Oral Answers to Questions

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

The report by the Select Committee on Work and Pensions and the Select Committee on Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy concluded that the directors, not the Government, were responsible for the fact that Carillion failed and that the Government had made a competent job of clearing up the mess. I refer the hon. Gentleman again to the fact that independent research commissioned by the last Labour Government showed savings to taxpayers of, on average, between 20% and 30% from outsourcing, compared with undertaking tasks in house. That is money that can go back into frontline public services.

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

2. Whether he has made an assessment of the operation of recent voter ID pilots; and if he will make a statement.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

7. Whether he has made an assessment of the operation of recent voter ID pilots; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)]

We are encouraged by the data from the returning officers and the statements they have made indicating that the pilots were a successful test of the implementation of voter ID. The Electoral Commission will publish its evaluation in July and the Cabinet Office will conclude its own evaluation at the same time.

[Adam Holloway]

Does the Minister agree that additional measures should be brought in, given that the issue affects the vulnerable, the elderly and, in my constituency, ethnic minorities?

[Chloe Smith]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s commitment, which I share, to helping voters to be able to cast their ballots in a way that also protects the integrity of the wider system. Let us never forget that that is not only an individual advantage, but in the collective interest.

EU Referendum: Electoral Law

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point. I hope he will produce the evidence that he says he has to hand, and allow the matter to be investigated thoroughly. Otherwise he will be at risk of simply trying to muddy the water, and I am sure that he is not trying to do that.

If the Electoral Commission did indeed interpret the law correctly, we should note that Open Democracy also states:

“As a registered Leave campaigner, Grimes was allowed to spend”

£625,000

“during the referendum. Earlier this year a Vote Leave source told a parliamentary committee that it had enlisted Mr Grimes’s BeLeave campaign because it was close to breaching its £7 million spending limit and wanted to ensure all the money it had been given would be used. Under UK electoral law, this is fine. The Electoral Commission has ruled that such donations are allowed—so long as there was no ‘plan or other arrangement’ between Darren Grimes and Vote Leave about how the money was spent.”

In other words, one organisation, Vote Leave, can pass a huge amount of money to another, just before it would break the legal limit if it carried on spending. Although that second organisation is very familiar with the activities of the Vote Leave organisation—indeed, co-located with it, using the same supplier for the delivery of targeted messages and, presumably, the same or a remarkably similar specification for the work that Vote Leave pays for—the law says that the two are not acting in concert. If that is a correct interpretation, or indeed if that is how the Electoral Commission will interpret the law once it has considered the new evidence, I must say that I think the law is an ass and will need to be changed, because what it means, in effect, is that there is no limit to the amount that third parties can spend on supporting the main designated campaign organisation in any future referendums.

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

I would love to hear what the “new evidence” is. It is coming from some very junior people who are currently making contradictory claims on different television programmes. Let us hear what it is, and let us leave it to the Electoral Commission. It has already cleared this twice.

[Tom Brake]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman was not concentrating on what I said earlier, and I forgive him if that is the case. I said very clearly that the new evidence had been provided by three people who were at the heart of BeLeave and Vote Leave, and who were probably the only people who were working for BeLeave. Let us face it: this was not a large organisation. It was an organisation that had a handful of people working for it. I suspect that they know more about BeLeave’s activities than anyone in this place, which is why I have referred the matter to the Electoral Commission and the police so that they can carry out appropriate investigations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tommy Sheppard]

I agree, and on the email it says “official”, so there can be no question that the Prime Minister did not know what Stephen Parkinson was saying. I have written to the Government today to demand that this young man be apologised to for the actions that have been taken. That is the very least that we can expect. Most reasonable people in this country will be wondering why Stephen Parkinson has not already been sacked, quite frankly, and in many other companies and areas of life, that is exactly what would happen.

[Adam Holloway]

Look, let the Electoral Commission do its investigation. Why is this House trying to pre-empt it? No one should be sacked until we actually have a decision.

[Tommy Sheppard]

I was not talking about the Electoral Commission investigation. I was not talking about the allegations of collusion between Vote Leave and BeLeave. I was talking about a senior official of the Government exposing somebody for being gay in response to their blowing the whistle on what has been happening in Government. That speaks to the character of this Government, who have hours, rather than days, to claw this back and put it right. I hope that when the Minister gets to her feet she will say that the Government will respond to these concerns, speak to Mr Parkinson and take the appropriate action—and I cannot see any other action possible than to say that this man is no longer fit to hold office in government.

