Ukraine
Lord Soley Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Soley (Lab)
This is a strong Statement and I welcome it very strongly. Can I ask the Minister to convey—
Noble Lords
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
My Lords, from these Benches I, too, wish to thank the noble Baroness for repeating the Foreign Secretary’s rather comprehensive Statement today updating us on the European Council. It is a happy coincidence that President Didier Burkhalter of Switzerland happens to chair the OSCE at this time, because the OSCE is the right body to defuse tensions. We were very heartened to see that he has suggested to the President of the European Council that he hold a series of round tables to try to mediate the situation. Can the noble Baroness tell us whether the Foreign Ministers of France, Germany and Poland—or, indeed, their representatives—will play a prominent role in the OSCE negotiations? That group of countries negotiated the first accord, which I think was acceptable to all sides in the conflict.
Will the noble Baroness also tell us about the position of Germany? I understand that the German Government are keen that Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, the chairman of the Munich Security Conference, should lead a separate round of mediation efforts. I am sure that the noble Baroness does not need me to remind her of this, but I put on the record that it is absolutely critical for the European Union to remain united on this issue through the OSCE. To have individual countries breaking off and setting up their own initiatives for their own geostrategic reasons can hardly be a welcome development from our side but would be welcomed by Mr Putin; it would be an opportunity for him to obfuscate further.
Baroness Warsi
I fully take those views on board. That is why we continue to sit with the Russians on the E3+3 negotiations with Iran. We want Russia to continue to play its role as an international partner, but it must abide by international norms and laws if it wants to continue to do so.
Lord Soley
Perhaps the Minister could take this opportunity to remind the House of the importance of a debate on Russia. I have been arguing for that for some time and the Chief Whip has written to me about it. We need to talk about Russia. The first thing that I would like to ask the Minister is whether we are raising with Russia the recognition that there is genuine concern about Russian speakers or people of Russian ethnicity, but they can be better protected by normal human rights legislation, not by moving in special forces to stir up local trouble. Exactly the same concerns arise about the minorities in Crimea, who will now feel very much at risk in view of the occupation by Russia. The way of dealing with minorities in east Europe and Crimea should be part of the agenda.
Baroness Warsi
The rights of minority communities, and indeed minority languages, are an issue that every country deals with and struggles with. Indeed, part of my role in the United Kingdom is about dealing with faith and communities and ensuring that all communities feel part of our nation. However, what part of international norms is about saying that you have to invade the territory of another country because you feel that somehow you have an affiliation to a language that may be spoken by some people in that country? Of course it is important for us to support the Ukrainians in their support for these minority communities and to speak out against xenophobia and anti-Semitism, but it is also important to set out what the international norms are.
Ukraine
Lord Soley Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Soley (Lab)
I fear I start from a rather more depressing position than many Members of this House. I agree with the concluding remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Howell. There is a lot in what he said and I think that there was mishandling by the European Union and NATO of a number of the east European states.
I start from the position of trying to understand the Russian position. I have spent some time not only reading the speeches and comments of President Putin, which are liberally sent to me by the embassy—for which, many thanks—but I have talked to the Russian ambassador, who is a very civilised and thoughtful man. If you look at what President Putin has been saying and doing, you recognise that there is a pattern to that behaviour which is trying to reassert control over areas of which he has lost control.
I can understand that in historical terms. Russia did lose out when the Soviet Union collapsed. More importantly, although Russia has a proud history in terms of what it has achieved scientifically, culturally and in other ways, it had a truly tragic history in the 20th century: two world wars, a revolution that failed disastrously and led to millions of people dying from famine or being uprooted and deported, and of course the gulags and all that followed from that. It is a tragic history and Russians feel it very strongly. They feel equally strongly that Ukraine not only should be under their influence but needs to be because of the “fascist threat”, as they play that card. President Putin plays it but many Russians believe it, and the reason they believe it is not hard to find: a lot of Ukrainians fought for the Nazis and were particularly brutal. The reverse is also true: many Ukrainians fought for the Communists and Stalin and were also very brutal. The whole of Ukraine was brutalised throughout the Second World War period.
We can understand all that, but the basic line on this is that you do not just throw over international agreements that you have signed—and Russia did sign, as the noble Lord pointed out, the 1994 declaration which removed the nuclear weapons from Ukraine in return for a guarantee of its borders from the five permanent members of the Security Council: Britain, France, China, Russia and the United States. That is what Russia has broken, because it feels passionately that Crimea should be part of Russia. Actually, that could have been achieved. It would not be an unreasonable thing to develop.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Could my noble friend tell me where in the Budapest memorandum it refers to a guarantee?
