Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Finally, I call Mr Barry Gardiner.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

It used to be said that an English family’s home was their castle, but following the Government’s Housing and Planning Bill, new tenants in social housing will be on fixed three to five-year contracts. Does the Prime Minister think it is right that a student beginning their secondary education may face eviction at the very time they are coming up to their GCSEs or A-levels?

EU Council

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Tuesday 5th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right. One of the problems that has emerged is that the legal changes that have been made have defined free movement in a more and more generous way. It used to be the case that it was free movement to go and take a job for which you had applied, whereas today, I think I am right in saying, 60% of those who come to Britain are job applicants—they do not have a job when they come. This is another reason we need to address the welfare issue, because those people will be particularly affected by changes to in-work welfare, and we will not have that unnatural draw to Britain. Many people who come to Britain work hard and contribute and all the rest of it, but we need to make sure that our arrangements reduce the unnatural pull of migration to Britain, as my hon. and learned Friend set out.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister has said that the EU referendum will reflect the choice of the British people, but if the choice of the British people does not reflect the choice of the Prime Minister, will he resign?

[The Prime Minister]

This is the choice of the British people. Our aim is to set forward a choice for the British people that they want. They can choose either to stay in a reformed European Union or to leave the European Union. Come what may, I will continue to lead the Government in the way I have.

ISIL in Syria

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen), who spoke with great integrity.

The Prime Minister has been plausible in public, but graceless in private. I and other colleagues who will vote against his motion tonight are not “terrorist sympathisers”. He was wrong to say that we are. The Prime Minister wants us to take action, but he is not prepared to take action that, in my view, is adequate to the task. The House is being presented with a false choice. The Prime Minister wants us to believe that the choice is between taking the inadequate action proposed by the Government and taking no action. That is vacuous. I want effective, comprehensive action that will ensure an adequate ground force, under United Nations authority, made up not of western countries, whose presence can only inflame the situation, but of predominantly Islamic countries, particularly Sunni countries.

The Prime Minister’s statement and the Government response to the Foreign Affairs Committee talked repeatedly of the moderate opposition, but the opposition in Syria is neither unitary nor moderate. It is wrong of the Government to try to present it as being otherwise.

The Prime Minister knows that the United States had a programme to train and equip Syrian rebels to fight against Daesh. It was so unsuccessful in identifying any capable, trustworthy allies in action against Daesh that it was abandoned in September. Every single expert witness to the Select Committee said that there are “thousands” of disparate groups; allegiances are like shifting sands, and there are few moderates left.

In September the US announced that, instead of training people, it would focus on distributing weapons and ammunition to existing groups. The House may consider that distributing arms to groups whose members are increasingly radicalised and defecting to Daesh is a very foolish strategy indeed that risks doing more to strengthen Daesh than to eradicate it.

[Imran Hussain]

Does my hon. Friend agree that a number of individuals who trained on that programme ended up joining al-Qaeda?

[Barry Gardiner]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and simply reinforces my point. I want to eradicate Daesh. Doing so requires an effective ground force that can co-ordinate with the existing allied airstrikes in Syria—airstrikes that, in the words of Lieutenant General Sir Simon Mayall, are

“not a war-winning…campaign”.

Airstrikes can create a temporary opportunity for territorial gain, but in default of a competent ground force, that opportunity is squandered—and at what cost?

The population of Raqqa who are subjugated under Daesh will not be allowed into the tunnels. They will not be whisked out of the city in armoured jeeps with Daesh commanders. They will remain in the city and wait for British bombs. All military action comes with the risk that innocent lives will be lost; I understand that. Sometimes that risk must be accepted, but only when the military and diplomatic strategy that is put forward is coherent and comprehensive and has a reasonable chance of achieving its objective. The Government’s motion does not.

The Government have argued that it makes no military sense to curtail our pilots at an arbitrary border. They correctly point out that we are already engaged in military action. That is in itself a reasonable argument about the efficient use of military resources—I accept that—but the Government cannot also try to argue that by voting against today’s motion, we are voting to do nothing. We are still engaged in Iraq, where the Kurdish peshmerga and the Iraqi army can provide a limited but credible ground force. The Government have also argued—it is a powerful argument—that in the face of a request from our allies, we should respond. Of course we should, but we should not respond by doing just anything. We should respond by doing something that is effective, and what the Government propose is not. I will vote against the motion tonight.

Finally, Mr Speaker, I applaud the fact that you have spent the entirety of this debate in the Chair. I also admire your bladder.