What happens when the Electoral Commission does its investigation and comes to its conclusion? Even if the collusion is proven and the regulations were breached, it will not change the result of the referendum; it will not be overturned. Some on the pro-Brexit side seem to believe that the referendum was mandatory on Parliament and the Government. It never was—it was an advisory referendum—so even were the result to be challenged, it would not call into question the many decisions on article 50 and leaving the EU that Parliament has already voted on. I do believe, however, that it would add further poison to the well of British democracy, coming on top of the most mendacious campaign in political history—that fought in 2016—when people were lied to about what it would mean to leave the EU.

Not only were these lies told—lies that were not worth the bus they were written on, frankly—but the regulations and laws governing the conduct of the referendum might have been broken. The Minister needs to reassure us that the Electoral Commission will have all the resources it requires to get to the bottom of this matter. That said, I think that there is already enough evidence—because I presume that the whistleblowers’ statements will be sworn under oath—for this matter to be referred to the Crown Prosecution Service and for a police investigation to take place. That investigation needs to interview under caution the players in this debate, including those who now sit in government holding the highest offices in the land.

That brings me to the Foreign Secretary, who has chosen not to be present. Others have commented on how quick off the mark he was to denounce the allegations and the new information. I am left wondering whether this was just his attempt to be the English Donald Trump or whether this is someone using one of the highest offices in the land to bring their power and authority to bear to intimidate those who would criticise him and make these allegations, and that is very worrying indeed. I want an assurance from the Government today that if the Electoral Commission finds that there has been collusion and breach, those Cabinet Ministers involved in the management of the Vote Leave campaign will resign from office and take no further part in government. It would be ridiculous and would undermine our credibility if the Foreign Secretary and others, having been involved in a breach of our electoral law, were then to seek to hold the highest office in the land.

Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) raised a very important matter. As we uncover this, we will find more traces of dark money creeping into our electoral system, and we need the utmost transparency if we are to resist it. I therefore invite the Minister to comment on what action she and her colleagues will be taking with regard to the Constitutional Research Council and the money it siphoned to the Democratic Unionist party for the Brexit campaign. This is an organisation that has no website, no published report, no published accounts—it is the very definition of shady, and it is not something that we should accept in our democracy.

UK-EU Renegotiation

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am sure the voice of the Humber could help me with that, if he really wanted to. Britain is a member of a number of international organisations, some of which involve our having obligations towards them. We have ceded some of our sovereignty and our obligations to NATO, yet we do not see that as a cap in hand issue; we see it as a cornerstone of our security. What I am trying to secure here with Europe is that we are in the things we want to be in and we are out of the things we do not want to be in. If that is the case, we are not weaker, less powerful or less sovereign as a result; we are more able to get things done for the people who put us here.

[Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. No, no, I am always very keen to hear from the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr Holloway), but he only toddled into the Chamber some considerable way into the statement, as his puckish grin testifies. We will hear from him on a subsequent occasion. Perhaps we can just thank the Prime Minister for his patience and his courtesy. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I would like to thank all colleagues for taking part. There will be many opportunities further to debate these important matters, but let us give thanks where they are due.

ISIL in Syria

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

There have been many powerful speeches, and I admire those people who have such a certainty of view about this, which I do not share. I suspect that for that reason many people may find it difficult to support what I am going to say. I am full of doubts, as I think are many good people in the country listening to this debate.

I was talking only yesterday to an Arab friend who lives and works in the region and loves his country. He said, “Really, I think you in the British Parliament are not being honest. You have got to go to war, if you want to, on the basis that your closest friends and allies, the French and Americans, have asked you. If that’s what you want to do, go ahead and do it, but bear in mind that when you go to war, you almost certainly won’t make any difference, and you might make things a lot worse.”

I am afraid that is the rather nuanced opinion of many people in the middle east. I know there is a sense of wanting to be in solidarity with one’s own friends in this Chamber, but I was in this Chamber during that Iraq debate and I was one of only 15 Conservative MPs who voted against. I have not regretted that decision. I have been there and talked to people who have been horribly scarred by war. Tens of thousands of people have lost mothers and sons as a result of our actions, so we have to learn from history. We have to learn the lessons of our involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. We have to approach this debate ultimately not from a party point of view or from a point of view of what is important for our own country, but with a deep sense of humanity and love of peace and care for some of the most vulnerable and traumatised people in the world. We have made terrible decisions that have made the lives of many people in the middle east much worse. So this is a nuanced decision.