Lord Soley
It is a guarantee that force would not be used to change the borders of Ukraine. In return, Ukraine would give up the nuclear weapons on its territory.
In any event, even if my noble friend were right, which I do not think he is, and even if Putin were right to do what he has done, it would be disastrous, because—and I would put this very high on my list of concerns about President Putin—he plays the nationalist card. If you play the card which says, “The Russians in those territories call for my intervention to protect them”, where does that stop? The reason that people refer to Munich is not because they compare Putin to Hitler, or Russia to Nazi Germany—they do not; there is no similarity—but because there is a recognition, which plays very powerfully in the east European countries, that the Germans played the card of coming in to defend the German population and now Putin is using that argument for the Russian population, and that, once you play that card, it is very difficult to control it.
That is why I find this situation depressing. Even if President Putin says to people, “I do not want you to use the nationalist card in east Ukraine”, he has no guarantee that people will not. If they feel strongly that there is a real chance that Russia will regain the territories that it lost and that they will again come under the Russian state, which many of them would like, then you would lose control of it. We have to say, and everybody else in the world is saying, “Well, if you don’t do something about Crimea, and we didn’t do anything about Georgia and South Ossetia, then where does this stop?”. The problem is that, if you play the nationalist card, there are east European states which have real reason to be fearful, particularly the Baltic states—and they are members of NATO.
Please let us take a very hard look at this. I am not intending today to make any suggestions to the Government about the way forward. I agree that it must be a diplomatic way forward, but when people say, as they have been saying quite recently, “Nobody wants a war about this”, I simply remind them that in 1913 people were also going around saying, “Nobody wants a war”. The real danger of this situation is that someone will lose control of it. It is not controllable particularly when you play that nationalist card, so you get all sorts of unintended consequences. I understand the feelings of my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours about this, but, frankly, you have to face up to the fact that, if you do not stop it somewhere, you cannot control it and it is right outside your control. We have been round this track before; it is a dangerous track.
The great thing about Russia is, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, indicated, that many things are happening there that are very encouraging and exciting. You can see it moving back towards the more open and free society that we all want it to be. But I simply say that there have been three or four occasions in the past 100-odd years when Russia was doing that and, each time, it tripped over and failed. That is its tragedy, and none of us should underestimate the strength of feeling in Russia about being surrounded and invaded, and about its own inability to be the top power.
The other thing that stands out, particularly in Putin’s comments and speeches on this, is his anger and frustration that the United States is seen as the dominant power and that he is not seen as its equal, which is why he tries to rubbish some of the west European powers such as ourselves and others and why he tries to set himself up on an equal basis with the United States. As the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, will know, I have been saying for the past two years that you will not get Assad to the table on Syria until President Putin makes him go there. Now that we have just seen the latest military advances of Assad’s armies in Syria, you know that that is right. Putin does not have an interest in settling the Syrian dispute other than under President Assad’s control. That is another one that we have probably lost. We have probably lost Crimea, although, as I have said, you can make a case for that. The tragedy is that it would have been perfectly possible, had Russian diplomacy been up to it, to say, “Look, we want a settlement along that border area that includes Crimea coming back to Russia”. That would have had to be with guarantees for the minorities there, because if I was a Tatar or one of the others in the Crimean peninsula, I would be deeply worried.
I have just a couple of concluding remarks. First, it would be naive in the extreme to think that this will stop here. My worry is that it will continue. We need to face up to that reality. Secondly, and very importantly, the European Union must get real about a foreign policy and a defence policy. One reason we misplayed our hand in east Europe is because we did not have clear policies. I take my hat off to my noble friend Lady Ashton who did a great job on Iran and a range of other things, but we do not have in Europe a foreign policy or a proper defence policy. We still have to rely on the United States. We are in a situation now where there is a leader in Russia determined to assert his authority over the areas formerly controlled by the Soviet Union as it then was. He wants to control those and we have a weak and divided Europe. Where have we heard that before?
Syria and the Middle East
Lord Soley Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Soley (Lab)
My Lords, I declare my interest, which is recorded in the register, as director of the Good Governance Foundation, which operates in the region. I thank the Minister, not just for initiating the debate but for the way in which she has handled this incredibly difficult issue over the past few years. I should also put it on record that the Library note on the timeline of events in Syria is particularly useful to this debate. I want to focus my comments because this is such a wide issue that I would not wish to range right over it.
