Saudi Arabia: Executions

Lord Soley Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

No, my Lords, our experience has been that with certain countries that is not the case and it can in fact be counterproductive. We are always careful to ensure that we make best use of our diplomatic voice in private. Saudi Arabia is not the only country that responds better to that kind of exchange. However, that does not stop me from being as public about this matter as I am today.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, the Iranian and Saudi Governments are both extremely volatile. As we know, what is happening in Saudi spills over into Yemen and if we are not careful, it will also spill over into Bahrain. I ask the Minister to exercise as much pressure as we can on the Saudi Government to understand that it is almost impossible to defend them at times, given the behaviour of their regime.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, the point lying behind the words of the noble Lord, Lord Soley, is certainly right: all countries must have regard to the fact that their actions may lead to regional instability. It is important in the Gulf and Middle East that all countries recognise the impact their actions can have.

Syria

Lord Soley Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Soley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress has been made towards a settlement of the conflict in Syria.

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Anelay of St Johns) (Con)]

My Lords, as a result of efforts by the International Syria Support Group over the past three months, on 18 December the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 2254 requesting the UN to convene the Syrian Government and opposition for negotiations on a transition process. These negotiations are due to start on 25 January and will be a welcome step towards ending the conflict, but clearly there is still a long way to go.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

I welcome that Answer and the progress, however slow, that is being made. Can I ask the Minister to say a bit more about Russian policy, which has always troubled me? It seems that Russia is determined not to let Assad or his party lose power. If that is the case, I am afraid that sooner or later, and difficult though it will be, we may have to reassess whether we have relations with that part of Syria and the Government of Syria as it was.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

The noble Lord is right to point to the concern we have had that Russia’s military tactics appear to have been aimed more at keeping Assad in power than at attacking Daesh. I hope that Russia will consider that carefully and aim its attacks on Daesh instead, and that it will use all the levers in its power which it has with the Assad regime to persuade Assad to come to the talks and make sure that his team is engaged in true negotiations about peace in order to achieve a transition process. But the noble Lord is right to point to the difficulties involved.

Daesh in Syria and Iraq

Lord Soley Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

I echo the request of my noble friend Lord Touhig for the Government to keep the House updated on the progress of the talks, not least because Members of both Houses, and indeed in the wider country, who did not support military action need to see that this is part of a political process. That is very important—I have felt from the start that that message did not get through and it needs to.

Following up on that, if those important talks in Saudi Arabia are successful—and it is a big if—we need to think about a policing mechanism in Syria afterwards; that was referred to earlier. There is clearly a role in that for the United Nations, among others.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My right honourable friends the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary have committed to giving updates on a three-monthly basis. They can be flexible and do so more regularly, particularly when a House may be going into recess. I will certainly ensure that it is possible for noble Lords to have an update before the February Recess, outside the Chamber. We can have a meeting on that.

With regard to the issue of—sorry, I lost track of the second part.

[Lord Soley]

It was about some form of international policing.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

I apologise to the noble Lord—I could not read my own writing. I mentioned earlier that we are pleased to now be in the position where there will be a trained Sunni police force. It is the first step. Policing is clearly important as, when places are taken from Daesh, people will want to return to them but those places often have been booby-trapped with IEDs and police need to be in place to provide security while any remaining dangers are cleared. It is the only way for a community to be in a place and feel safe to set up its own council and organisations to run itself.

Syria

Lord Soley Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

I congratulate the noble Baroness on getting the debate. It is tragic that it is so short, but she has done an awful lot of work on this and it is very important. I agree with much of what she has said and also with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, too.

I will keep my three minutes to one factor, because we cannot go into all of it, which is Russia, which the noble Baroness touched on. I have felt for a long time that the role of Russia in this is far more important than we have realised. I ask the Minister if we know whether Russia is still arming Assad and whether it is still providing him with intelligence. We underestimated the importance of the intelligence from Russia. We have to remember that it has satellites over the area providing information to Assad’s forces so that he can hold ground that, frankly, he would have lost otherwise. It has always been my view that Assad would not negotiate as long as Russia felt that it could keep him in place.