I accept that our military involvement will make some difference. I will not repeat all the arguments. I am not competent to comment on Brimstone missiles, but I am sure they will help to degrade ISIL. I accept the argument that, if we are bombing ISIL in Iraq, why not in Syria? There is a difference, however, because in Iraq we are supporting a legitimate if inadequate Government, as well as ground forces, whereas the situation in Syria is hopelessly confused. I am afraid we cannot forget that many of us were asked to bomb Mr Assad two years ago. I have heard the phrase, “My enemy’s enemy is my friend,” but, “My enemy’s enemy is my enemy,” is rather more complex.

[Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

I do not know whether my hon. Friend agrees with me, but so often we have gone into these places with minimal knowledge of the realties on the ground. For example, most of the people whom we call Daesh in Syria and Iraq are the ordinary Sunnis. We have to give them a more meaningful choice than living under either ISIS or Shi’a militias.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I agree. I think we are rather arrogant in the way we look at this debate. We want to call ISIL Daesh, but we have to understand that, for whatever reason, many people in the Muslim world who live in the region support ISIL. We find that an extraordinary point of view.

If, by some miracle, our bombing campaign made a difference and we took Raqqa—although, as my right hon. Friend the Chairman of the Defence Committee has explained, there are no credible ground forces to achieve that—what would happen? Would ISIL go away? No, because ISIL is an idea, not just a criminal conspiracy. There are many people in the Muslim world who support this flawed ideology, and we in the west and in this House are not going to defeat it just by military action.

I am not a pacifist. My duty is not to my friends in France, much as I love them, or to the traumatised people in the middle east, but to the people we represent. If, in his summing up, the Foreign Secretary can convince us, not that some people are inspired, but that there is a direct threat to this country from Raqqa and that there is a command and control structure that is planning to kill our people—[Interruption.] Hon. Members are nodding. Let us hear it from the Secretary of State. If we are acting in self-defence, by all means let us go to war, but let it be a just war, defending our people and in a sense of deep humanity and love of peace.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

I apologise for my voice, Mr Speaker, which is hurting me, but I wanted to speak today. Some 12 years ago, I sat over there listening to a very eloquent and emotional speech from the then Prime Minister. We Back Benchers had a lot of pressure on us in that debate, even more than there has been today. I listened to another eloquent speech from a Prime Minister today. Last time I felt an instinct that what we were doing in Iraq was wrong, and I feel that same instinct today.

I am certainly not a pacifist. I was one of the few people, along with Paddy Ashdown, who called for the bombing in Bosnia long before it was Government policy, and I am certainly not a supporter of terrorism, coming as I do from Northern Ireland. I hope the Prime Minister will apologise to me personally, in private, for accusing people such as me, who might be going to vote against this motion, of being in some way in support of terrorism. I take that very personally.

Lots of Members have cited generals and all sorts of important people, but I wish to mention a constituent of mine who was a soldier for nearly 20 years in the regular Army. He wrote to me to say:

“I view with dismay the current clamour to re-engage”

in this war. He says that when we went into Iraq

“I was assured that we had a superb plan that could not fail”,

that when we went to Afghanistan

“I was told, ‘this is nothing like Iraq’, and when the RAF were sent to bomb Libya they were told ‘this is nothing like Afghanistan.’”

They always get it wrong.

I would not be against bombing to remove Daesh if I really believed it would work, but so many questions need to be answered convincingly and if they cannot be, I believe the action is futile. Do we know who our enemy really is? Is it just Daesh or is it all or many of the multiple jihadi groups? Do we know who our allies are? Is Russia our ally? Is Assad perhaps one now? Is our ally anyone who is against Daesh? Do our allies share our objectives and those of all our other allies? We do not and cannot know that, as it is at least a five-sided war. Can we trust our allies? That shows the trouble with alliances of convenience. What happens when our allies’ interests conflict with ours, as they will? Do we then bomb our allies? Will they bomb us? Are Daesh sufficiently concentrated for us to bomb them without an unacceptable loss of civilian life? Is Daesh under a centralised command structure that can be destroyed through bombing? When Daesh is removed from an area, who will come in to rebuild, repopulate and keep the peace? That issue has been raised by so many people.

