Alex Salmond
Main Page: Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party - Gordon)Department Debates - View all Alex Salmond's debates with the Cabinet Office
(9 years ago)
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The Prime Minister
Mr Speaker, I will take dozens of interventions in the time that I have. I am conscious of not taking up too much time as so many people want to speak, but I promise that I will give way a lot during my speech. Let me make a bit of progress at the start.
In moving this motion, I am not pretending that the answers are simple. The situation in Syria is incredibly complex. I am not overstating the contribution our incredible servicemen and women can make; nor am I ignoring the risks of military action or pretending that military action is any more than one part of the answer. I am absolutely clear that we must pursue a comprehensive strategy that also includes political, diplomatic and humanitarian action, and I know that the long-term solution in Syria—as in Iraq—must ultimately be a Government that represent all of its people and one that can work with us to defeat the evil organisation of ISIL for good.
The Prime Minister
In a moment.
Notwithstanding all of that, there is a simple question at the heart of the debate today. We face a fundamental threat to our security. ISIL has brutally murdered British hostages. It has inspired the worst terrorist attack against British people since 7/7 on the beaches of Tunisia, and it has plotted atrocities on the streets here at home. Since November last year our security services have foiled no fewer than seven different plots against our people, so this threat is very real. The question is this: do we work with our allies to degrade and destroy this threat, and do we go after these terrorists in their heartlands, from where they are plotting to kill British people, or do we sit back and wait for them to attack us?
The Prime Minister
I will make some progress, and then I will give way.
In answering this question, we should remember that 15 months ago, facing a threat from ISIL in Iraq, the House voted 524 to 43 to authorise airstrikes in Iraq. Since then, our brilliant RAF pilots have helped local forces to halt ISIL’s advance and recover 30% of the territory ISIL had captured. On Monday, I spoke to the President of Iraq in Paris, and he expressed his gratitude for the vital work our forces were doing. Yet, when our planes reach the Syrian border—a border that ISIL itself does not recognise—we can no longer act to defend either his country or ours, even though ISIL’s headquarters are in Raqqa in Syria and it is from there that many of the plots against our country are formed.
Alex Salmond
The Prime Minister is facing an amendment signed by 110 Members from six different political parties. I have examined that list very carefully, and I cannot identify a single terrorist sympathiser among them. Will he now apologise for his deeply insulting remarks?
The Prime Minister
I have made it clear that this is about how we fight terrorism, and that there is honour in any vote.
We possess the capabilities to reduce this threat to our security, and my argument today is that we should not wait any longer before doing so. We should answer the call from our allies. The action we propose is legal, necessary and the right thing to do to keep our country safe. My strong view is that the House should make it clear that we will take up our responsibilities, rather than pass them off and put our own national security in the hands of others.
Alex Salmond (Gordon) (SNP)
“We cannot do nothing”, said the hon. Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter), but that is not an argument for doing anything; it is an argument for doing something that works, as part of an overall strategy that has some chance of success.
I find myself in the unusual position of complimenting some Conservative speakers. We have heard some fine speeches thus far, but some of the best have come from Conservative Members dissenting from the Government line. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) did the House a service by reminding us of the proportionality of what we are discussing. We are discussing adding perhaps an extra two Tornadoes and a segment of Typhoons to the bombing campaign in Syria. We make up 10% of the current flights in Iraq. As the right hon. Gentleman said, we will not make any conceivable difference to the air campaign in Syria, where there are too many planes already, chasing too many targets.
Alberto Costa
Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that the RAF has the capability to destroy Daesh’s supply and funding lines without causing any civilian casualties of note? If the RAF is capable of doing that, why is he opposing this?
Alex Salmond
I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman the number of times I have heard the argument about minimising the civilian casualties from a bombing campaign. I bow to no one on the skill of our pilots and the sophistication of weapons, but if he actually believes we are going to engage in a bombing campaign in a concentrated urban area such as Raqqa without there being civilian casualties, he is living on a different planet. As the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden said, there is no conceivable balance of difference that we are going to make to the campaign in Syria.
The Prime Minister said that we must not be haunted or hamstrung by past mistakes, by which he meant the war in Iraq. I am more interested in far more recent mistakes in terms of this House and its decision making and this Government and their decision making. First, we had last night’s mistake of describing opponents of the Government’s action as “terrorist sympathisers”. A hugely demeaning thing for a Prime Minister to do when he should be engaged in attempting to unite the country is to concentrate on accentuating divisions within the Labour party. Goodness knows, I have spent a lifetime in politics attacking the Labour party and replacing it, but I have not attacked its divisions on this issue because this is a matter of war and peace—it is about sending people into conflict. For a Prime Minister to demean himself in that way indicates that although he might be successful in dividing the Labour party, he will fail in uniting the country, and he should have apologised when given ample opportunity to do so.
The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), the Chair of the Defence Committee, reminded us in his speech that only two years ago the same Prime Minister came to this House asking to bomb the other side in the Syrian civil war. That can be called many things by right hon. and hon. Members but it is not the sign of a coherent military or political strategy. Another mistake, which is less thought of, was spending 13 times as much on bombing Libya as we did on reconstructing that country after the carnage, and the total disarray and dysfunction of society that resulted.
Mr Burrowes
Let us bring this on to more recent history. On 26 September 2014, the SNP’s parliamentary leader, the right hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) voted against the bombing of ISIL in Iraq. Would the right hon. Gentleman have joined in that position? Does he maintain the opposition to operations in Iraq against ISIL?