The third question that I would ask the Minister is this. I think that President Putin now knows that, although Assad might have to be part of the solution, as the noble Baroness said, he certainly cannot dictate it. There is no way that Assad can or should be back in control of the bulk of Syria again, even if Syria can hold together. A very important part of the policy that we have never fully debated in this Chamber is: what role is Russia playing? How close are we to Russia? Despite all the other problems with Crimea and the way that President Putin is behaving in modern Russia, there must be some shared interest in working together to solve this problem. It is not in Russia’s interest to have ISIL winning in that area.

Similarly, although it might not quite see it this way, it is not really in Russia’s interest to see the United Nations frozen out, as it is at the moment because of the attitude of Russia and China against intervention. Syria is a classic example of how, just as intervention can go wrong, as it did in Iraq, so non-intervention can go wrong, too, as it has in Syria—unless people think that it is some wonderful success. The role of Russia is an issue that we need to bring out to some degree. Much of what else has been said could be dealt with in a much bigger way.

My last point is that we are in acute danger of a growing major war in the region involving Saudi Arabia and Iran—and, of course, the split within Islam between Sunni and Shia—which would have a knock-on effect on many of our allies there, which are becoming destabilised. Yemen is the latest example; I always worry about Bahrain, which has been doing remarkably well and deserves a lot of credit when it is in an almost impossible position in relation to Iran and Saudi.

For tonight, I simply would like answers so that I know more about what the British Government are doing with Russia—or is it just that we cannot do very much with it?

EU and Russia (EUC Report)

Lord Soley Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, I have congratulated the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, his committee and staff before on an excellent report. It should be read in conjunction with the excellent recent report on soft power from the committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Howell. The two link up rather well.

I rather take the view, as the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, said, that we need to understand the Russian position, but I also strongly take the view that when you understand bad behaviour and its origins you do not justify it. The noble Lord made that point in a single line. It is very important. It is easy to look back on Russian history in the 20th century and see what a disastrous history it was: two world wars, famine, dictatorship, failed revolution, collapse into ignominy in the later part of the century. Russia is not a country you would have wanted to have been born into in the 20th century.

Just as that is true, the other side of the same coin is that you would not have wanted to have been born in one of the eastern European states that were occupied by the Soviet Union or, as those states saw it, by Russia. Indeed, I remember seeing groups of German troops in what was then East Germany, and a large group of armed Russian troops a few hundred yards down the road. That was common throughout, because those countries were held in occupation, and what they remember is not only the occupation but the failed revolutions, whether in Hungary or Czechoslovakia, and the brutality with which they were put down. They also remember, and this is particularly true of Ukraine, the mass famines and deportations that were driven both by the Nazis and by the Russian communists. In other words, there is an appalling history in this belt of countries that makes it easy to understand why they are behaving as they are.

As I say, understanding behaviour is not the same thing as condoning it, so it is also important to recognise that this is an incredibly difficult area for the world to address and one that in my view, as I have said before in the House, is profoundly dangerous precisely because it is difficult to predict how it is going to develop. Several people have said that they think that Mr Putin is a skilled strategist. I do not think he is, but he is extremely good on tactics. I am deeply worried. In what I thought was a rather perceptive speech, the noble Earl, Lord Oxford and Asquith, hinted that the problem of Russia under Putin is that there is not really a strategy that in the long run will be beneficial either to Russia or to the other countries in the region. It is a profoundly dangerous strategy, because at the very least it will blow up into a major conflict in one area or another.

One of the problems driving Russia at the moment, and to which many speakers have referred, is that of nationalism. Mr Putin is a strong nationalist. The problem with nationalism is that if you use your Russian populations in the border areas, as has been done in Ukraine, you cannot necessarily control them. The noble Baroness on the Front Bench who is to respond to the debate for the Government will know that I was saying some years ago that there could be no peace settlement in Syria because Putin would not allow it until Assad was winning. That has turned out to be true. It is true not because there is necessarily some wickedness in Putin, but because he believes that all this is about the loss of Russian world power and Russian nationalism, which are so important to him. That very nationalism is dangerous. It is also out of kilter with what is happening in the rest of the world.