[Mr Speaker]

I am extremely grateful.

Syria

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. What lies behind wanting to take this action is not just the protection of ourselves here in this country but building a Syria to which people can return. That is what they want.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I commend the Prime Minister for the way he has brought this matter to the House. The failure to date of the allied operation to defeat Daesh is not through a lack of air power or bombs that the UK could provide; it is through a lack of sufficient and efficient ground forces able to capitalise on the temporary gains air power is able to achieve. The Free Syrian Army is not adequate to, nor even focused on, the task of defeating Daesh. It is equally focused on undermining Assad’s regime. Until the Government can guarantee a strong ground presence, does he accept that his strategy is one of hope, not confidence?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for what he says about the way I am presenting this case. I am not presenting this case as one of perfection. Syria is very far from perfection. Even Iraq, where we have the ground troops of the Iraqi security forces and the peshmerga, is a far from ideal situation. As Opposition Members have said, we need to see more Sunnis engaged in the Iraqi armed forces. Obviously, in Syria we need more ground forces to help us do what we do. I believe, however, that to conclude from that we should do nothing is a counsel of despair. We should be taking this action, building on the resources we have.

European Council

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The European Commission has said that it will not campaign in the referendum and those of us who want Britain to stay in a reformed European Union probably breathed a sigh of relief when we had that news. There will clearly be an in campaign and an out campaign, and there will be plenty of material on which everyone can make up their mind.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

With your customary perspicacity and eye for detail, Mr Speaker, you, too, will have noted that the section of the Prime Minister’s statement that is entitled “UK renegotiation” is punctuated with 14 separate “dot, dot, dot” gaps. Did the Prime Minister fill those gaps at the European Commission and did he lay down red lines to the commissioners? If so, will he state that to the House now?

[The Prime Minister]

I can put the hon. Gentleman out of his misery. I put the “dot, dot, dots” into my statement because sometimes I have a bit of trouble reading what I have written down. It is purely stylistic and has nothing to do with the content, but I think he knows that.

Syria: Refugees and Counter-terrorism

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister has said that Britain will take in 20,000 refugees over the next five years, but he has paradoxically said that we will not accept them as refugees—they will not be given refugee status. He said they would be given status as being under humanitarian protection. As he knows, that is a discretionary leave to remain that does not entitle them to settlement. These are people who desperately need security and stability in their lives. How is he going to reconcile that with the status that he is proposing to give them?

[The Prime Minister]

That is a very good question. There are two reasons for taking this approach. One is that by granting people the humanitarian passport, as it were, they do not formally have to go through asylum procedures to prove that they are refugees; we are taking them once they have met the criteria, and then they have the right to stay. Of course, at the end of those five years some may choose to return to Syria, but many will want to stay here and apply for settlement rights, which of course they will be able to do.

Iraq: Coalition Against ISIL

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

The motion is the result of our failure to develop a sustained, coherent and strategic policy in the middle east. ISIL has a 10-year track record both in Iraq and in Syria, but the question we should ask is how has it become so strong. Jane’s World Insurgency and Terrorism assessed that ISIL was funded from the very countries with which we now propose to ally ourselves—Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait—and whose refusal to put in place any serious financial controls has seen hundreds of millions of dollars siphoned off to ISIL and other jihadists. What pressure did the UK Government put on those Governments to tighten the noose around that flow of funds? Did we talk of sanctions or of freezing accounts in London? Of course not. The Government were too busy trying to clinch the £4.4 billion deal for the 72 Eurofighter Typhoon jets to Saudi Arabia. That was our Government’s priority. It should have been otherwise.

Now that ISIL are regarded by its former paymasters as too big for its boots, we are joining forces with them to degrade ISIL’s capacity and to cut it back down to size, but we are told that there is no intention to have boots on the ground. What an assurance that is. Of course there will be no boots on the ground. The Sunni states in the middle east do not want to destroy ISIL. They want it to remain as a thorn in the flesh of the Iraqi Government. This Government is not America’s poodle; it is the poodle of the Sunni states. Britain could have exerted real influence on the Maliki Government, but we turned a blind eye as the Iraqi Government ruled as faction and thug. Where was our Government’s attention? It was on Syria, but who did we want to degrade there? It was not ISIL, but Bashar al-Assad. The Government have made foolish alliances and alienated countries such as Russia that could have helped. They have been pathetically weak in bringing our so-called friends to book, and they are deluding themselves—or, worse, the public—with any suggestion that air strikes against ISIL are a sufficient response to the wider hell that is the Sunni-Shi’a conflict.

