I can still see the remnants of those values. We have made one fundamental error in the fairly recent past, and that was when we created a third legislature—the expensive and unaccountable Supreme Court. The law of the land has, until recently, always belonged to the people. The people have elected their legislators to the Commons, and this Chamber has utilised its skill and experience to fine-tune and to be the peoples’ final arbiter through the Law Lords.
Now we have, like most aspects of government, abjectly surrendered—some probably call it delegated—every aspect of responsibility to unidentifiable, unanswerable and unaccountable individuals cocooned in some detached monastic environment. That is why Question Time is no longer answer time but has deteriorated to become a fairly futile discussion interlude. Ministers may try to do their best, but they are disadvantaged simply because they are no longer in control. We saw it here last week during the Statement on the Gary McKinnon extradition case. That 10-year injustice has not been resolved. Justice has again been put on the “long finger” by a Home Secretary who has effectively said, “I will delegate the matter, without time considerations, to the courts”. Hence, a once 35 year-old with autism spectrum disorder—now 45 years old—is tossed in life’s dustbin for, what, perhaps another 10 years, and that is justice?
Today, I shall not take further time of the House to ask whether the United Kingdom has lost or is losing its way in its relationships with the United Nations, NATO, the European Union and so on. Suffice it to say that I think that the UK has abdicated, or is incrementally abdicating, its authority. If the Government cannot even implement a rail franchise, and it is obvious that they do not know where that went belly up, then the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, belatedly or otherwise, has posed the right question here today. Am I wrong when I perceive Cabinet to be a caucus and government increasingly to be delegated to and—effectively or otherwise—run by proxy bodies? In the past 20 years I have seen deterioration in parliamentary competence and responsibility, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, that today he has sought to alert us to a better possibility which would mean that my next 25 years here could be made more rewarding.
Libya and the Middle East
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I agree with my noble friend Lady Morris. She is right when she talks about institution-building and the role that we can play. That includes looking at the experience post-1989 and the building of democracy in central and eastern Europe. Bodies such as the Westminster Foundation for Democracy play a very important part. As I said in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, it is partly about building these institutions and partly about rebuilding their economies. The two very often go hand in hand, and we should be looking at the two in making sure that we can bring all of this to a successful conclusion.
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for bringing the Statement to the House. I congratulate the Government and our security services on how they have worked effectively together so that this operation has been completed without casualties. I suggest that perhaps the Government would do well to look at their relationship with the press, who appear to have been pre-emptive and working on a minimal amount of information when they evoked the initial criticism of the operation.
It is important that civilian firms employing British civilians overseas keep a proper record of who they employ and where they are employed. If they already do so, was that information available as quickly as it should have been to the Government? I should be grateful if the Minister could answer those two questions. Lastly, this House should and does acknowledge the gratitude due to our Turkish friends and allies, who have once again stepped into the breach to support us at this difficult time.
Saville Inquiry
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass Excerpts(14 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
My noble friend is right to talk about the healing process. Of the many noble Lords who have been involved in the history of these troubles over many years, my noble friend is one who can claim to share a large part of that experience. My noble friend referred to the civilians who were affected. It is worth quoting from the report itself. The noble Lord, Lord Saville, says, in paragraph 3.70:
“None of the casualties shot by soldiers of Support Company was armed with a firearm or (with the probable exception of Gerald Donaghey) a bomb of any description. None was posing any threat of causing death or serious injury. In no case was any warning given before soldiers opened fire”.
I think that that answers my noble friend’s point on lifting any question of doubt in the minds of families who lost loved ones on that day, when there has been some potential stain. That today is completely removed. I entirely agree with what my noble friend said: the apology made by the Prime Minister on behalf of us all is unequivocal. We must all hope that it is part of the process that continues to heal the wounds in Northern Ireland.
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass
While I thank the noble Lord for repeating the Statement in this House, as someone who was on duty on 30 January 1972, I deeply regret the death of 13 people in Derry on that day. However, I cannot be as magnanimous or one-eyed as I feel that the Saville report has been—and, I am sorry to say, this Government have been in how they have received it. Before Bloody Sunday, 180 people died in Northern Ireland, victims of terrorism. The 13 deaths are regrettable, but no more regrettable than the other 167—the 94 per cent of those who died that year. In the year 1972, 490-odd people died. The deaths in Derry have been investigated at the cost of almost £200 million, when we all knew the answer and that a huge error had been made. Those 13 deaths represented 2.5 per cent of the deaths in 1972.
As someone who, as a soldier, ran the gauntlet of planned IRA assassination and personal attack, I say to noble Lords that it is very easy to be humble on an occasion such as this—but one has to remember the many people who were not rioting and who had not broken away from a peaceful parade to confront soldiers who themselves had never been trained for that sort of confrontation in an urban guerrilla warfare situation. That is the background against which I hope noble Lords and the Government will view this report overall. I hope that we will not dismiss those many deaths into which there has not been an inquiry costing £200 million.
Lord Strathclyde
The noble Lord speaks from tremendous experience and knowledge, as he has shown today, and he is right to acknowledge the background to the events of Bloody Sunday. The report is clear that the circumstances of Northern Ireland and Derry in 1972 were tense and bordering on chaotic. It was the bloodiest year of the Troubles. However, we should not allow Bloody Sunday to define the 38 years of the military operation in Northern Ireland in which so many of our brave service men and women served, as well as noble and gallant Lords. We cannot doubt the courage and professionalism of the vast majority who worked to uphold democracy and the rule of law in Northern Ireland, and I am sure that all noble Lords will want to associate themselves with my remark that our Armed Forces today continue to display great character in adversity.