Israel-Hamas War: Diplomacy

Debate between Bob Seely and Andrew Mitchell

Monday 11th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

I understand the right hon. Lady’s strength of feeling, but she does no service to Members on either Front Bench, who have made it clear that the reasons why a ceasefire would not work are known to the House and that trying to secure humanitarian pauses—the longer the better—is the way to release humanitarian support to those who are suffering in the way she describes.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

The despicable actions of Hamas and Iran are responsible for this conflict, but proportionality is important in the rules of war, as my right hon. Friend knows. Can he explain what we are doing, working with our friends in the middle east, to encourage a sense of proportionality in Israel’s response, so that we minimise the many civilian casualties while respecting their need to take military action?

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend expresses the balance very clearly and very well, particularly in the first part of his question. The important point, which Britain makes continually to Israel, is that its response must be proportionate, and it must operate within international humanitarian law.

Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories

Debate between Bob Seely and Andrew Mitchell

Tuesday 14th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

We are speaking out in every way we can to try to protect vulnerable citizens. I quote what President Joe Biden said yesterday in an Oval Office address. He said that Al-Shifa Hospital “must be protected” and that

“it is my…expectation that there will be less intrusive action”.

Israel has made it clear that it has clashed with Hamas nearby, but has not fired on the hospitals themselves.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

First, I thank the FCDO for helping to rescue a group of Isle of Wight pilgrims who were caught in the Holy Land at the beginning of this dreadful conflict. Secondly—it is a genuine question—both sides have talked about the importance of protecting hospitals, but what can Israel do when those hospitals are being used to store ammunition and hold hostages, when there are military HQs and operational Hamas commands underneath those hospitals, and when Hamas are deliberately denying those hospitals fuel, because they would rather broadcast pictures of very tiny babies dying than try to save them?

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend speaks with great eloquence and passion on this point. I can do no better than to commend the eloquence of his argument.

Official Development Assistance

Debate between Bob Seely and Andrew Mitchell

Thursday 9th July 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I start by making it absolutely clear that I regard the decision to dismantle DFID as a quite extraordinary mistake. First, it will destroy one of the most effective and respected engines of international development in the world. Secondly, many of the senior figures who are key to Britain’s role as a development superpower are likely to leave and work elsewhere in the international system, destroying at a stroke a key aspect of global Britain. Thirdly, it is completely unnecessary, as the Prime Minister exercises full control and line of sight over DFID’s strategy and priorities through the National Security Council. Churches, faith communities and hundreds—thousands—of supporters up and down the country of Oxfam, Save the Children, Christian Aid and CAFOD are dismayed, as are our many friends around the world, who are shaking their heads in disbelief at this extraordinary act.

Both the Foreign Office and DFID work ceaselessly in Britain’s national interest, but foreign affairs and development, while totally complementary, are not the same thing. I welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment to the 0.7%, but that involves both the money and the OECD rules on what constitutes legitimate aid and official development assistance, and I fear that we will shortly hear that the rules are not quite right for the United Kingdom and we need our own rules. With that, the 0,7% will go up in smoke as the stronger interests plunder the budget and Britain’s development effectiveness dissolves, and with it our international reputation as a world leader in the field.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I absolutely respect my right hon. Friend’s experience. Does he accept that currently, including ODA and non-ODA, we spend nearly 0.8% funding overseas operations in Iraq?

[Mr Mitchell]

The House will understand why I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me an extra minute, but I have learned during my 30 years in Parliament that, in politics, there is limited point in spending one’s time howling at the moon. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the decision, it has been made, so I will turn now to how best it can be implemented, with the least damage to Britain’s brilliant work and reputation.

I draw the Minister’s attention to the excellent paper produced by Stefan Dercon, who was the chief economist in the Department when I was Secretary of State. I know the Foreign Secretary has had a chance to look at it. I hope the Foreign Office will bear in mind the constructive comments made in that wise and thoughtful paper on how to make the merger work. First It is important to ensure a whole-of-Government approach to the spending of development money. Different Departments spend it, but not consistently, and most of the spend that attracts hostile comment in the press—the spend in China, for example, or the Newton fund—is not spent by DFID. In my first hour as Secretary of State, I stopped all spending to China, unless it was legally incurred. There is a danger that mis-spending by other Departments brings the budget into disrepute with our constituents, and I urge the Government to focus on that point.

Secondly, to ensure an emphasis on the quality of the spend, the ICAI looks at all spending. Its annual report comes out tomorrow, and I urge colleagues to read it. ICAI was set up in the teeth of opposition from the development sector, but it is extremely important for holding to account the quality of spending. It is the taxpayers’ friend, and we must drive up the quality of ODA spend across Government.

Leaving the EU: Integrated Foreign Policy

Debate between Bob Seely and Andrew Mitchell

Wednesday 30th October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Seely]

That is not the evidence that I have read, but I look forward to reading it. If the hon. Lady would care to send it to me, I would love to have a look at it. From my conversations with Australian and Canadian diplomats and people who know about these things, I understand that their system—the integration of trade and the international development into their Foreign Offices—has actually worked quite well. This is not a criticism of DFID, which does many things very well. It spends public money considerably better than the Foreign Office does. It is not about trashing or diluting DFID, but about its full integration into an integrated overseas policy. I am also not arguing against 0.7% of national income being spent on aid, but I would change its definition.