[Mr Holloway]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Kate Hoey]

No. Will removing Daesh from Syria by bombing reduce worldwide and, in particular, UK jihadism? Will it increase it, as Muslims react to the deaths? Why do we always have to be the policemen going in first? I have not yet heard a genuinely convincing answer to any of those questions. If they remain unanswered and we still go ahead and bomb civilians, we are being as unthinking and reactionary as some of those people we are fighting.

Daesh is an organisation that has no civilised values. We are fighting a cult that has no moral values whatsoever. Bombing will not change that. We have to look at other, cleverer ways and we have to spend some of the money that we are going to spend on this bombing on guarding our borders and making sure that the work against jihadism and fundamentalism in this country is carried out. There is no moral case for this action and I will be supporting the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

Since I was 18, I have spent a large portion of my life as a soldier, television reporter and MP in some of the more unhappy places in the world. What has struck me is the blindingly obvious point that war and conflict are the result of broken politics. Over the past 15 years or so, our country has made some disastrous decisions that have left tens of millions of people in the middle east and north Africa in a very difficult position.

One middle eastern ambassador told me last week on the Foreign Affairs Committee’s trip to Iraq and Turkey, “You have to diagnose a sickness properly in order to treat its root causes. Palliative therapy is not a cure.” So what do we have in Syria and Iraq? When we think of ISIS, we think of Jihadi John, with the terrifying offering in orange in front of him, but the reality is that ISIS is mostly made up of the Sunni populations of those areas. Our challenge, if we ever want to cure this problem, is to separate those disfranchised Sunnis from what we might call core ISIS.

We have got to give the Sunni in the middle east a different choice. At the moment their choice is ISIS and security from Shi’a militias, or Shi’a militias. Of course airstrikes play their part, but to me they are much lower down the “to do” list. We must have a proper political and security strategy so that we can separate those mass populations from ISIS. Those people are ultimately our ground troops against ISIS, and until we realise that, we’re stuffed.

Last week a very senior coalition commander in Iraq told us:

“We have a military campaign. We don’t have a political one.”

Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the US are all doing their own thing. Think about that—I do not have time to go through it now.

Politicians in the Chamber this afternoon have given expert opinions on military matters, but we have come up a bit short when talking about the politics. Nevertheless, it is mainly politics that will fix this situation. The biggest thing that the United Kingdom can do right now is to use the influence that we think we do not have to talk to people seriously, so that we have a proper long-term strategy that results in a cure. Bombing can only ever be palliative. [Interruption.] I cannot take an intervention because I’m done.

[Mr Speaker]

We are extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Most helpful indeed.

Iraq Inquiry

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

I understand absolutely that that is the hon. Gentleman’s position, but our position should be different, and this is where Britain differs from a country like Denmark. First, we should be investing in knowledge—investing in knowledge in the Foreign Office, which means ensuring that there are proper language allowances and that we dismantle the grisly core competency framework for promotion, and that we get out of the situation of there being only three out of 15 ambassadors in the middle east who can speak Arabic.

[Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

I do not know whether my hon. Friend remembers this, but in 2007 or 2008, I think, there were no fluent Pashto speakers across the Foreign Office, the MOD or DFID in Afghanistan.

[Rory Stewart]

There were absolutely no fluent Pashto speakers, and only two operational Dari speakers in our embassy in Kabul.

We must also develop the habit of challenge.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

I have no idea of the reason for the report’s delay—I do not think anyone has—but it does matter. This should not be about a pre-election period, or about bashing Blair or anyone else. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) has said, more than 150,000 civilians and 632 British troops died in two completely idiotic wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we need the Chilcot report in order to ensure that we do not make the same mistakes again. The report will go some way towards helping us to work out why we made those mistakes. We need to learn.

It was Sir Basil Liddell-Hart who talked of the motivation to achieve the task in hand and of effective leadership from those placed in authority. Our failure in Iraq was caused, first and foremost, by a failure of effective political and military leadership. From what I have seen on the ground in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, we seem to have a deeply dysfunctional situation right across what my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) referred to as the “full panoply of the government machine”. I shall divide this into four parts: an inexperienced class of political leaders; ambitious civil servants, most of whom have since been promoted; “can-do” military officers, most of whom have also since been promoted; and experts who were ignored or marginalised.

I shall start by talking about the inexperienced political leaders. Obviously, I am not including the right hon. and brave Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) in that category. There were no experts at the Prairie Chapel ranch when Tony Blair and George Bush agreed to go to war—when Tony Blair basically allowed his mate to drive the car while drunk. You don’t do that. Then there was the dodgy dossier, written late at night like something produced during a politics, philosophy and economics essay crisis. The line that the analyst had written in the intelligence report to say that the missiles no longer existed was completely ignored. We somehow convinced ourselves and most people in the House that there were weapons of mass destruction, and I think most people voted in good faith.