One thing which the report brings out so well, and which is probably the central message that I would like to re-emphasise, is that the European Union does not have a clear strategy for how to deal with this. In fact, what troubles me, and as the report indicates, there are divisions growing within Europe. People have mentioned Hungary, but I am not sure what is going to happen with Greece at the moment—something that has been mentioned outside this House. One can see that there is the danger of a certain fragmentation of a coherent policy within the European Union, and it is obviously in Mr Putin’s interests to play on that. He would like to see greater disintegration, if you like, within the European Union and NATO.

That raises the question: how can we in the European Union make sure that we have a common policy towards Russia? When people say to me, “Oh, at the end of that road there is a common foreign policy and a common defence policy, and that will lead to a European nation state”, perhaps the first thing I would say is that history tends to indicate that a severe external threat often creates a united state in some form. Indeed, we need only look back to the origins of the United Kingdom to see how we created a nation state out of four separate nations in large part because of threats from outside of what were then religious wars. We do not have to go down the road of a common European foreign and defence policy, but my goodness we really do have to have a clear strategy towards what Mr Putin is doing in Russia.

This is not just about the issues in Ukraine; there are issues along several of the boundary areas. It is also about the corruption in Russia. It is about the fact that polonium-210 can be transported from a nuclear reactor somewhere in Russia across to Moscow and then to London, be used to poison a person, and go back again with no action taken by that Government. It is the whole issue of the Russian policy of trying to push at boundaries in a way that is destabilising not just for Europe but for the rest of the world. That is one of the reasons why I rather like the recommendation made in paragraph 282 that we should organise an international conference to help Ukraine not only on economic regeneration but on dealing with the corruption that is inherent within Ukraine itself, because that has been part of the problem. We need to do that not just in the European context but externally. I really do not believe that some of the other emerging great powers—India, China, South Africa, Brazil—think that it is a good idea to have a major power changing borders by force. They certainly do not think that it is a good idea to get a power to give up its nuclear weapons, as Ukraine did in 1994, and then start dismembering that country. What does that do for nuclear disarmament anywhere? It is a profoundly serious problem.

I have great respect for the Russians, but a danger pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, with regard to sanctions is that one of the things that drives Putin is his belief that the West is decadent, whereas Russia can suffer bravely and with courage. That is what sanctions do. I do not have an alternative and I think that we have to impose sanctions—I strongly support them at the moment—but we need to recognise how intensely serious this issue is.

To my mind, the problem of how we deal with Mr Putin’s Russia is a greater threat to world peace than what is happening in the Middle East. The Middle East is actually containable; Russia is not containable, and at best this situation has the makings of a new Cold War drifting into the future. It is not easy, but I will say this to the noble Baroness who is going to respond for the Government: please can we start doing all we can within the European Union to get a clear and coherent strategy on our foreign policy reaction to Russia and to the dangers in the border areas? There are answers; they are far too complex to deal with in my final minute, but they are there and they need to be developed in full.

Ukraine

Lord Soley Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, none of us in the European Union is seeking a confrontation with Russia; it is the Russians who have sought confrontation with Ukraine and others. We need to work within those parameters. That is why I say that it is not business as usual with Russia, but it is business. We talk to the Russians—and indeed tomorrow the Normandy format will show that there is negotiation—but do not let us underestimate the determination of Mr Putin to try to drive a wedge between us. That must not succeed.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the fact that this debate has been much more detailed than in the past and I am grateful for that. I also welcome the recognition that this is a profoundly dangerous situation. However, I say to the Minister that it is not new. If we read President Putin’s statements and speeches over the years, as I have done, it is clear that he is looking for a re-ordering of Europe. He uses phrases such “spheres of influence” and “near neighbours” over and over again, which go against the United Nations rules on those very things. So we have a crisis that will grow, and getting it under control in some way will be profoundly difficult. Some of the suggestions which have been made today, including that of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, may be useful in time, but we should be under no illusions and we should be reading President Putin’s statements because they tell us an awful lot.