I have three questions. What demands about inclusive government, and what potential sanctions, has the UK placed upon Prime Minister al-Abadi in Iraq as preconditions of our involvement? What assessment have the Government made of the warning by the Royal United Services Institute that

“limited air strikes could serve to further legitimise ISIS?”

Finally, what demands has the UK placed on Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states about cutting off funding for Wahabist jihadi groups around the globe?

The Prime Minister says that we are fighting for democratic values, but those we are fighting with are not democracies. In joining them, we are not protecting democracy. They are the last absolute theocratic monarchies on the planet, and we join them at our peril.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Thursday 11th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman]

I certainly join the hon. Gentleman is congratulating his constituents on the work that they are doing. Let me also emphasise the importance of Government procurement in supporting innovation, which is one of the Government’s key priorities.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

The Minister rightly spoke of the importance of having scientific advice available, but it must of course be based on scientific evidence. As he will know, last year the Government consulted on proposals to stop local authorities gathering evidence on the scientific effects of air pollution in their areas. He will also know that, just this year, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has said that it will not collect any future scientific data on the badger culls that are taking place. Will the Minister ensure that data that are important as bases for scientific advice are collected across Government?

[George Freeman]

It is a bit rich for Opposition Members to talk about cuts when we have protected the science budget. We inherited one of the worst crises in the public finances, and we have a duty to correct it.

This country is internationally respected for the level of scientific advice that we put into policy making. Across the board—on badgers, on genetic modification, and on all the other difficult issues that we face—we are basing policy on the best scientific advice. [Interruption.] It ill behoves Opposition Members to criticise our approach. They set the standard in taking advice from spin doctors; we take advice from scientists.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vince Cable]

The hon. Lady is right to say that, particularly given the overall problems with access to finance for small and medium-sized companies, the issue of late payment is crucial and that this is happening on a massive scale. We will, in the course of this Bill, be making it much more transparent how larger companies, in particular, make their payments—we will be helping small companies in that way. I am happy to look at how we can strengthen the code, and indeed we are talking to the Institute of Credit Management about how we can do that.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Two years ago, figures were released showing that the green economy, although representing only 6% of the wider economy, was responsible for 30% of the growth in the economy. Will the Secretary of State tell us the current figures and, in his new line-up, which Minister has been specifically appointed to be responsible for green economic growth?

[Vince Cable]

There is a green economy group operating through government. I serve on it, together with the Secretaries of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and for Energy and Climate Change—I believe it has Treasury representation on it, too. We put enormous importance on having a green thread in policy and we have taken major initiatives in that respect, notably through renewable energy innovation, supply chain development and the establishment of the green investment bank.

Ukraine (Flight MH17) and Gaza

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I will listen carefully to what my hon. Friend has said. The difficulty is that we are making the argument that the territorial integrity of Ukraine should be respected. That is why the people who should be securing the crash site and making it available for investigation should be the Ukrainian Government—it is their country. To bring in UN forces in some way would be to accept that there is a legitimate case to be made for the separatists who are trying to break up the country through violence.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister is right to condemn utterly the downing of MH17 and the way in which the bodies have been dealt with. Does he understand why those who recall that the west supplied and encouraged the protesters of Maidan and held out to them the probably false prospect of the EU welcoming them into its bosom, and who saw the support that the west provided for the overthrow of Ukraine’s former President as a clear provocation of Russia, find it ironic that the Prime Minister now accuses Russia of being the party that initiated and fomented the tragic division in Ukraine?

[The Prime Minister]

I respect the hon. Gentleman, but I really do not agree with that. The former President of Ukraine wanted to sign an association agreement with the EU. I believe that if a sovereign country in Europe wants to sign an association agreement with the EU, it should be free to do so and Russia should respect it. I have always said that Ukraine does not have to choose between a European future and a Russian future; it should seek to be a bridge between the two. Europe is prepared to let that happen, but apparently Vladimir Putin is not.

European Council

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. One of the things that will be key to the EU’s success in the coming years is whether it can deal with a Europe that requires change for the eurozone and change for Britain. From my discussions with Jean- Claude Juncker, I think he understands that that is a very important agenda on which we have to make progress, otherwise the British people will take a different view.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Does the Prime Minister not experience the slightest cognitive dissonance in arguing on the one hand that the voters of Europe feel that the European project has gone far enough, while arguing on the other that the borders of Europe should be extended all the way to Donetsk in the Leninsky district of Ukraine?