G20 and the Paris Attacks

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

The Prime Minister has talked about a comprehensive approach and his overall strategy. That very much involves not just the way in which we are currently supporting the region and the way in which he is talking about extending military action, it is also about supporting neighbouring countries and working with them in the region. The points that my noble friend makes are well made, and certainly very much in the Prime Minister’s mind as he considers how best to respond to the current situation.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

My Lords, there is a great deal in the Prime Minister’s Statement with which I concur—not least his sentence which was very simple but should mean a lot to all of us:

“In this situation we do not protect the British people by sitting back and wishing things were different”.

In that context, I make just two comments to the Leader of the House. First, it is absolutely proper that we should be engaged in trying to find a political solution to some of the problems in Syria, but we would be operating under a delusion and deceiving the people of this country if we implied that even should a political solution—with President Assad or without him—be achieved tomorrow, it would solve the problem of ISIL. It will not. This is part of a long-running, generational attempt to establish an Islamo-fascist empire under people who will stop at nothing. Therefore, it is to delude the people of this country to say that opposing ISIL is somehow made redundant if we achieve a political solution.

The second thing is what is missing from the Statement in terms of domestic security. Last week I asked the relevant Minister, and received assurances, about the scrutiny of refugees coming to this country. However, 750 UK citizens have gone off to Syria, 450 of whom have come back. They are prime facie not only sympathisers but active supporters of the atrocities that have been carried out by ISIL abroad, and there is every reason to suspect that they will continue that sympathy, and potentially that action, in this country. What are the Government doing about the 450 who have come back, and why was there no mention of them in today’s Statement?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

The noble Lord argued in his first point that finding a political solution in Syria would not render our efforts to destroy ISIL redundant. I agree; he is absolutely right. On his question about those Britons who have left the UK, gone to Syria and elsewhere and then returned, the measures that we introduced in the Counter-terrorism and Security Act, which was passed by Parliament earlier this year, were designed specifically to address this kind of threat.