We then went on to convince ourselves that the reason we were in Afghanistan was that we were fighting them over there so that we would not have to fight them over here. Only about two years ago, after I had given a presentation to the National Security Council, an immensely senior person in our Government took me aside and said, “Adam, are you really saying that the Taliban aren’t a threat to the UK?” That revealed the most fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between the Taliban and al-Qaeda. It almost beggars belief. If I told you who had asked me that question, you would be appalled. [Hon. Members: “Go on! Name them!”] No. We cannot be too unfair on the politicians, because I think that they have been badly served by ambitious civil servants.

Some of those civil servants had a “good news only” culture. General Petraeus spoke in that context of putting lipstick on pigs. A Secretary of State for Defence was at a briefing at Basra air station attended by two of my friends. Apparently—he denies this—he banged the table and said, “Why have you not been telling me the truth? I had no idea that things were quite so bad.” There is a sense that civil servants play back what the politicians want to hear. I shall never forget the briefing in Helmand when we were told everything was going well. A few weeks later, when I was back in Kabul on a private visit, I was in a bar and the same official bounded up to me and said, “Adam, I’m really sorry about that briefing in Helmand. The thing is, we just don’t get promoted for telling the truth.”

The same is true of senior military officers. I do not think anyone thought about our responsibility to the people of Basra after the invasion. Indeed, one of my friends was on the recce in 2004 before we went into Helmand. When he got back to England, he went to see a very senior guy at Permanent Joint Headquarters. That very senior general asked him, “So, what’s the insurgency like in Helmand?” My friend replied, “Well, there isn’t one, but I can give you one if you want one.”

We have the same sort of thing with helicopters. Senior military people are constantly saying, “We’ve got enough helicopters to do the job”. We all remember the deaths of Rupert Thorneloe and Trooper Joshua Hammond. Before he died, Rupert wrote in a report of “unnecessary…road moves”. He stated:

“This increases the IED threat and our exposure to it.”

And yet, as I have said, the top brass were saying that we had enough helicopters to do the job.

A senior British general who had been in Kabul attended a Defence Committee meeting, at which he basically tore my head off for being a nay-sayer. When I went back to Kabul a few weeks later on a private trip, I went into his office and said, “General, are we still winning? Ha ha ha!” He said, “If we f***ing are, I’ll be dead by the time we do.” So there was a real mismatch.

We also ignore the experts. Of the people who knew anything about Iraq, who suggested it was a good idea to dismantle Ba’athists from the various structures of government? Nobody thought about that. As a soldier I was in Iraq before the war in 1991, and in 2003 I was back on the ground in Iraq, partly with Marie Colvin, who was killed in Syria a couple of years ago. I will never forget driving into Mosul literally in the minutes the city was collapsing. It was the first occasion in my time in journalism that I was nursing a submachine gun under the chair of my four-wheel drive. There was the odd body on the streets, chaos and a threatening, nasty environment. American jets were coming down really low to intimidate. I went to the police station, where there were all these Saddam lookalikes. The chief one said to me, “You’re looking for the Americans, aren’t you?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “When you find the Americans, can you get them to send someone up here to tell us what we should do?” That was an amazing thing to hear from an Iraqi an hour after the city had, in effect, capitulated. So I found the American and did my business with the colonel and I said to him, “The Iraqi police brigadier wants you to go up there and tell him what his instructions are.” The American colonel said, “You can tell him to go f*** himself.”

In Afghanistan, we ignored the experts. I was there in 1984, the year before I went to university, and we had plenty of experts on Afghanistan then, but they were all ignored later. My hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), a former Foreign Office official, had been living in Kabul. He spoke a great deal of sense about it, but we ignored him. We ignored people such as Semple and Patterson, after their failed attempt to make a deal with the Taliban, until it was just too late. We ignored the Russians and their ambassador Kabulov, who had been there for a decade. I remember sitting, in his house in Kabul, with the Afghan general who held that city for two years after the Russians left. He had four mobile phones in front of him. I said, “So, presumably the British have been asking you how to run Helmand?” He looked down at his phones and said, “I am still waiting for them to ring.” We still have not rung him.

