Iraq

Lord Trimble Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trimble (Con)]

My Lords, I start by reinforcing the final point made by the noble Baroness; that is a hugely important issue, which I hope we will be able to follow up. One of the pleasures of speaking so late in a debate is that so much has already been said that I can just tick off who I agree with, and I have a little list to go through in that respect.

I thank the Minister for her opening speech; it was cool and comprehensive, and I found myself completely in agreement with it. The only snag was that there was a little hole in the speech called Syria and what we do when inevitably the actions that are going to be taken in Iraq, if they have any success, involve having to go to the source of the problem, which, as far as ISIL or ISIS is concerned, is in Syria. Inevitably that issue will have to come.

On that point, I agree with what my noble friend Lord Hurd has said about House of Commons votes. It will be ridiculous if the tactical situation on the ground is that we are getting close to the Syrian border but we then have to stop in order to have a meeting of Parliament at which to pass a resolution on the matter. We are getting to the point where tactics, not strategy, may be interfered with by politicians, which is not a good idea—the noble Lord again made that point. We must trust the military and leave it to it. In that respect, we need to step back a bit.

I find myself also in complete agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, in his excellent speech. I particularly enjoyed his comment at the end about ensuring that, with regard to the operation of our forces, there is a limit to political and juridical interference. I thought that that struck a particular nail on the head. I wish that I had heard similar sentiments from other members of our coalition partners, but maybe towards the end of this debate something else sensible will come from the Benches to my right.

A lot of the discussion concerned who we will deal with, talk to and make alliances with. This issue and the related issue of what to do with bodies that are involved in terrorist activity are questions not of whether we should talk, but of what the context is in which we talk, and whether we talk as part of a coherent political strategy, with a cold eye as to what the possibilities are and what the characters of the people we are talking to are.

I heard people suggest that we should turn to Russia. What on earth makes people think that Russia under Putin, subject to the sanctions we manage to impose upon it, will suddenly come and help us? I do not think there is much prospect of that happening. Iran has at least two faces. Rouhani presents a slightly reasonable face and looks as though he might be helpful in some respects, but the Revolutionary Guard bears a heavy responsibility for the present situation. To say it largely controls the situation may be overstating it, but it certainly had a very strong influence over Maliki. Although Maliki has gone, the militia groups that the Revolutionary Guard runs are still there and will still be a huge problem. We need to be careful about that.

Regarding cosying up to Assad, I noted what my noble friend Lord Howard said about what kind of a country we would be if we did not step up to the plate on this. What sort of country would we be if we started getting close to a person like that? We have to draw some limits.

Finally, I will mention two things. Turkey and Egypt are hugely important, especially Turkey. I hope we can get a view from the Front Bench this evening as to what Turkey is likely to do: it cannot stay on the sidelines much longer. We should also remember, when we discuss what should or might happen in the future, that unfortunately the enemy also has a vote.