European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Marquess of Lothian Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st February 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Marquess of Lothian (Con)]

My Lords, last June I voted to leave the European Union. After years of urgently needed reform of the Union being promised and never delivered, and finding ourselves on the path inexorably to ever-closer union, I decided that the time had come to leave and, thankfully, a majority of the British people took the same view. This has been and still is a marathon debate and we have heard an enormous number of views. Most of them I have seen as trying to refight the referendum all over again and I do not intend to be part of that argument. That argument has had its airing. I want to look forward to what is going to happen after the Bill is passed. The Bill will start the exit process simply and without frills. We do it no favours by hanging amendments on it. The process will be complex anyway and it will not be helped if this House appears to be making it even more complicated.

We have heard a lot in this debate and before about the need to set out a negotiating strategy publicly in advance. I learned during the peace process in Northern Ireland that successful international negotiations are better carried out under the radar. Attempts publicly to lay down the ambit of negotiations help only the other side. Equally, you do not negotiate with your cards face up on the table, much as Mr Barnier would like you to. You hold them close to your chest and play them at the best possible moment. No successful negotiations can be conducted if one side in those negotiations is at war with itself. I make this point in all seriousness. That presents an open target to the other side and we must think very carefully about how we deploy our feelings as we move forward. We have all expressed our views over these past months and I respectfully suggest—although, I have to say, not with great hope—that in the national interest we should now all exercise restraint and let the Government get on with it.

That is not all. There is another thing we need urgently to look at. We have a duty to think with imagination and self-belief about the future, not just our relations with Europe but our place in the world. The democratic decision to leave the EU provides an enormous opportunity to do this. Whether we seize it depends on whether or not we plan and prepare for it now. It will not happen if we are still fighting our old referendum battles. We must now put them behind us and look forward. It is not about just bilateral trade deals and rights of residence. Of course those are essential elements, which must be established as we move through the Brexit process and beyond, but we need to raise our eyes and our aspirations. We need urgently to decide how we see a future Britain. We need a new, bold view of what we want Britain’s role in the world to be—something which, I have to say, has rarely been possible within the EU. We should seek once and for all to end the culture that Churchill once described as being “adamant for drift” and to outline a clear new purpose towards which we can begin to plan now.

The history of our country was built on a combination of vision, dogged determination and the courage to take on the odds and win through. I believe that those elements are still part of our national psyche. Over these past years, they may have been somewhat dormant. The time has come to reawaken them. The Bill presages a momentous point in our history—whether for good or bad ultimately will depend on us. One thing is certain: successful momentous outcomes do not fall into your lap. You have to go out and earn them. We need a vision and a strategy and then that dogged determination and courage to make them a reality. That ultimately is how Brexit will be judged and, in the end, that is a challenge for us all.

Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament Report: Fusilier Lee Rigby

Marquess of Lothian Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

Religious bodies are excluded from the list of groups that will be bound by the Prevent measure that we are going to put on a statutory footing in the counterterrorism Bill because we are focusing on public bodies, and clearly religious faiths do not qualify in that area. That does not mean that all religious faiths do not have a responsibility to support us in preventing extremism and terrorism. Indeed, there is a wide range of different programmes, some of which are supported though the Department for Communities and Local Government. There is a lot of work going on in that area.

My noble friend asked about the Government’s response to the report being provided in January. Today, the Prime Minister’s Statement provided our initial response. The measures in the counterterrorism Bill being introduced tomorrow stem from two things: JTAC’s change of the security status earlier in the summer to the increased level that it is now and the creation of the extremism task force, which the Prime Minister put together following Lee Rigby’s death. The counterterrorism Bill contains measures that have been put together after careful thought and consideration. They are most definitely not a knee-jerk reaction to the ISC report published today.

[The Marquess of Lothian (Con)]

As one of your Lordships’ two representatives on the Intelligence and Security Committee, I welcome the commendation of our report by both the Government and the Opposition. I also welcome the announcement of further resources in this area, which is an important measure—although it is important to stress that such is the extent and pressure of the terrorist threat in this country at the moment that the prioritisation of threats to be dealt with by the agencies will have to continue.