In Syria, we are now largely ignoring the Foreign Office officials who, over the past few years, have been deployed forward with the Syrian opposition. I am talking about those who argue that ISIL is fundamentally a political and counter-terrorist problem, not a military problem: ISIL is a function of broken politics of the middle east. Those people are ignored.

I have not got much time left, so let me return to the importance of Chilcot. Clearly, Iraq went very badly wrong, and, similarly, the NATO deployment to Afghanistan was a disaster. Our overall approach since 9/11 has given this country an enormous level of strategic risk. After the chemical outrages in Damascus we were asked to bomb the Assad regime, yet a year later we were asked to bomb his enemies. So it is little wonder that the public do not have much confidence when Ministers tell them that they deserve their backing. As my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border says, we need to get serious and to learn. I hope that Chilcot goes some way to making the people of Gravesham safer.

Oral Answers to Questions

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Wednesday 7th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

That is a commentary on the amount of noise. Let us have a bit of order for Mr Adam Holloway.

[Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

T5. Will the Minister update us on the timing of the publication of the Chilcot report?

[Mr Maude]

I cannot really add to what Sir John Chilcot has said. That independent inquiry is under the control of the inquiry members. I can say that we have responded to every request for extra resources; none has been turned down. I would just add that if the previous Government had launched the inquiry at the time it was requested, it could have been finished and could have reported long ago.

Iraq: Coalition Against ISIL

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

I believe that when Members think of ISIS, they think of a foreign fighter, dressed in black, holding before him a terrified offering dressed in orange—a kind of spectre or ghost, screaming at us out of cyberspace. Last week I was in Iraq with my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng), and an Iraqi said to me, “You’ve got to see ISIS in Iraq like this: it’s the good, the bad and the ugly.” The good are the Sunni tribesmen, rising up against the sectarian Government in Baghdad, the bad are the foreign jihadists, and the ugly are the former Ba’athist regime people whom my regiment fought in the first Gulf war. Who will kick out the bad, the jihadists? The only people on the ground who will be able to do that are the good and the ugly—the tribes and the Ba’athists.

Time and time again, we see that the only way to remove people like ISIS is without the consent of the local people. It is overwhelmingly a political problem, even if it is a security headache. It is not a first-order clash between the west and the Muslim world but one between neighbours. In Iraq, it is a sectarian conflict. ISIS did not take over Iraq’s second biggest city by magic or by force of arms; it took it over because the local people allowed it to. One of my friends from the war in 2003 said that for people in Mosul, there is very little difference between living under a sectarian Shi’a Government and living under ISIS. He said, “The only difference, actually, is that ISIS won’t let you smoke.” That might be overdoing it somewhat, but we have had only the most limited reports of Sunni resistance from inside the great swathe of territory that ISIS controls.

None of that excuses the extraordinary cruelty of ISIS, but before we even think about anything beyond emergency air strikes in Iraq and escalation into Syria, ought we not to stop and work out what needs to be done politically and how we might take the political ground back from ISIS? At Sandhurst, they taught us that military force is exercised to support political ends, and that politics should dictate the terms of military engagement. As we have heard, John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, has worked hard to put together a coalition, but if we tried to make up the worst way to start the campaign, it would be with headlines around the world, including the Muslim world, referring to “US-led air strikes”.

[Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Holloway]

I would love to.

[Mr Ward]

What the hon. Gentleman seems to be forgetting is that we have been invited and requested by a democratically elected Government to help to deal with a mess that many people, including me, believe we created. What should we do when they ask for that help—should we say, “We created that mess, but we are having nothing else to do with it. It is none of our business”?

[Mr Holloway]

A first step for the hon. Gentleman might be to join the Territorial Army and, in a year’s time, volunteer to serve in the region. Arab countries should be at the forefront of the fight, and we should think about how to help Iraqi and Syrian Sunnis gain security and a fairer deal, so that they eject ISIS themselves.

By not yet diving in completely, the western capitals have shown that they have learned something from the absolute disasters of Iraq and the NATO deployment to Afghanistan, and from our chaotic and inconsistent response to the Arab spring. However, we must ask ourselves what we are doing when the US Secretary of State seems to be chairing the effort.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s feeling that bombing can work only if there is a plan for what comes next, but I am not hearing from him what that should be. I am probably not the only Member in the Chamber who is not certain about how they will vote because they are not hearing enough about what happens next. I would like him to tell us what he thinks should happen.

[Mr Holloway]

That is a fair observation. There is no simple solution to any of this, but the answer will not come from something military that is led by the west. It will come from something political that is led by people within the region.