I first want to focus the Minister’s attention on Libya. I have had some talks with representatives of the Libyan Government, and it has been clear to me that it is almost impossible for them to achieve stable government without dealing with the problems of divisions within the security services—the police and the army. As the Minister will know, there is a series of armed groups who claim or try to be the police force or the army for the country. Perhaps our Government have done so but we ought at least to explore the option, possibly with NATO and the European Union, of putting some of our experienced military officers in there to try to help disarm and merge the various groups, and try to create at least one major police force or armed unit. Unless we do that, I cannot see how a stable state is going to emerge. The European Union, ourselves and NATO have some experience in that we know about how to negotiate between competing groups, get them to give up arms and introduce other stabilising forces. I conclude my comments on Libya by saying that unless we do something along those lines, it is hard to see how that country can progress to a more stable state.
I turn now to Syria. It is not with any great pleasure that I remind the Minister of my comment in the summer last year—she was good enough to acknowledge that it might come true—that the talks about Syria would almost certainly fail. I thought that they would fail, not on the humanitarian side—I recognise what the Government are doing on that and it is very good—but, as perhaps the debate has already indicated, we are not paying enough attention to the role of Russia.
People talk about the arms going to the various opposition groups in Syria, but the Iranian and Russian arms going to the government side—to the military, in fact—are profoundly important. The reason they are particularly important is that Russia is a sophisticated power with satellites, so it is not only arms being provided: there is good reason to believe that it is also providing intelligence to the Assad regime and military about the whereabouts of the various forces. Of course, Assad has an air force and it is no surprise that the barrel bombs—even though they might go astray at times and hit targets either deliberately or not deliberately—are targeting those areas about which it has information likely to have come from the Russians. I have yet to hear from the Government, either in this House or in the House of Commons, about how much we are engaged with the Russians in trying to get them to pull back some of their support for the regime.
I do not suggest that the Russians will necessarily want to see Assad stay in power, but I think they have a very real interest in ensuring that the military stays in power in Syria. That is why the Russians work closely with it. The Russians have a military base in the area and they want that base. Russians have arms contracts with the Syrians and they have always made it very clear that they will continue to supply according to those contracts. There is no dishonesty about it from the Russians’ point of view; it is just that they believe—and they are not entirely wrong on this—that if they do not back the Assad side, then it will be a failed state. The problem with the Russian position is that we are either facing a military state or a failed state, and neither of those is a particularly attractive option.
We therefore need to know a little more about the Government’s engagement with the Russians on their policy towards Syria. My own view still is that, although there is no clear winner on the ground in the military sense, the military controlled by Assad—or it may be other way around, with the military controlling Assad—is winning more ground than various opposition groups. That is really why I said a year or so ago that I believed that the talks would not succeed: because as long as the regime in Syria thinks that it can gain ground through military advances, it is not in its interest to engage in talks. That is why I found myself in agreement today with the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, about a plan B. I do not have any suggestions about what that plan B should be, but I understand—the noble Lord, Lord Wright, mentioned this—that if it is true that the Russians are determined to keep the military in control of Syria, rather than the various other opposition groups, then, frankly, that is what we might have to live with in times to come. If so, we had better have a policy about that; it is very hard to see what we could do otherwise.
The Russians are big players in this. Russia and Iran have a very real interest, and I do not doubt that they would deliver on ensuring that weapons of mass destruction are not used by the Syrian armed forces. It is in Iran’s interest, not least because it was on the receiving end of weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein. From the Russian point of view, it is because its world image is so awful, but I do not think it is true to say that the Russians do not have an interest in making sure that the military stays as the primary force in Syria. That points to a military dictatorship of some type, except in the very unlikely event that one of the other groups comes forward as a winner.
A number of people in recent months have made the comparison with Spain in the 1930s. Obviously, the differences are far greater than the similarities; but the one similarity we should all be aware of is the problem for the western nations: they look at the opposition and see this diverse group which is unable to deliver a proper government while at the same time seeing a military Government who are unacceptable in everything that they have done and look like doing.
The world goes through various phases of supporting or being against intervention. You can go back much further than the post-war years to find policies on intervention, but we all believed in intervention when we found that we could work in certain areas. We tried Somalia and burnt our fingers there—or, rather, the United States did—so we promptly refused to intervene in Rwanda and 1 million people died. We intervened in Iraq but the post-conflict situation was dealt with so poorly that it went badly wrong again. However, who is really arguing that non-intervention in Syria is good for humanity? Of course it is not, but that non-intervention is a failure of the United Nations.