Middle East and North Africa

Lord Soley Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, my interests are declared in the register, most notably a recent visit to Bahrain, funded by the Bahraini Government, from which we produced the report in my hand, which I will happily make available to any Member of this House. It was written by myself and the other four members of the visiting group, from both Houses, and published by the noble Lord, Lord Noon. It is an important item, to which I want to return. Before I do, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Risby, on this debate. I know of his great interest in Syria and the tragedy there. He will, I think, know that Assad was a constituent of mine and I always feel that this is something of a reflection on me, but I am not sure how real that is.

We are debating the Middle East generally. When I have taken part in debates before, we have often talked about the region in terms of gloom and doom. There is a lot of gloom and doom and some of the speeches today have been very powerful, most notably, that of the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, who made an excellent speech and is a great loss to the Front Bench—it probably will not do her any good for me to say so–not least because she always mastered her brief. That is a big plus for any Minister from any political party. None of that reflects on the current holder of the post, I hasten to add.

All is not gloom and doom and I want to focus my remaining comments on two countries: Bahrain and Abu Dhabi, part of the Emirates. I was interested in Bahrain because it had an enormous flair up of trouble in 2011. Bahrain is in what many people would describe as an impossible geopolitical situation. It is joined as an island by a causeway to Saudi Arabia. Just across the gulf is Iran. A very large section of the population of Bahrain—some would argue up to 80%—are Shia. The Government, or the royal family, are largely seen as Sunni, although to the king’s great credit, he said to me when I discussed this with him that he saw himself as a Muslim and not as a Sunni or a Shia. I respect that and I know that he is trying to hold a difficult balance. I also know that since the ayatollah took over in Iran in 1979, the gulf between Sunni and Shia, which was always there, has been greatly aggravated and I fear that younger generations identify themselves much more as Sunni and Shia.

Following the riots in 2011, the Bahraini Government set up the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, with some very significant international figures running it. An independent report was produced and the recommendations made in it were all accepted by the Government, although the problem is that of translating them into reality. I think that the Government are doing a good job. If anyone doubts that, I would ask them to read my report and challenge or question it where necessary. What I felt was so positive about it was something that I have been arguing for over the past 10 to 15 years. I began to realise that the rule of law is infinitely more important to many of these countries than democracy. In the past it has been a mistake on the part of the West to think that somehow or other we can hand democracy out on a plate; we cannot. What people in these countries are often looking for, apart from jobs and a decent economy, is justice and fairness. The rule of law is what brings that about. It is important.

The Bahraini Government are focusing on that and we were all very impressed by the efforts being made both within the prisons and outside with the police and the judiciary to modernise their approach. I do not have the time to do so, but I could give the House the details of a number of things they are doing that make me feel confident that they are moving in the right direction. However, we must recognise that this has to be a slow movement. It is not easy for them because the proposals that the king and other members of the Government have made are not universally accepted throughout Bahrain. There is opposition to them and I was very sorry to see that members of al-Wefaq, the main opposition society but what we would call a political party, have actually resigned and refused to take their seats. Yet this is a country which has introduced universal suffrage for elections to the Council of Representatives for everyone over the age of 20. Obviously there are shortcomings in the structure, but I will say, as I said to members of al-Wefaq who I hope to see again shortly, that if they do not take part, they simply aggravate the position. They do not make it better. That is an important message and we in this House should be doing all we can to help the Bahraini Government with these matters. I hope that at some stage we might be able to offer a bit of help to some of these elected representatives on how to work with Select Committees and so on.

I also want to mention the role of Bahraini women, which brings me neatly on to Abu Dhabi because in both cases the role of women is rapidly improving. I met a number of women judges in Abu Dhabi and often the greater number of people attending classes at the university are women. They are becoming increasingly important to the economy and in society. The reason I got involved with Abu Dhabi was because I had a battle with the authorities over what I thought was probably an injustice which should have been resolved by the rule of law, but it was not. As a result, and to their credit, they asked what I would suggest. I said that a postgraduate course should be established in the university and that because the injustice had involved a Palestinian, there should be some outreach to Palestine. I am pleased to say that there is now a course at the University of Zayed being taken by some 26 Palestinians who are being funded in all ways by the Government of Abu Dhabi. I did that with the help of the head of mission for Palestine here and the British Foreign Office, which has been immensely helpful both here and in Palestine.

