Military Action Overseas: Parliamentary Approval

Debate between Lord Swire and Edward Leigh

Tuesday 17th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I have considerable sympathy with the hon. Gentleman’s argument. I have just said that I agree with the Father of the House that in general Parliament should have its say before action is taken.

I believe that there is so much opposition to what we are doing in the middle east because from the beginning western Governments have not really been cognisant of the sheer complexity of the situation. The Americans are against Assad and the Russians, and for the Kurds, many of whom are against Assad, but the Americans are also allied to the Turks, who are against the American-backed Kurds, and the Turks will do anything to stop the Kurds, even though both are friends of the Americans. That shows the sheer complexity of the situation.

I must quote the patriarchs of the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Greek Orthodox Church and the Melkite Catholic Church. They are based in Syria and rely on the Assad regime for protection and their continual survival. This can perhaps be dismissed, as they are subject to pressure from the regime, but their beatitudes say:

“It causes us great pain that this assault comes from powerful countries to which Syria did not cause any harm in any way.”

They are Christian leaders speaking in Syria. We should be very careful.

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

Did any of those Christian leaders in Syria comment on the atrocities visited on innocent children that we have seen in the past week?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I have just said that these Christian leaders are under great pressure from the Assad regime to toe the party line, as it were, but the fact is that their responsibility is to protect their own communities, which are under unprecedented pressure. We have to take some account of the pressure on Christian communities.

Last week, when the Vatican all-party group was in Rome, we had a meeting on persecuted Christians in Syria. We met every single expert from the refugee services and from all around the world who look into this issue, and they all told us that bombing was a dangerous thing to do with regard to opinion in the middle east and pressure from Muslims on the remaining Christian communities. I was struck when the representative of the Catholic Church in Pakistan said that the Catholic communities there would get it in the neck even more because, unfairly, so many Muslims do not differentiate between Russian bombs, American bombs, French bombs and British bombs. They say that the misery in Syria has been caused by foreign Christian powers raining bombs on their communities. That might be an unfair point of view, but it is generally held in the middle east.

This point has not been made by anybody else in the debate so far: I accept that the Government were right to act, and that they have powers under the royal prerogative to act, but I do not believe that we should pursue any more our objective of trying to change the Assad regime. If we then do act for humanitarian reasons—if we intervene to deter a possible chemical attack—we will have much more credibility in the middle east, because we would not be seen to be taking sides. That is the way forward.