At the end of the day, it is possible to intervene in these states but you can do so only if all the major world powers are in agreement. That is our problem—we do not have that agreement. We should remember that it was only about two or three years ago that there were discussions in this House and the House of Commons about the new concept of a responsibility to protect, drawn up through reform of the United Nations. At the moment that has gone, and I am afraid that it will stay gone until we get agreement among the great powers. That is particularly difficult while Russia, most notably, but also China are opposed to intervention, unless of course it is close to their own borders in the case of Georgia and—one hopes not, but possibly—Ukraine. At some stage we need to reopen the argument in the United Nations about a responsibility to protect and what we do when we are faced, as we are in Syria, with the alternatives of a military Government who have been behaving appallingly by any standards and a series of groups, all of which would equal a failed state if they came to power.
I ask the Minister to respond particularly on the point about Libya. Otherwise, I thank her for what she has been doing in this field. Her knowledge of the religious conflicts in this area is very helpful.
European Union (Referendum) Bill
Lord Soley Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)
My Lords, I apologise on behalf of my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill, whose name is added to Amendment 1 and the other amendments in this group, spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong. My noble friend is unable to be in the House this morning because he has a medical appointment.
I agree with Amendments 1, 28 and 31, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, and with Amendment 32, and I want to speak briefly to them—but, before doing so, I want to take on what the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, said. I tend not to tangle with the noble Lord—normally he is far too ferocious for me to lift my head above the parapet— but I remind him that it was Mr David Cameron, the Prime Minister, who undertook in a speech in January 2013, famously known as the Bloomberg speech, to negotiate a new settlement with our European partners. He said that once the settlement had been negotiated, there would be an “in or out” referendum in which the British people would choose to stay in the EU on these new terms or come out altogether. He undertook that this would be done in the first half of the next Parliament. He said:
“Legislation will be drafted before the next election. And if a Conservative Government is elected we will introduce the enabling legislation immediately and pass it by the end of that year”.
In fact, what has happened is that the Bill before us is the enabling legislation. It should not be before us in this Parliament; it should come as enabling legislation after the next general election.
I will now speak to the amendment. I note that I am the first member of this House’s Constitution Committee to so do and I regret that our chairman, the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, is unable to be here now. However, I draw the House’s attention to the Constitution Committee’s report on the Bill. The report is brief but clear. It clearly sets out that the Electoral Commission has, in Section 104, a duty,
“to ‘consider the wording’ of a referendum question and to report on its ‘intelligibility’. In doing so the Electoral Commission considers whether the question presents the options to voters ‘clearly, simply and neutrally’”.
It recommends that the question be amended from the question in the Bill, which is:
“Do you think that the United Kingdom should be a member of the European Union?”,
to one of two alternatives. One is:
“Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?”,
and several noble Lords have spoken to that, and the other is:
“Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”,
with the possible answers to the second option being, instead of yes or no, remain or leave. We should discuss both options.
My personal preference is not, as this group of amendments recommends, that the question should require a yes or no answer but that it should ask whether the UK should remain a member of the EU or leave the EU, with a “remain or leave” option clearly put to the electorate. The reason I say that is that when the Electoral Commission conducted its research—in the way that the noble Lord, Lipsey, might have found flawed, although I will not address his concerns at this point—it discovered that significant numbers of the public were confused as to whether we were members of the EU or members of the eurozone, and indeed there were people who did not know that we were members of the European Union. In the light of that, the committee certainly suggests that the House should carefully consider whether it is satisfied with the question and that it should do so in the spirit of its obligation to carry out scrutiny and revision.
Lord Soley (Lab)
My Lords, I want to make two or three short points. They will be short because, at least in large part, the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, has made one of the most important points—that when the SNP drew up the question, we all, rightly, said no. We have the Electoral Commission to do this and it must set the question. Notwithstanding some of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and others about views within and between political parties, the principle of having an independent body to draw up the question is an important one. Personally, I am not fond of referendums at the best of times. They are usually invented in order to help political parties get out of difficult situations. However, if we are to have them—and I accept that they are now part of the furniture of politics—it is very important that the question should be drawn up independently. That is why, whichever question is acceptable, it must be agreed or approved by the Electoral Commission.
My second point concerns the wording. That is particularly important, as was pointed out in an earlier intervention. The question in the Bill is:
“Do you think that the United Kingdom should be a member of the European Union?”.