Alex Salmond
The SNP has been demonstrated to be correct, not least in Iraq, in being cautious about military interventions. The difficulty is that once we get in, it is hugely difficult to get out. What I will concede to the hon. Gentleman now is that there is in one part of Iraq a logical reason for having an assisted bombing campaign, whether by the US or by the 10% contribution of the UK; the peshmerga forces on the ground, probably our only reliable ally across the region, have had some success in pushing back Daesh. The Prime Minister referred to that earlier, but he did not develop the argument in response to my question about why we do not accent our action in Iraq as opposed to diverting to Syria. What he did not address was the second part of the question I asked at closed security briefings: why have we not given the peshmerga heavy armour and heavy weapons, and why do they have to dominate the road between Mosul and Raqqa using only machine guns? I suspect that the answer—I was not given the true answer—is because it would offend our NATO allies in Turkey, who spend as much time, if not more, bombing our allies in the Kurds than they do in pursuing the campaign against Daesh.
The hon. Member for South West Devon wanted something to be done, so we must consider what can be done. First, if we as a western liberal democracy cannot pursue a successful campaign of propaganda against a death cult, we should have a very good look at ourselves. I accept that, at last, we have made progress in calling these people for what they are. Daesh is a mocking term that mocks their claims to be a state and to represent the great religion of Islam. Much, much more can be done in carrying that forward. Infinitely more can be done by interrupting and dislocating the internet strategy that they pursue. For one of our fast smart bombs, we could have a whole squadron of people taking down their websites and stopping the communication and the contamination of the minds of young people across western Europe, and across the rest of the world.
I very much agree with the leader of the Labour party that, above all, we need to interrupt the financial resources of Daesh without which this evil cult could not function. Whenever I ask the Prime Minister about that, he tells me that he is sitting on a Committee. For two years, we have heard nothing. Little or nothing has been done to interrupt the flow of funds and to identify and stop the financial institutions without which Daesh could not have lifted a finger against us or anyone else.
Finally, we are being asked to intervene in a bloody civil war of huge complexity without an exit strategy and no reasonable means of saying that we are going to make a difference. We should not give the Prime Minister that permission.
Jim Dowd (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston). She says she is from an RAF family; my father served in the Royal Air Force for 15 years, including all the years of the second world war, so we have that in common. In fact, I was born at the RAF base in Gütersloh in Germany.
When Bill Clinton was first elected President of the USA, the slogan was, “It’s the economy, stupid.” That was thought to be the primary reason for people voting as they do in elections. I do not disagree with that entirely, but I believe that people have a higher consideration as well. It is the primary duty of any Government, or any party purporting to form a Government, to do anything and everything necessary to protect the people, their families and their homes. If any party, Parliament or Government do not do that, they will pay a terrible price. That is what people expect the Government to do. I am sure that everyone in the Chamber agrees with that. Perhaps the only question we have to answer is how best we can protect our citizens and communities.
Hon. Members have said that we should accept the genuine depth of feeling on this issue on both sides. I am grateful to the many constituents who have contacted me with their views. Many have sent formalised messages given to them by other organisations, but I do not dispute their belief in what they were saying and doing. I am particularly grateful to the constituents who said, “Even if you don’t agree with me, I hope you will do what you think is right,” and that is what I intend to do this evening.
Others have said that the debate is out of all proportion, because we are not talking about a new engagement. We are talking about a variation on the commitment that the House overwhelmingly endorsed not so long ago. There will of course be complications. Actually, I have some sympathy with those who have said that the effect will be only marginal. That might well be true, but the question is: is it worth doing or not? We need to decide which side of the argument to come down on.
I will certainly not vote for the amendment, for a number of reasons, not least because of the weasel words and sophistry it employs to suggest that the case has not been made. That is the kind of thing the Liberals used to say before 2010, when they had to face up to genuine responsibility. It is like when people say, “I take a principled stand on this.” They seem to be suggesting that they are principled and that anyone who opposes them is unprincipled, but that is not true. The fact is that people can have genuine, deeply held views on this matter, and we should respect their views—
Alex Salmond
For the hon. Gentleman’s information, the wording of the cross-party amendment is exactly the same as that of the amendment that tried to stop the war in Iraq. A lot of people think that it would have been a better thing if that amendment had been carried that day.
Jim Dowd
I do not dispute that for a moment, but I am not sure what point the right hon. Gentleman is making, so I shall move on.
People set up barriers. They say, “We must have a UN resolution.” Then, when the UN comes forward with a resolution, they say, “Oh no! That’s not good enough. We want a better-quality UN resolution. Tell it to go do its homework. Tell it to do better.” It is ridiculous. These are weasel words in the amendment; they are euphemisms. It is almost as though those who say that the case has not been made think they have a higher moral standard, a transcendent judgment superior to that of those who disagree with them.
I just want to say this to the Prime Minister: the Brimstone missile about which we have heard so much is known as a fire-and-forget weapon—[Interruption.] Well, it is known by some as that; maybe not by Conservative Members. It has been described as a fire-and-forget weapon, but the motion, which I find comprehensive and persuasive, is not a fire-and-forget motion. If we pass it tonight, we will have to come back to it and address all the issues raised in it. We must make sure that nobody is pretending that airstrikes alone will solve the problems in the middle east. There is much more to be done, and we will need dedication, effort and application to ensure that we do as much as we can to bring peace and a degree of stability to that troubled part of the world.