Syria

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I, too, thank the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) for her initiative in securing this important debate.

I share the moral outrage expressed on both sides of the House—Assad and his henchmen are barbarians and the desire to do something to stop them is deeply and keenly felt, as colleagues on both sides have expressed sincerely and passionately—but our guiding principle must surely be that whatever we do must have the best chance of reducing suffering in the region, and I remain to be convinced that the military strikes we have seen are the best way of doing that. Airstrikes against chemical weapons facilities might help us to avoid feeling impotent and irrelevant, yet taking action that risks escalating and creating further loss of life and suffering would only perpetuate the problems we all want to solve. Moreover, in places such as Libya, as in Syria, such action has time and again proved a distraction from the difficult, relentless and all too frequently neglected work of waging peace, which is a lot more difficult than waging war.

In my brief speaking time, I want to challenge those who suggest that those of us who question the military action are somehow in favour of doing nothing. That is not the case. There is a vast amount we could be doing. For example, we should be cracking down on Russia, through further sanctions, and pursuing diplomatic channels too. It is worth noting that US sanctions against Russia are finally beginning to bite. Last week, new US sanctions against seven oligarchs, 17 top officials and 12 companies led to tens of billions of dollars in losses on Russian markets within just a few hours last Monday, and the rouble recently suffered its biggest daily fall in over three years. We now need to double down on these actions, even if that has an effect on our own economy. The right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) would probably find it as worrying as I do that I find myself in agreement with him over the issue of energy in the EU. We could be taking more action there to put pressure on Russia, even if it comes at a cost to our own economies.

While moral outrage is all very well, we also need to invest in our own moral authority. Britain urgently needs to get its own house in order if it wants to be a credible, positive influence on the world stage. That means deploying the UK’s considerable power and influence in the world to advance the full enjoyment of human rights; scaling back and ending alliances of convenience with repressive, aggressive or corrupt states such as Saudi Arabia, beginning with a ban on arms exports to such states; restoring the UK’s diplomatic capabilities, starting with a reversal of the cuts to the FCO budget; championing constructive engagement and multilateral forums; and in the longer term, as others have said, working towards reform of the UN as well. We also need to expend serious and sustained effort to enhance and expand UN peacekeeping and peacebuilding capabilities and to strengthen and fully resource the International Criminal Court and the process of establishing and supporting war crimes tribunals. How can we be serious as a state about peacebuilding if the Government continue to boycott UN attempts to prohibit nuclear weapons, especially at a time when the world faces the renewed threat of nuclear strikes?

Finally, two quick things: I completely agree with everything that the hon. Member for Wirral South and others have said about the importance of taking more refugees, and I have been supporting a war powers Act for many years, but it has to be a free vote. We cannot outsource our responsibility for making that decision to the party Whips. We, as MPs, have to take that moral decision.