I liked the use made by the noble Lord, Lord Quirk, of the “To be or not to be” approach. My knowledge of English grammar is terrible. I seem to be able to use it all right, but I have never understood it. However, what I can say with some conviction is that in another part of “Hamlet” it is said that he ought to be sent to England because we are all mad here—so perhaps there was more logic to it than I realised.
My point is that, if you put it in those terms, you must also look at the context, which I think my noble friend Lord Lipsey put his finger on—that is, the importance of the question to the whole population. As has just been said, the reality is that a minority—it is a significant, although not huge, minority—do not know whether we are a member of the European Union. They are uncertain about that, and they often confuse membership of the EU with membership of the eurozone.
If a question is put to them in the format that appears in the Bill, the tendency is, as the Liberal party discovered when it proposed the amendment on voting systems, that people will tend to vote no if they think that by doing so they will preserve the status quo. In other words, a no vote is saying, “I don’t want change”. However, by voting no to this—I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, knows this, having written “House of Cards” so well; knowledge of the Whips’ Office is always a useful experience, not to mention knowledge of No. 10—you will change things, but a significant minority, although by no means the majority, of people will believe that they are maintaining the status quo.
I like the wording in the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, because it clearly presents the issue, which we have never resolved in this country. It says quite clearly:
“Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”.
It is a statement of a factual situation and it gives a choice. Given that one of the arguments about a referendum has always been that the people must choose but must be informed by the discussion that runs up to the referendum, it is very important that that discussion takes place in the context of a question that says, “Your two alternatives are either to leave, which has big implications, or to stay in, which also has big implications, and you must make the choice”. If we do that, at least we will be open and honest with the electorate and challenge them to think about it.
If we surrender to the people as a whole our right to be the representatives in a democracy who decide these issues and then put ourselves before the electorate—this is one of the reasons why I do not like referendums —we must ensure that the people as a whole are presented with the arguments. The wording of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, does that and enables the debate to take place.
My other big concern about referendums of course is that, as with the one in 1975, they do not solve the matter; people are still uncertain. I suspect that in 25 years’ time you might find people arguing for another referendum. I can think of at least one person in this House who will be happy to come back next year with a referendum if necessary.
Even if noble Lords do not accept this amendment, they should accept one that will enable the Electoral Commission to deliver the referendum question in a way that enables the British people to make a proper choice.
Middle East Peace Settlement
Lord Soley Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Soley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what role the European Union is currently playing in efforts to reach a wider Middle East peace settlement.
Lord Soley (Lab)
My Lords, two themes underpin this very short debate, and I shall try to keep my remarks very brief, to assist others. First, and very obviously, the Middle East poses a major threat to world peace. There are appalling conflicts there at the moment and the humanitarian disasters are great. The second theme relates to the activities of the European Union, which have been growing in significance and are extremely important. One of the things that I want to suggest today is that we must use the influence of the European Union to get involved in some of the other disputes that trouble us in that region. The noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, as the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, has played a particularly important role, and this House owes her a debt of gratitude as she has certainly put us on the map in that way.
In theory, the European Union does not have a foreign policy or a defence policy. What has been happening, particularly in the Iranian talks, is that you have the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany and Iran, but with the European Union playing a very significant role in those negotiations, precisely because it has enormous economic power. With economic power in a unified market, as some of us have been saying for some time, you inevitably get drawn into foreign affairs and security policy because you cannot run a single economic market without having a profound influence on the world. It is, by far, the most powerful economic bloc in the world and is therefore going to have a wider influence. That is important. With such economic power, I would argue, states are born. They may be very diverse and loosely knit ones, and it is hard to call the European Union a state, but it certainly has some aspects of a state.
The European Union’s role in the agreement emphasises that economic power, because it was as a result of those talks, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, chairing them, that she was also able to deliver relief on some of the sanctions imposed on Iran, such as some of the nuclear ones, some of the financial ones affecting the insurance of the oil industry and so on. You could see economic power translating into political power by saying to Iran: “If you co-operate, we will move, as will the other states representing the United Nations Security Council, and Germany as an individual state with great interest in the area”.
Those facts are true also for the Palestine-Israel dispute. I could spend some time—I will not because of the shortage of time—listing what the European Union has already done for both parties in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Both parties have benefited from European Union involvement, which has been progressively growing. People will have noted that, if there is a final status agreement, the European Union has already promised a very significant economic and political package to try to underpin that agreement. Again, this is enormously important. It offers an attractive option for both parties to find a settlement and underpins the efforts by the United States to create that agreement. We ought to recognise that this is powerful.