There is a huge amount that we can do, but it should mostly involve encouraging and enabling other people. It should not be a rerun of Iraq in 1991, when, although there was a grand coalition of Arab states, it was still led by the United States, or of 2003. If we are to win, the lead should come from within the region and should include a long-term political vision. Otherwise, step by small step, we will enter a much darker age of war and radicalisation.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Holloway]

No.

If the west fails to morph into the background, away from the military lead, I am afraid our vote today will drive our nation towards disaster.

Oral Answers to Questions

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Wednesday 26th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

Q14. I know that the Prime Minister is acutely aware that we are coming up to the 30th anniversary of the appalling carnage at the Golden Temple at Amritsar. What more can be done at last to bring someone to justice for the appalling events that followed across India?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right that what happened at Amritsar 30 years ago led to a tragic loss of life. It remains a deep source of pain to Sikhs everywhere and a stain on the post-independence history of India. We cannot interfere in the Indian justice system, nor should we. The most important thing we can do in this country is celebrate the immense contribution that British Sikhs make to our country, to our armed forces, to our culture and to our business life and celebrate what they do for this country.

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I would now like to make progress and conclude.

This is not Iraq. Yes, we must learn the lessons of Iraq, but we must not assume that the choices that we face to today are identical choices to those that we faced in 2003. This is not an attempt to barge our way into someone else’s war. We are not seeking to topple a dictator or to flex our muscles. We are not talking about putting British boots on the ground. As I said earlier, the motion is not an amber light for military action. That could only even happen by way of a separate debate and vote in the House.

Voting for the Government motion tonight will send a clear message that if and when a brutal regime kills its people with chemical weapons prohibited under international law, this Parliament believes that it cannot expect to do so with impunity. Iraq casts a long shadow, but it would be a double tragedy if the memory of that war now caused us to retreat from the laws and conventions that govern our world, many of which the United Kingdom helped to author. Because of our commitment to peace and stability around the world, we must now reaffirm our commitment to upholding those laws.

[Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

Am I alone in feeling a sense of unreality that we in here seem to be talking about intervening in a civil war in Syria, when the people out there are not?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As I said earlier, what we are talking about is simply seeking to find the best way to deter the further use, proliferation and more widespread use of these heinous and illegal chemical weapons. What has happened is without precedent. Assad has now used chemical weapons more frequently against his own people than any other state in living memory.

Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

I think there is a lot in what the hon. Gentleman says. This debate has produced many ideas and suggestions, and I hope IPSA will take them on board in deciding how the system might be changed.

We must also take into account that setting up IPSA was a very big task. We all acknowledge that there were bound to be teething problems, and hon. Members should recognise that a lot of hard work in a very short space of time has gone into establishing the organisation. I, for one, would simply want to say that in my experience all the IPSA staff I have met—I have visited the offices—and all the IPSA staff to whom I have spoken on the phone have been unfailingly helpful in trying to assist. The problem that brings us here today is clearly not the staff; it is the system itself—how it was designed and the ways in which it does not work.

If we ask Members, “Do you think IPSA is helping you to do your job,” which ought to be the real test, the clear answer we get—we have heard it today—is, “No, it is not.” It also seems that Members are not entirely sure that IPSA fully understands the work we do as Members of Parliament.

[Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

Members such as the saintly hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) have allowed the impression to be put about that expenses are, somehow, some sort of perk. In fact they are what we need in order to do our job. Before I entered the House, I worked for months, or years, with “Newsnight”, “World in Action”, “Panorama”, The Sunday Times and ITN, and what amazed me on arriving here was how many things that I needed to do my job had to be paid for from my own pocket, which was never the case when I worked in the media. I cannot think of any organisation that regularly expects one subset of its members to spend seven or eight hours at home every night on this issue. It is extraordinary.

[Hilary Benn]

The salaries of the staff who support us in our work are not by any reasonable definition an expense. In fairness to my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw, I do not think he was making that argument; that is an interpretation that others have sought to put on what has been said.

A number of issues have been identified both in this afternoon’s debate and elsewhere. The first is the expense of the whole system because of its complexity, the multiple checking, and the transaction cost to IPSA and Members of Parliament in trying to make it work. The second is the sheer amount of time it takes, in part because compared with the old system a lot of the inputting of data has been outsourced to Members of Parliament and their staff. The time taken in collecting, checking, clarifying, going online, copying and posting and so forth means MPs and their staff are spending too much time doing accounts, rather than holding the Government of the day—of whatever party—to account, which is what we are elected to this House to do. We know that some MPs do not claim back legitimate expenses because they are afraid of getting it wrong or because of the time it will take. Some also say they get contradictory advice, in that a claim might be accepted one week but not the next.

