Aleppo

Debate between Ben Bradshaw and Tobias Ellwood

Monday 28th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

The work of the International Syria Support Group has been difficult, and has been tested. The most recent meeting took place at the United Nations General Assembly, and I attended that meeting with the Foreign Secretary. It was clear that Russia was starting to split away from its intent to provide support and to seek a political settlement, which had been the purpose of bringing the group together. Again, we are left with the problem of gaining the necessary permission for the aircraft. However, I will certainly consider what my right hon. Friend has said, and I will write to him with more details.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

I have a lot of time for this Minister, but he should not rewrite the history of what happened in 2013. As one of the Labour MPs who did support action against Assad back then, may I gently point out to him that two of his colleagues who were recently Foreign Office Ministers, a former Secretary of State on his own Benches, the Labour Front-Bench team and Labour Back Benchers are all calling for the Government to bring something back to the House on airdrops, so why does he not just do it?

[Mr Ellwood]

I will answer that in two parts. First, why do we not just do it? Because of the very challenging issues that we face. We do not have permission to send in aircraft. We saw what happened to the Russian aircraft that wandered into Turkish space. It is a volatile environment and we would need to gain the permissions at this point to make that happen. On the other part, I do not wish to antagonise the House and try to rewrite the history. It is as much the Government’s fault for failing to win across all parliamentarians. For me, that is the biggest error from our Government—we did not take with us Parliament itself. We collectively need to work together to ensure we are all up to date and, in that way, the Executive can be empowered to do such things, whether no-fly zones or airdrops. However, only with the will and support of Parliament can we make that move forward.

Syria

Debate between Ben Bradshaw and Tobias Ellwood

Tuesday 1st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

The point about the 70,000 moderates has been raised before. The figure is an estimate. We should understand that this is a very divided group of people who have been standing up to Assad since the Arab spring. They are the pockets of resistance that had a choice, when Assad started to bomb and kill his own people, either to go extremist—to go fundamentalist—or to say, “No, I want something different. I do not want to be part of the Ba’ath party in the future; I want the freedoms that I am seeing develop in other parts of the Arab world.” They are disparate. They are in Aleppo in the north, through to Idlib, through to parts of Damascus, and down to Daraa in the south. Those pockets of people have stood up, and they have now come together by participating in the Geneva talks that are taking place thanks to the leadership of Saudi Arabia. So yes, they are not united in the sense that we would like them to be, but we are moving forward, and they now need to be part of the process that works out what the country looks like post-Assad.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

In my view, the people of Syria have paid a really dreadful price for our failure to act three years ago after Assad used chemical weapons against his own people, and even earlier than that.

I want to ask the Minister about a glimmer of hope: the elections in Iran and the impact they might have on the situation in the middle east and in Syria in particular. Does he think that what has happened in Iran vindicates the policy that his Government, the previous Labour Government, Europe and President Obama have pursued with the Iranian regime?

[Mr Ellwood]

On the first point, there is no point in saying so now, but many of us will look back at how different life would have been, and how things would have changed, had we taken different action on a punitive strike. The reason why Assad is back in play now is that Russia has backed him. He was falling—we were seeing his slow demise—and Russia came back in to support its person. That is why we are in the position that we are in today.

The right hon. Gentleman asks a very relevant question that is slightly outside the scope of this subject, but with your permission, Mr Speaker, I will say that we are cautiously optimistic and welcome what has happened in Tehran. There are only early results yet, but with the moderates in the Assembly of Experts and in the Majlis itself, this is the first opportunity for the people of Iran to have a say in the future of their country.

However, Iran will be judged by its actions because of its proxy involvement with Hezbollah in Lebanon, in Damascus in Syria, in Baghdad in Iraq, in Sana’a in Yemen, and in Bahrain. If we see changes there, we will know that we are working with a different Iran, but until then we should expect the same.