I hope that the course is continuing, although I have to say that I need to check on it again. However, I am pretty confident that it will do so. I tried to persuade the university to host an annual lecture on the rule of law, but I probably failed on that. There was one lecture but we have not had another. That is because one of the things I want to say—I will end on this note—is that if we can get people over there talking about the importance of the rule of law in order to bring about stability and allow the freedom to expand progressively, we will do a very great deal for the region without sounding too judgmental in how we speak about it.

Iraq

Lord Soley Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interest in the register as a director of the Good Governance Foundation, which operates in the region. I say straight away that I do not think that this is, or should be, a debate about the Iraq war of 2003—much as I would actually welcome that, and I hope that we get time for it. I agree with a lot of what my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours said; like him, I voted for the war but not on the basis of WMD, which I thought was an important part of it but not the central part. The failure was, frankly, a failure of the post-conflict plan and the dysfunctional nature of the United States Administration, particularly when they replaced Colin Powell, who had a plan, with Donald Rumsfeld, who simply felt that all we had to do was take away Saddam Hussein, get rid of the Baathist party and its operations in Iraq and everyone would welcome democracy with open arms. It never works like that, and it certainly did not then. Along with my noble friend’s colleague Ann Clwyd MP, I wrote a whole pamphlet for the Fabian Society on this very issue back in 2004.

I shall leave that aside, though, because—I agree with everyone who has said this—you cannot pin the current situation on the removal of Saddam in 2003. It is very hard to conceive of the war in Syria not affecting Iraq even if Saddam had been in power. We have to look slightly deeper at this. It is pointless to look at historical causes. You could point to the nature of the Ottoman Empire, which, although a very civilising and progressive empire, at its end was very brutal in the region. Gertrude Bell has been mentioned, and you could point to our division of the Middle East in her time—but going back in history does not actually solve current problems.

I want to say a couple of things. First, and I know that the Minister has a particular interest in this, we have not talked enough about the Sunni/Shia divide. There has always been a division within Islam; at times it has been bad and at other times not so bad. You could say the same of Christianity. The present division got dramatically worse in 1979-80 with the arrival of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and then the following Iran/Iraq war. Only a few weeks ago I was talking to the King of Bahrain and some of his people there about this problem. His generation feel quite strongly that they do not want to be labelled as Sunni or Shia because they regard themselves as Muslims—and I suspect that the noble Baroness takes exactly the same view. My concern, and this is one of the things that we have to address, is that the younger generation is becoming increasingly pushed into support for either Sunni or Shia. The more that we go down that road, the more difficult it will become as that view is entrenched in that generation as they grow older.

I say to the Minister that one of the things we ought to be thinking about in our discussions with various Arab and Islamic states is how the whole issue of the divide between Sunni and Shia can be headed off and brought back to a more unified sense of the religion, accepting that they will never agree on the original cause of that division. That divide will always be there, as it is for many Christians, with Catholics and Protestants and so on. In Islam right now, though, that division is getting deeper and it is hard to see how that can be in any way helpful in the present situation.

We ought to look on the terrible situation at the moment as an opportunity. I agree that military intervention would not make sense and would not work. I am in favour of military interventions when I am clear about the objectives, but if you are going to intervene militarily, you must have a clear objective. It is difficult to see what that objective would be in the current situation. That is why you should not do it. However, we can look at how we can assist in the area. Unless there are groups within ISIL that will take over the more extremist groups, one hope is that the Sunni tribes will rise against that extremism, as they have in the past. There is a real possibility of that. That is what we ought to be discussing, and if we can assist in any way, we should do so.

