Defence Command Paper Refresh

Debate between Ben Wallace and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 18th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

Yes, absolutely. I was delighted to visit David Brown—it is the famous David Brown of the Aston Martin David Brown in Huddersfield. When one goes there, one realises the importance of not only keeping the skill base going, but making sure that we have a clear pipeline of orders and pathways to incentivise those companies to invest in the next generation of machinery. If they do not feel incentivised, they will not invest and when we need them at a time of war, there simply will not be anything there. As I said about some of the rearming of our stockpiles, restimulating the supply chain takes years and it is incredibly important. It is also important to recognise that the aerospace industry is pan-United Kingdom; it goes across the UK and is everywhere. People do not often realise that it is not just in Lancashire, part of which I represent; it is in mill towns, in Scotland and in Wales—it is all over the place. The defence pound really does help the British economy and secures British jobs across the UK, including in Northern Ireland.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

The Secretary of State is a thoughtful man, and today he has announced that we are going to be spending £50 billion on defence, at a time when every other Government Department is under financial pressure. He has also said that he predicts that this country will be at war within seven years. Does he have any idea or process to bring about more peace and rapprochement in the world, and less military threat? Or are we going to go on, year by year, increasing expenditure on defence and potentially being involved in more and more military conflicts? Does he have any idea different from that?

[Mr Wallace]

The right hon. Gentleman knows me fairly well. We once spent a nice week in Iran together, with the then Member for Blackburn—I was the most pro-European of the three, I remember.

I am not out looking for war. We are all out here trying to defend our nation by avoiding war, but we do not avoid war by not investing in deterrence. Sometimes we have to invest in hard power, to complement soft power. We do not want to use it and we do not go looking for it. I know the right hon. Gentleman mixes with some people who always think this is about warmongering; it is not. But if countries are not taken seriously by their adversaries, that is one of the quickest ways to provoke a war.

Ukraine

Debate between Ben Wallace and Jeremy Corbyn

Monday 21st February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

At this incredibly dangerous time, I notice that the Defence Secretary did not say much about the Minsk agreement. Does he think that is a way by which we can get back to talks? If the Russians pulled back, would he be prepared to countenance any reduction in the NATO presence on the border, to bring about longer-term, secure peace in the region?

[Mr Wallace]

The right hon. Gentleman raises a point about Minsk. I was clear in my press conference in Moscow and elsewhere that both Russia and Ukraine signed Minsk. As he will know, and as we have found with the Good Friday agreement, treaties are one thing, but the big challenge is in rolling up our sleeves and delivering the sequences in the right way. We all remember that from decommissioning in Northern Ireland, which was easy to write into the Good Friday agreement but hard to deliver, and it is the same for the Minsk agreement. However, we all recognise that the Minsk agreement is one of the ways out, and we should do our best to support its implementation.

On the right hon. Gentleman’s point about pulling back NATO, we did not put 165,000 combat troops on the edge of a sovereign country and hold a gun to the head of a democratically elected Government; Russia did. We have nothing to de-escalate from; Russia does. I hope that he will condemn the Stop the War Coalition, which always seems to paint us as the aggressor. Perhaps he would like to ask the people of Ukraine who they think the aggressor is.

Ukraine

Debate between Ben Wallace and Jeremy Corbyn

Monday 17th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

I hope that it does what it does for all nations in Europe. Britain will always be interested in the security of Europe, whether we are in the EU or not. The security of Europe is important for our security as much as it is for that of others. Britain will mean what it says. Britain will not just say, “Please don’t do this” on behalf of those people; we will help people defend themselves. That is why this announcement today is just one of those steps. That is sometimes the difference between us and others.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

When the Minister meets his Russian counterpart in a few weeks’ time, will he use that opportunity to widen the debate into nuclear disarmament and security measures in general, to build up a dialogue with Russia so that we can deal with all the issues and also de-escalate the dangerous tensions, which are rising? Will he assure the House that no British troops are going to be sent to or stationed in Ukraine?

[Mr Wallace]

First of all, I am not sure that the right hon. Gentleman will accept my invitation; I have made it, and I hope he does. Of course we will start the process of establishing a dialogue on a whole range of issues, which hopefully will involve security, confidence in each other and transparency, to make sure that there is no miscalculation going forward.

British troops who are orbital have been based in Ukraine for years. They are not NATO bases, as President Putin alleges: no one is setting up NATO bases in Ukraine and no one is positioning strategic weapons in Ukraine. This is unarmed orbital: we train people in all sorts of methods. As I said, the trainers that come over on these systems will leave once the training is done. All I can say is that this is not new—we have had people there for years. But of course we are there at the invitation of the sovereign nation of Ukraine.

Middle East: Security

Debate between Ben Wallace and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 7th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for the advance copy of his statement. Can he tell us where the Prime Minister is, and what he is doing that is so much more important than addressing Parliament on the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, an extremely dangerous and aggressive act that risks starting yet another deadly war in the middle east?

On Friday, I sent the Prime Minister a letter posing a series of questions. He has not answered any of them. Instead, today he is hiding behind his Defence Secretary. Is it not the truth that he is scared to stand up to President Trump because he has hitched his wagon to the prospect of a toxic Trump trade deal? At this highly dangerous moment, we find the Government giving cover and even expressing sympathy for what is widely regarded as an illegal act, because they are so determined to keep in with President Trump. This assassination puts British troops and civilians, as well as the people of the region, in danger.

