Tunisia and European Council

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, the Prime Minister made it clear that he believes that ISIL and Daesh are actually a threat to the existence of our nation at the moment. I have to say I do not see it in that way, but he has said that. Clearly that means—rather like the last time we had such a threat, which was the Second World War and the Cold War—one has to look at spending priorities in a totally different way, and things such as foreign aid, education, the National Health Service and welfare have to take a hit because we need to spend money on defence and security. However, my question is more specific. When we started our air campaign in Iraq, we said that we would not do attacks into Syria unless something specific—an atrocity or something—happened. Those of us in the military pointed out it made no military sense not to do attacks into Syria. Is this now being looked at again so that we have some more cohesive aspect to what should be a much bigger overall strategic plan, which a number of us have talked about?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I think what the Prime Minister said was that ISIL presents an existential threat to the United Kingdom. In response to the point that the noble Lord makes about military action and intervention and expanding on what we are already doing in the area, as he knows, the House of Commons was given an opportunity to consider whether we should get involved militarily in Syria and decided against that action. We believe that what we are doing right now is an appropriate and a very valid and important contribution to the fight against ISIL. Ultimately, we believe—and the international community feels—that to properly combat the threat of terrorism that emanates from ISIL there needs to be better governance in these countries. That is going to take a long time, and we need to support the people in the relevant countries to form the kind of representation of all the people that will lead to stability in those areas.