I want to say something about the way we use our power and influence. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, will know about soft power. We need to readdress it. I have worked on and discussed this issue over the years, and I have found that there is general acceptance that people would like the rule of law and there is general, but not quite so ready, acceptance that they would like democracy. However, in some of the countries in that region, democracy is being interpreted as “winner takes all”. You saw that in Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood. That does not justify what the current regime is doing in Egypt, but you could see the problem as soon as the Muslim Brotherhood took power.

You can also see that with the Maliki Government in Iraq. There was a real opportunity. There was plenty of pressure from the West generally on Maliki in the early days of his Administration to include the Sunnis, but he found that incredibly difficult. I know that spokesmen of the Government of Iraq say that they have Sunnis in the Government and in administration. Yes, they have some, but it is very clear that an awful lot of Sunnis felt excluded. More than that, they felt powerless and threatened. If you feel powerless and threatened, you start taking extreme actions. The bombings and killings that have taken place in Iraq in the past few years are an expression of that, plus the aggravation of the Sunni/Shia divide.

There are some positives here. The rapprochement between Iran and the United States ought to be built on, and the involvement of the Sunni tribes might well be critical. We also have a role in refining our soft-power approach—if I can use that shorthand way of saying it—in a number of countries. When we talk about the rule of law and democracy, we must start focusing much more on the recognition that you cannot have a winner-takes-all situation not just in these conflicts but in any state. You must give something to opposition groups because if you do not, you breed dissent. Indeed, we saw that in Northern Ireland. I remember my early involvement in the 1980s. It was very clear that a large section of the community—a minority, but a very important minority—felt discriminated against and excluded. That was bad enough in Northern Ireland. In the Middle East, it is deadly.

Russia: Arms

Lord Soley Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Soley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the risk of an arms race between Russia and the West.

[The Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Warsi) (Con)]

My Lords, we and our allies monitor developments closely. Russia and the West have reduced defence spending substantially since the Cold War. Russia is now increasing its military capabilities, although it is unclear whether it will be able to sustain its plans. There is certainly a need not to allow western defence spending to be reduced too far. At present we assess the likelihood of an arms race between Russia and the West to be small.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

I am grateful for that Answer. The Minister will be aware that, for some years now, western defence expenditure has been dropping, while Russian defence expenditure has increased in real terms by almost 5%. One explanation for this is modernisation, but my key question for the Minister is whether we are taking this opportunity to involve ourselves in talks with Russia to make sure that we do not drift into another arms race, given the opposite directions of travel of defence expenditure in Russia and the West.

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, the view of HMG—and, indeed, that of successive Governments—has been that all our disputes around the world, including those with Russia, should be resolved amicably through diplomatic means. However, of course we maintain a defence posture that has to be flexible and adaptable, and NATO is an essential element of that.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Soley Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall focus my comments today on the environment. I know that the Minister who will respond will not deal with this issue, but I should be grateful if he would draw my comments, particularly what I am going to say about defence forces and biofuels, to the attention of the relevant Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Astor.

The Queen’s Speech is too thin on environmental issues. I welcome the policy on plastic bags; I do not think that it is a laughing matter—the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, made the point well about the impact on wildlife. My noble friend Lady Sherlock made a very interesting point about the degradation of biodegradable bags, where the plastic itself does not degrade. That brings me to the heart of what I want to say. We still do not do enough in this country to put science and technology in the driving seat on climate change. I have expressed concern about climate change since I first wrote about it in the early 1980s, but I have never believed that the way to deal with it is to try to stop people driving, flying or whatever. When the developing world looks at us, they ask us—forcefully at times—why, when we cut down all our forests several hundred years ago, we are lecturing them on reducing their forests now. That is a powerful point, although of course it does not alter the factual situation that we have to address.

Science and technology are also important because, at times, people forget that Britain has been at the forefront of some of the science on climate change precisely because we are an advanced scientific nation, and particularly the advances made by what is still the second largest, second most advanced aerospace industry in the world. That is how we know about climate change. If we did not have the measurements available from the science learnt from the aerospace industry, we would not know a fraction of what we do about climate change. It is crucial to have science and technology in the driving seat.