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

My hon. Friend and I have a difference of opinion on this matter. Let me be very clear: no one who has studied these things closely thinks that the Canadian and Australian model that he describes is superior to the British model. I can reassure him on this point. When David Cameron set up the National Security Council in 2010, he did so directly to address the point that my hon. Friend makes. The National Security Council provides for the co-ordination between defence, diplomacy and development. With the greatest of respect, that makes my hon. Friend’s proposal to put those Departments back into the Foreign Office entirely redundant, because the new mechanism delivers precisely the goal that he and I want to see—better co-ordination of policy in Government.

[Mr Seely]

I am not sure whether that is the case, but I will explore that idea in a few minutes if I have time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Seely]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and I would love to see Ministers do that more—I hope the Minister will not then blame me for jetlag if he ever has it. That is an absolutely sensible point. I will crack on, because I do not want to run out of time.

We have a tendency towards reactivity. We have a National Security Council, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield articulates. We have an Africa strategy, and we are developing a China strategy, so we are integrating more, but I would argue that we need to turbocharge it, push it and institutionalise it to greater effect. One way to do that is to change the nature of the National Security Council and turn it into a national strategy council. It would have two roles: it would have the reactive role that it has at the moment, and it would institutionalise and formalise a strategy role to set up whole-Government policy towards different parts of the world. That is beginning to happen; the National Security Council has within it committees that look at different parts of the world and themes. However, for me it is not institutionalised enough. There has been a lack of political leadership, as there often is nowadays—this relates to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) made about travel—to integrate Departments so that we maximise the value of our power.

[Mr Mitchell]

What my hon. Friend is saying about strategy is very good, but the National Security Council tends, to a very large extent, to be the creature of the Prime Minister. All I can tell him is that, when David Cameron was Prime Minister, the point that he makes about strategy was understood, and perhaps pursued more than it is today.

[Mr Seely]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention and for being present; it is a great privilege for me that he is. He makes the point well about the need to normalise and institutionalise the strategy element so that, regardless of the Prime Minister’s determination to push through a strategy, the setting of strategy five, 10 or 20 years ahead becomes the norm. The Army does it when it looks at strategic threats out to 2045—I was listening to the Commandant General of the Royal Marines yesterday—but we are not doing it at a political level. I am worried that our excellent FCO diplomats and soldiers lack political leadership because we have become too parochial in this House. It is a pleasure that so many Members with a broader vision are in the Chamber. I will crack on, because I am about to run out of time.

Here are some ideas for the One HMG agenda. I want it to remove barriers to joint working so that, whatever system we have—whether or not we keep DFID and DIT, and whatever their relationship with the FCO is—we maximise the integration factor. I was painfully aware of some of these ideas when I was overseas and deployed in my former life as a very accidental soldier. We need clear, integrated governance structures. We need integration of more levels of Departments, potentially through the use of what I call joint effects teams. I have seen their worth, and their absence in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq.

We need integrated line management through ambassadors. Ambassadors cannot manage DFID staff in the same way as they can with the FCO. An ambassador in a country should have control over the whole staff. There should be a common set of pay and conditions, which, frankly, means giving the FCO staff pay rises to bring them in line with other Departments and ensure that they are treated in exactly the same way.

Critically—especially for military operations in which the military are in the lead but DFID is very well represented and other international agencies fall under the British chain of command—there should be a single legal chain to speed decision making. Among the many things that slowed down decision making in provincial reconstruction teams in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq were the multiple legal chains that stretched back to individual Departments. If DFID is leading an operation in Africa and other Departments are supporting, DFID should supply the legal chain and there should not be parallel legal chains elsewhere. If the military are leading and DFID is supporting, the military lawyers should likewise have the legal remit. That speeds decision making and gives clearer and firmer political direction without too much infighting. That is an example of integration at a practical level that does not require great structural changes—I still want to see them, but I accept that they may not happen.

I would like to see the UK push for significant reform to DAC, the OECD committee. To colleagues who think that I am hostile to DFID, let me say that I am genuinely not, and I am genuinely not hostile to 0.7%. Some people in this House, like Nigel Farage outside it, say, “We should pretty much scrap it. It is a disgrace that we spend more on overseas aid than on policing.” Actually, that is an embarrassing figure for us. I am not against the 0.7% figure at all, but we need to change the definition in some way that helps us. I suggest 0.5%, with 0.2% that we spend how we like, without reference to DAC. We could do two things in particular. All UK peacekeeping should come out of development money, because it is a fundamental building block to development. That would save the Ministry of Defence £300 or £400 million a year.

[Mr Seely]

Yes, and I congratulate the former Minister on her excellent work and that of the Department. We can spend 15% now, but there is a big difference between 15% and 100%. I would like to see all UK peacekeeping counted, either by changing the rules of DAC or rearranging how we spend our aid money.

The second thing I would like to see is a reinvigorated BBC World Service TV and radio, with significantly increased funding, and I would like that to come under aid and development. Increasingly, aid and development will be seen not just as keeping people alive, as important as that is—I would not touch, but increase the life-saving element of DFID’s budget. However, I would reallocate some of the economic support, where there is no discernible evidence of its effectiveness, either to the BBC World Service so that it can take on global fake news, or peacekeeping.

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point about the BBC World Service. In fact, when I was Secretary of State, I increased by nine times the amount of money spent on the BBC World Service Trust. On the OECD DAC, if we make a promise to the poorest people in the world—Archbishop Tutu described that as a sacred thing—we should stick to it. The promise was 0.7%, and I am very proud that a Conservative Government introduced it. My hon. Friend is perfectly right to say that we should always review the nature of the definition. What he says about Britain’s peacekeeping effort is absolutely relevant, but the OECD DAC works very well for Britain, because it brings countries that do not spend their aid as effectively as we do up to the standard that Britain expects, so we gain from that.

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

Bob Seely, you have 10 minutes left.