Events outside the Middle East, which I would like to talk about at some other stage, also indicate this growing influence. When French troops went into the Central African Republic, fairly soon afterwards—indeed only the other week—the European Union asked its members to provide additional troops in that area. The reach of the European Union is becoming wider: it is not just the Middle East, although that, to my mind, is by far the most important area and the one where we can do the most at the moment.
It is my contention that we have gone so far in using the European Union as a tool of our foreign and security policy that we ought to think through additional ways in which we can use our influence within the European Union. We are a very influential player in it and by evolving a greater coherence on foreign and security policy we can have great influence. I stress that this does not mean that we have to rush to create a European army or a European Foreign Secretary, and I am sure the Minister will not be rushing to the Dispatch Box to say that that is what we want to do. However, there is a delicate but incredibly important balance where we can actually increase our influence in that way and develop it in a way that really benefits the whole region and enables us to act as though we had a foreign policy, but without actually creating the problems that would exist within the European Union if we tried to set that up formally. It is the informal but very co-operative approach that the European Union takes with its members that enables that to work.
I ought perhaps to put this into context as I was in the House of Commons when there were terrible problems in the former Yugoslavia. There was a growing desire to intervene in that situation as ethnic cleansing reached horrendous proportions. Eventually we did intervene, led by Prime Minister Tony Blair. It was done by NATO but, significantly, nearly all the military assets were those of the United States. The vast majority of the air power assets—more than 85%—came from the US Air Force and US Navy. That brought home to Europe the fact that if it could not deal with ethnic cleansing in its own continent, what other threats could it not face down around the edges of its continent? That was a very important lesson and one that is continually being learnt.
I am a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, which recently produced a very useful paper pointing out that it was incredibly frustrating for people in the defence industry and the defence world generally to see that the European Union did not have such a policy because it was increasingly marginalising the European Union forces as the world power balance shifts and new powers emerge—Brazil in aircraft production, and China, India and Russia will all come back into play in due course. Those factors are incredibly important and ought to be looked at in due course.
I want to focus on the Middle East and where it goes forward from here. The role of the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, in the Iranian talks is very important. I note that she is now being invited by Iran to visit the country. That invitation was issued the day before yesterday, I think. Perhaps the Minister can tell us whether she has accepted that invitation. I think that there is a strong case for doing so not least because the discussions should widen as my Motion indicates, towards talking about resolving the dispute in Syria as well as the dispute with Iran over the nuclear weapons issue. There is a very real chance of the European Union playing a crucial role here. If the Iranians recognise, as I know they do, that the European Union is a different entity from the United States and from the individual great powers which it has dealt with so far, and if the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, does visit, the EU might find it a very useful way of seeing what role it can play.
It is difficult for the United States and others to accept that Iran should be present at the table when the discussions take place on Syria. I have doubted for some time whether those discussions will take place, as the Minister will know from other questions that I have asked her in the past. If we can get that conference going then there is a case that Iran should be there, subject to certain limitations. Perhaps the European Union can be helpful in that regard. Even if it does not work out that Iran is present then the European Union can act as a conduit between that conference and the Iranians. If the Iranians do not co-operate on a settlement within Syria, the problem will continue to trouble us, and the horrendous sights of what is happening in Syria that we see on our televisions will continue unhindered.
I said that I would keep my remarks as brief as possible but I have one final, important point, particularly for the Eurosceptics. The European Union magnifies our influence; it does not diminish it.
UK: EU Membership
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Baroness Warsi
My Lords, membership of the European Union is in the United Kingdom’s interests and we will continue to make the case vigorously as we progress with our proposals for reforming the EU. My noble friend is absolutely right that there is no doubt about the huge benefits that membership of the European Union brings to us, including the 3.5 million jobs in the United Kingdom which are dependent upon trade with the EU.
Lord Soley (Lab)
Is the Minister aware of the enormous damage that the Government’s constant criticism of this country’s membership of the European Union is doing to Britain’s reputation within Europe? Increasingly we are seen as a semi-detached part of Europe, and that does us immense damage.
Baroness Warsi
There are voices across European Union countries that echo our sentiment that we need to move forward with a reformed European Union. Indeed, after the Prime Minister’s speech, we heard voices from the Netherlands, Sweden, Austria and across the European Union who, too, felt that we need to have a Europe which is much more flexible and democratically responsive to the needs of its members.