Although it is now a declining number who deny the dangers of climate change, I make two passing points. The first is that if you are warned of a danger of this type, it is foolish to do anything other than adopt the precautionary principle and address the issue. If it turns out not to be as fearful as you expect, the damage is relatively little; if you do not do anything, the damage could be very severe.

The second common-sense reason for wanting to do something about it is that, by and large, it is a bad idea to encourage production without doing so in a non-polluting way. Think of the dramatic expansion in the world’s population, who are all going to want to fly, drive and have a living standard comparable to that of the UK, the US and western Europe. We cannot do that without the application of science and technology.

That brings me to my point about the defence forces. I make no apology for asking the Minister to draw it to the attention of the noble Lord, Lord Astor, because I tabled a Question on this issue, which I shall refer to in a moment. I also hope to get a short debate on the issue. Let me give my examples in very bald form from the various scientific journals and the Governments concerned. Our allies in the Royal Australian Navy make it clear that it plans to make all its ships and aircraft biofuel-capable within six years. The United States Navy plans to launch what it calls a “biofuel-enabled Great Green Fleet”—a bit of a dramatic title that—by 2016, a couple of years away,

“complete with fighter jets, helicopters, destroyers, and other ships”,

able to use biofuels.

It is not commonly known that many of the advanced fighter jets deployed by the United States in Afghanistan, and indeed many of their other aircraft, were using biofuels in the form of algae. A large part of the reason was not cost, because they are not cheap to produce, but security. If you are having your fuel lines blown up as it is brought in through Pakistan and Afghanistan, it is easier to produce the fuel on site—and that is what they did. The Italian navy currently has a ship deployed off the Baltic states, partly as a result of the NATO response to Crimea, which is a biofuel ship. They are also planning to increase the use of biofuels through one of their major companies. The Dutch air force is also now flying Apache helicopters with a mixture of biofuels.

I give those four examples—I could give others from other countries—because I want to read out the Question for Written Answer that I put down in January this year to the Ministry of Defence. I asked,

“what is their policy on the use of biofuel by the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force”.

The Answer was:

“The Ministry of Defence … uses biofuels in road transport (petrol and diesel) where EU legislation obliges fuel manufacturers to include a percentage of biofuels in the fuel they produce. The use of biofuels in marine and aviation fuel is governed by the requirements and approvals of MOD equipment manufacturers. The MOD is encouraging these manufacturers to work towards adopting biofuels in the future”.—[Official Report, 16/1/14; col. WA 37.]

That is an awfully sad reply. I then turn to our Royal Navy’s Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti, the UK’s former climate and energy security adviser, who went to the United States a couple of years ago and came back recommending that the US and UK collaborate more closely on the development of strategic, high-performance biofuels.

These biofuels are not the ones that take up land use—that is, some of them are but the majority are designed to be renewable. One extremely important point that I have made to this House before is about algae, which can be produced in any type of water—salt water or dirty water—and is a very powerful additive. Why are we not doing anything and why is there nothing in the Queen’s Speech to put this science and technology drive right in the front seat? If you took out the green argument and just asked who would develop these fuels if we do not use them for our defence forces, they would be developed in the United States, Italy, Holland and other countries.

We are losing that high-tech bit which we won on when, through the aerospace industry, we spotted the dangers of climate change. People forget it now but quite a few years back when the ozone layer was being depleted by the use of chlorofluorocarbons, it was British science instruments based in the Antarctic which discovered that. The science and technology response to it means that the ozone layer is now recovering. Climate change is a problem of pollution, just as the depletion of the ozone layer was. We can solve it but it requires science and technology.

That is the message which I would like the Minister to take back to the noble Lord, Lord Astor, and alert him to the fact, if he is not already aware of it, that I am trying to get a debate on the Armed Forces. Frankly, I feel slightly ashamed at the nature of the Answer I got compared with what is being done in Australia, the United States, Holland, France, Italy and elsewhere. We are not doing very well, yet we have been at the forefront of the science and technology.