I also make the point that despite the criticisms in this report of the agencies in regard to this particular case, on behalf of the committee I would like to commend our intelligence agencies for the sterling and tireless work they do in protecting all of us in this country from the threat of terrorism.

Finally, I raise a subject which has been raised before, which is what I call the capability gap in the agencies accessing communications from overseas communications service providers. Along with the measures that she has mentioned, I wonder whether the Minister would agree with me that in the end the United Kingdom has to use its influence with the United States through the exceptional co-operation on security between our two countries to find a final and lasting way to resolve this situation. Perhaps the Minister could say a word about what steps are being taken in that regard.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am certainly grateful to my noble friend for echoing the support for the security services and the work that they do to keep all of us safe in this country. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my noble friend for his work as a member of that committee. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Butler, from this House is also a member of the committee, and there are other Members of this House who have been previous members of that committee.

On my noble friend’s point about prioritisation still being necessary even in light of increased funding, that is right and will always be the case. There is a need for balancing prioritisation with not delaying the necessary steps. I quoted from the statement of the MI5 Director General in the Statement by the Prime Minister that I repeated. The security services do not have an army of people waiting to deploy; they have to use their resources all the time as best they see fit, and they are doing a very good job.

On the capability gap regarding communications service providers, which my noble friend mentioned, he is right that we have to use our influence at all levels and I can confirm to him and the House that that is happening right up to the highest level, including the Prime Minister with the President of the United States.

Iraq

Marquess of Lothian Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Marquess of Lothian (Con)]

My Lords, I have reservations about what is being proposed today. Of course, ISIS is the epitome of total evil and barbarity but the question today is whether the timing and nature of what is being proposed is right. The Prime Minister rightly tells us not to be “frozen with fear” by previous experiences in Iraq but there is a vast gulf between being frozen with fear and learning the “lessons of the past”. The main lesson is that this time the relevant questions must be answered before and not after action has commenced, and my reservations arise because I believe, with great respect to the Leader of the House, that many of the crucial questions have not yet adequately been answered.

The Prime Minister stressed the importance of a clear plan: a strategy to degrade and ultimately to destroy ISIS. Will bombing achieve this and will our involvement in that bombing enhance that strategy? Both past experience and senior military voices today suggest not. What, then, is our real objective? Is it containment? Possibly it is, but the lesson of past conflicts is that containment works only as long as the pressure is applied and, when that pressure is removed, the containment ends.

Can, in fact, ISIS be degraded and destroyed? Its armed capability probably can, but the Wahhabist philosophy behind it and from which it draws its inspiration and indeed much of its finance will persist. If bombing does not achieve that main strategic objective, what then? Will we admit failure and walk away? I doubt it. Or will we more likely apply more and more military pressure—the classic mission creep—ending up with British boots on the ground? How long will our involvement continue? The answer that we will be given is, “Until the job is done”. That is the same answer that was given in Afghanistan, in Iraq previously and in Libya, on each occasion with a studied failure to define what the job was.

Have we actually considered what we will leave behind? In the past, it has tended to be chaos and violence. Today, even if ISIS were successfully degraded, the fundamentalism would continue, as would the underlying conflict between Sunni and Shia. How would our intervention have affected these broader and potentially even more dangerous geopolitical issues and the very real terrorist threat that ISIS poses to us here in the United Kingdom through returning jihadis? What will be the effect of our involvement in bombing ISIS on potential jihadists here? We know already that so-called lone-wolf terrorists operate and pose a real and present threat in this country at this time. How much greater might that threat be if we are perceived as bombing fellow jihadis from a great height, and would the military degradation of ISIS in Iraq diminish the threat here? Again, I have to say that I doubt that. These are some of the questions to which the lessons of the past effectively demand satisfactory answers before we embark on another military intervention in the Arab world. Until they are answered, we should at least hold our fire.