Iran and Syria
Lord Soley Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Soley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what discussions they have had with the Government of Iran regarding that country’s role in the current conflict in Syria.
The Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Warsi) (Con)
My Lords, after that last question I am really looking forward to the debates in January. The Government have impressed on Iran the importance of it playing a constructive role in Syria—for example, in pressing for greater humanitarian access. However, its current actions are far from that. Iran continues to support the Assad regime financially and militarily. We are using the upgrading of our diplomatic relations to engage Iran on a range of issues, including Syria.
Lord Soley (Lab)
I thank the Minister for that Answer. Bearing in mind the remarkable success of my noble friend Lady Ashton in chairing the nuclear talks, the importance of the links that have developed between Iranians and civil servants in the European Union and the western powers, and the effect of the international sanctions that have brought Iran to the table, is it not time to expand those contacts with Iran to try to use extra influence on them both against the Assad regime and with Hezbollah?
Baroness Warsi
We are expanding our contacts with Iran. The noble Lord will be aware of the meetings between Foreign Minister Zarif and my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, and the telephone conversations between the Prime Minister and President Rouhani. He also will be aware of our decision to appoint the chargé d’affaires last month. I can inform the House that our chargé d’affaires, Mr Ajay Sharma, visited Iran this week on 3 December. We are hoping that the chargé d’affaires from Iran, Mohammad Hassan Habibollah-zadeh, will visit the United Kingdom this month.
Project Tempora
Lord Soley Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Baroness Warsi
It is interesting that the noble Lord interprets it in that way but I think he would also accept that it would be inappropriate for me to comment on intelligence matters, which includes any comments on the project.
Lord Soley (Lab)
Will the Minister take back what is troubling so many of us, which is that there has not been an acknowledgment yet by the Government of the need for a major discussion about the way we exercise oversight? It is not just the issue of accountability; it is also because of the almost terrifying fact that something like 60,000 files were available to some 800,000 people. This is supposed to be secret, even top secret. It is a nonsense and dangerous from that point of view, as well as the accountability. Please can she tell her colleagues in government that we need a full discussion on the accountability and the way we are doing it, because at the moment it is not working.
Baroness Warsi
I assure the noble Lord that these discussions are taking place, although not necessarily in the format he would like. Indeed, only this morning I had a round table with a number of NGOs and human rights activists who work in the area of freedom of expression on the internet and how that overplays with these kinds of allegations. These conversations are ongoing, and part of the appearance of the three intelligence chiefs at the Intelligence and Security Committee meeting was to do with that. I think the noble Lord would also accept that this is about perception —that leaks and the kind of information we have seen create a sense in the mind of the public that something is not quite right. It is wrong therefore for us to in any way play up to that by starting to comment on individual intelligence matters.
Syria
Lord Soley Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Warsi
My noble friend will be aware that the largest humanitarian appeal ever has been launched as a result of the situation in Syria. The United Kingdom has made the largest contribution it has ever made to a single humanitarian appeal—£350 million. Indeed, the Secretary of State for International Development was in Lebanon earlier this week pledging further support for Syrian refugees in Lebanon. The long-term solution is to resolve the political situation on the ground so that these people are allowed to return. There are more than 4 million people displaced within Syria and 1.7 million displaced outside it. There is no conceivable way, even as an international community, that we could meet the housing needs of that many people. The solution has to be to create the climate for them to return to their own homes.
Lord Soley
Is the Minister aware that the reason that the Russians are reluctant to set a date, and they are reluctant, is that they want the Assad regime to regain as much control of territory as it can to strengthen its hand in negotiations? That cannot be good for Syria or anyone else in the long run, but we need to be realistic about it. There is a reluctance to set a date because the regime wants to extend its control on the land so that it can negotiate from a position of strength.
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, I cannot hypothesise about the reasoning for the Russian’s position. Of course, we have different views on handling this crisis, but we have shared fundamental aims. We are both committed to ending the conflict, to stopping Syria fragmenting, to letting the Syrian people decide who governs them and to preventing the growth of violent extremism. We are hopeful that, because we are committed to the same aims, we can reach an agreement on how to get there.
Pakistan: Religious Violence
Lord Soley Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Soley
I agree with a great deal of what has been said. I commend the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, on the way he spoke and his well known commitment to freedom and religious tolerance. Let us deal with the political point first. I think that we all accept that Pakistan came very near to being a failed state with nuclear weapons. As the noble Lord, Lord Desai, hinted, there are indications of a movement away from that towards being a more stable state. We must do all that we can to encourage that, and I know that the Government, as did the previous Government, are doing all that they can to help development and structure the rule of law.