As the Secretary of State will confirm, I have long spoken out against the Iranian Government’s human rights record, including when he and I visited Iran together in 2014. This is not a question of Soleimani’s actions or record in the region. Whatever the record of any state official, the principle and the law is that we do not go around assassinating foreign leaders. Without the clear demonstration of an immediate threat, it is illegal. So do the Government regard the assassination as legal under international law? If so, how? Do the lawyers in the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence regard it as legal?

If the Secretary of State really believes that this was an act of self-defence, what evidence has he or the Prime Minister seen of an imminent attack on the US? The Secretary of State says that the United States is confident that attacks were imminent, but US officials have been quoted in the press as saying that the evidence was “razor thin”. How would the Secretary of State describe it?

In the past few days, the US President has threatened to target Iranian cultural sites and to attack Iran in a manner that is—I quote him directly—“disproportionate”. Both actions would be war crimes, yet the Government still seem unable to condemn such threats. On Sunday, the Foreign Secretary said that the onus was entirely on Iran to de-escalate. I wonder whether, if Iran had assassinated an American general, the British Government would be telling Washington that the onus was entirely on the US to de-escalate.

We talk about this as a conflict between the US and Iran, but the worst consequences are likely to be felt by Iraq, a country on the brink of further terrible violence and instability. President Trump has threatened Iraq with

“sanctions like they’ve never seen before”

after its elected—yes, elected—Parliament voted to ask US and other foreign forces to leave their country. He has said he will not withdraw entirely unless the US is compensated for the “extraordinarily expensive air base” that was actually built by Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. The Prime Minister—when he finally resurfaced from his trip—said that he was committed to the sovereignty of Iraq, so will the Secretary of State confirm that this Government will respect Iraqi sovereignty if the Iraqi Government ask all foreign forces, including British forces, to leave?

We know that the British Government were not consulted by the Trump Administration in advance, despite there being obvious British interests at stake. Let me also ask what the Government are doing to secure the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and other dual nationals who are currently in detention in Iran. This must be an utterly terrifying time both for them individually and for their families.

It is not in anyone’s interests for this to escalate to an all-out war. All sides should exercise maximum restraint and allow for meaningful dialogue, led by the UN Secretary-General’s office. To prevent war, we need a strong plan for diplomacy, so are the Government in contact with the UN Secretary-General? And let us not forget that there was a diplomatic plan: the Iran nuclear deal. It was working, until President Trump came along and tried to rip it up.

Time and again over the last two decades, the political and military establishments have made the wrong call on military interventions in the middle east. Many of us opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the failed invasion of Afghanistan, and I opposed the bombing of Libya in 2011. Have we learnt nothing from those events? This House must rule out plunging our country into yet another devastating war at the behest of another state.

[Mr Wallace]

I note that the Leader of the Opposition sent the Prime Minister a letter in which he posed three questions, none of which he has just posed from the Dispatch Box. I find that rather interesting. I am afraid that instead of a serious interrogation about we would de-escalate this situation in the middle east and how we would ensure that British citizens and British allies were secure, we heard the usual tripe—“This is about Trump, this is about America”—and all the other anti-American, anti-imperialist guff.

The Leader of the Opposition asked where the Prime Minister was. Well, funnily enough, the Prime Minister is running the country, something that the right hon. Gentleman will fail ever to do as a result of the general election. This Prime Minister actually believes in Cabinet government, and in letting the members of the Cabinet who are responsible for the policy come to the House to be able to answer questions about a matter relating to that policy. Indeed, the Prime Minister felt that it was appropriate for me, as a Secretary of State for Defence who currently has a significant number of assets in the region—in Iraq—and who is charged with the duty of defending this country, to attend and to answer the questions in his place.

Perhaps I can answer some of the few questions that were asked by the Leader of the Opposition. First, it is for the United States to answer in detail the question whether it views the intelligence on the basis of which it made its decision to be illegal or not. On the basis of the information and intelligence that I have seen, what I can say is that it is clear that there was a case for self-defence to be made in respect of an individual who had come to Iraq to co-ordinate murder and attacks on US citizens. That begs the question what the Leader of the Opposition would have done if that individual had come to Iraq or anywhere else to plot the murder of British soldiers and diplomats. Perhaps, as he recommended with al-Baghdadi of ISIS, he would seek to have him arrested at that time.

It is of course the case that this Government are engaged in a full diplomatic effort at all levels to de-escalate the tensions that have grown in the region, not only at the United Nations but in leader-to-leader, Defence Secretary and Foreign Secretary discussions and using all other levers that we have. More broadly than just in the region, we are seeking efforts to ensure that Iran does not retaliate in any way that would escalate the situation and that our friends and allies do not escalate the situation either. The call that this Government are making is to ensure that we pause, that we focus on the safety of the peoples of that region and that we seek a way out for Iran and for its neighbours. The first way we can do that, which this Government are determined to try to do, is to ensure that the destabilising activity that has been going on in the region is ceased, so that we can all progress to find the solution that we desperately want to the conflict. In the meantime, the Government will get on and ensure that they keep people safe in the region, and we will do everything we can to protect them and their lives.