G20 and Paris Attacks

Andrew Mitchell Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is right to mention the bombing in Beirut. Some people posit this as a clash of civilisations—the Islamic world against the rest. The Beirut bomb, as with so many other bombs before it, proved that these people—in this case, ISIL—are killing Muslims in their hundreds and thousands. It is very important to demonstrate to Muslim communities in our own countries that we take this violence as seriously as violence committed in Paris or elsewhere.

The hon. Gentleman asks whether what we would do in Syria would be about civilian protection. My argument is, yes, it would be about civilian protection in the obvious way—that if we can take out the murderers of ISIL, we are helping to protect the Syrian people whom they are threatening—but, because Britain has precision munitions such as the Brimstone missile, which are in many ways more effective even than some of the things the Americans have, our intervention and our assistance would mean better targeting of the people who should be targeted and fewer civilian casualties.

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

In his very welcome statement today, my right hon. Friend is clearly right to focus on the political track in the Syrian negotiations, building in part on the Kofi Annan proposals from some time ago, and on the significant progress that appears to have been made in Vienna last week. If those negotiations are successful, that will of itself remove a huge barrier to the widespread military coalition that all of us want to see, in which Britain, as my right hon. Friend said today, would have the ability, as well as a number of unique assets, to play a very significant part. If the negotiations in Vienna are successful, I have no doubt that the Prime Minister, coming back to this House, will get a huge majority of Members from both sides supporting Britain’s full participation in it.

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend, who follows these things closely, makes some very good points. Of course, as I have said, to defeat ISIL in Syria two things are required. First, we need to make sure that the international community—Arab states and others—are taking the military action to degrade and defeat ISIL. Secondly, we need a political settlement that gives us an effective ally in Syria to defeat ISIL in a way that can unite the country. Those two things go together, but if my right hon. Friend is arguing that military action should follow only after some political agreement has been nailed down, we might wait a very long time for that to happen. I caution against that approach.

I want to be clear about what I am proposing here. I am saying that the Government will bring together all our arguments about how we succeed in Iraq, how we succeed in Syria, what a political process should achieve, how we degrade and defeat ISIL, the role that Britain should play, and my argument that we should be going further in Syria as well as in Iraq. We will put all those arguments together in response to the Foreign Affairs Committee. Then it will be for Members of this House to see whether they want to assent to that idea. If that happens, we shall have the vote and take the action so that we play a part with others in defence of our own national security.