The problem then becomes the issue of religion. We need to discuss that more openly, and I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, for the way in which she has raised this issue in public. At times, we tip-toe around it, for understandable and good reasons, because we are afraid of making a difficult situation worse or because we do not have the necessary depth of understanding and are afraid about making statements that might be misunderstood. Yesterday we saw an example in Iran, where a religious leader decided to exclude certain people from standing in the forthcoming elections. That is based on the assumption that the state is run on a religious guidance principle and that there is not a political judgment below that. I take the view that religions—not just Islam, but most religions—are a form of ideology. The problem then becomes how far you pursue that in a very heavy ideological way and how tolerant you can be of minorities. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, has indicated a number of ways. When it becomes very authoritarian, religious minorities of any type are vulnerable.
I follow what the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, said in response on the Statement on Syria on Monday on the Floor of the House. I asked how we dealt with the struggle between Sunni and Shia, and she indicated that in her background that difference between them was not a problem some 20 years ago. I agree with that; I knew of the differences, but I was not aware of any problem. I have certainly become aware of them strongly in recent years. What troubles me—and I had difficulty getting figures on this—is that well over 10 million Muslims have been killed in conflict, mainly in countries that have a majority Muslim faith. The majority have been killed not by Jews, Hindus, Christians, westerners, Russians, Chinese or anyone else, but by other Muslims.
We have to face the fact that a struggle is going on within Islam for its heart and soul. I am clear about whose side I would be on in this. I believe strongly in the rule of law and democratic principles, so I do not want to see the extremist ideology win in such circumstances. However, the question for a country like Britain—or, indeed, for people within Islam itself who do not want to see that happen is this: how do you respond to it? It is immensely difficult.
Britain has an impressive record of close relationships with Pakistan and, indeed, with many other states where Islam is the predominant force. We have many people who hold to Islamic values here. As we know, it is not just one of the fastest growing religions in the world, it is also one of the fastest growing religions in the United Kingdom. That might give us some influence. Perhaps what I was heading towards on Monday last with my question about Syria to the Minister is this: could we not play a role in what is almost a civil war within Islam in setting up discussions between the competing factions in a safe situation; that is, in Britain? That is because, frankly, they cannot do that in Pakistan. If you tried to arrange meetings between the Sunnis and the Shias in Pakistan in its current state, or indeed in Iraq or Syria, everyone would be in acute danger. We have seen that in the assassinations, bomb attacks and so on. There is a case for looking to see whether we can help, and that requires using the established leaders of Islam within the UK who recognise that there is a struggle for the heart and soul of Islam. It is a great religion. Although I do not like religions of any type—I am not religious and never have been—I recognise the importance of religion to many people. When people belonging to a religion are caught up in violent disputes that involve their own people being killed, we need to think of ways of helping them to discuss their problems in a more constructive manner. We have to face the fact that a struggle is going on within Islam for the heart and soul of Islam. I am clear about whose side I would be on in this. I believe very strongly in the rule of law and democratic principles, so I do not want to see the extremist ideology win in circumstances like this. However, the question for a country like Britain or, indeed, for people within Islam itself who do not want to see that happen is this: how do you respond to it? It is immensely difficult.
Britain has an impressive record of close relationships with Pakistan and, indeed, with many other states where Islam is the predominant force. We have many people who hold to Islamic values here. As we know, it is not just one of the fastest growing religions in the world, it is also one of the fastest growing religions in the United Kingdom. That might give us some influence. Perhaps what I was heading towards on Monday with my question about Syria to the Minister is this: could we not play a role in what is almost a civil war within Islam in setting up discussions between the competing factions in a safe situation; that is, in Britain? Frankly, they cannot do that in Pakistan. If you tried to arrange meetings between the Sunnis and the Shias in Pakistan in its current state, or indeed in Iraq or Syria, everyone would be in acute danger. We have seen that in the assassinations, bomb attacks and so on.
There is a case for seeing whether we can help, and that requires using the established leaders of Islam within the UK who recognise that there is a struggle for the heart and soul of Islam. It is a great religion. Although I do not like religions of any type—I am not religious and never have been—I recognise the importance of religion to many people. When people belonging to a religion are caught up in violent disputes that involve more of their own people being killed than are killed by others, we need to think of ways to helping them to discuss their problems in a more constructive manner.