The third problem was the assumption at the beginning—we must all acknowledge that this is changing—that all MPs had a bottomless private pocket out of which they could pay bills before claiming the money back. They do not. Some people are still owed money, others have been overdrawn, and we should recognise that the situation is particularly difficult for new Members, who have additional costs because they are establishing offices for the first time.

Every one of us dislikes intensely the fact that the money is forced to go through our personal bank accounts. It should not, and that is another reason why the system has to change. The point has been made forcefully that we know of no other workplace where one would tell an employee—although we are not employees—to pay the rent or the photocopier bill out of their own resources, and then pay them back. That is why direct payment has to be the way forward.

The fourth problem is that the budgets set do not reflect in all cases the commitments that MPs already have, the work loads in their offices or the higher cost of renting offices in some parts of the country, some cities and some towns. One practical and simple step to help MPs would be to allow virement between the staffing, office rent and office costs budgets, because that would allow Members to make that judgment. The overall budget level needs to be looked at, because adding the 10% pension contribution has created a real problem. The argument was, “We have taken some other expenses out,” but I do not know many Members who claim them.

MPs who have been worried that they cannot meet their commitments to staff—the number of hours and so on—have been told that they can approach the contingencies fund. I hope that IPSA will in all cases, therefore, meet those costs out of contingencies, because that problem needs to be addressed.

We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) about the difficulties of trying to obtain paternity leave, and I know of problems with maternity leave, too. I echo what my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) said about consulting staff and the unions. We should recognise the enormous contribution that our staff make in supporting us and in doing a job on behalf of our constituents.

Fifthly, we have heard about the impact on family life. The fundamental truth is that MPs have to live and work in two separate places, and we should not make it difficult for MPs, their partners or their children to do so. On the problem that my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Tony Lloyd) raised, the current rules are utterly inconsistent, because they only partly acknowledge family life, paying for some things but not others.

Sixthly, there are the problems that arise because of the definition of London. We have already heard some of those cases, including the commuting distance at unsocial hours because of the unpredictability of House business. That needs looking at.

There is also the problem of what is known as extended travel, including by Opposition Front Benchers, which is an issue for us now, given the outcome of the election. The Opposition get Short money to help meet the costs of research and support, as the current majority governing party got over the previous 13 years. In addition, the Fees Office used to pay extended travel for Opposition Front Benchers and others, but when IPSA arrived it said, “No, we’re not going to pay that any more.” That prevents Opposition Front Benchers from doing their job, travelling the country to talk to people, listen and bring that experience and voice back to the House.

Another point, which affects all hon. Members, is that if we look at the IPSA rules on extended travel, we get the impression that it sees us only as constituency MPs. That is incredibly important, because we are also parliamentarians, and, if a matter in which we have an interest comes before the House, the ability to travel to gain knowledge and understanding—to listen, which is what we need to do as Members—is important. It is important that IPSA changes that interpretation. I have written to the chief executive to make that point.

I shall make three other points in conclusion. First, one difficulty we are grappling with is that each MP is different, a point that has been forcefully made. The way in which we work is different, and a system that does not reflect that is a system that is not working. Secondly, all that has an impact on people who have become MPs or might be thinking of doing so, a point that the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) made more eloquently than I can.

A battle was fought—the Osborne judgment has been referred to—and winning that £400 a year payment was a big step forward, so we should not go backwards now. We should remember that 19 years earlier Keir Hardie arrived in the House. As hon. Members will know, when he was spied and people looked at his clothes, they said, “Are you working on the roof?”, and he replied, “No, I’m working on the Floor.” We must not go back to the time when how much money we had determined whether we could undertake this job.

Thirdly, to be perfectly honest, I wish that we did not have to spend time debating what should be straightforward in any job, which is having the means to do the job. The fact that we are tells us that there is a problem that needs to be sorted out. That is why the review that IPSA is undertaking is an opportunity, just as this debate has been an opportunity for hon. Members to send a clear message.

I end by welcoming the fact that the chief executive, Andrew McDonald, has shown a willingness to engage in discussion about how things can change. I am confident that we can get change, but it needs to be the right change and it needs to happen soon.