Iran

Chris Vince Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dr Evans]

My right hon. Friend is right. It may well be that the Foreign Secretary, the Defence Secretary or the Prime Minister has something more urgent to deal with, but I am yet to know what. I hope that in the wind-ups we will hear why this debate was needed so urgently, rather than Opposition day business, considering that it is a highly unprecedented move to prioritise a general debate over an Opposition day debate.

[Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Dr Evans]

I will take another intervention.

[Chris Vince]

I will try to make it a nice intervention as I will be speaking next and the hon. Gentleman might want to intervene on me. Does he welcome the experience that the Minister for Veterans and People, my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey), brings to this place? The Conservatives are often critical of Labour for not having enough business people talking in debates about business, so does he welcome the fact that both the Minister and the shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), are gallant Members of this House? We should celebrate that fact.

[Dr Evans]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fantastic point about how important it is for hon. Members to have lived experience when they come to this House, especially given that the Leader of the House said that Opposition day debates had to be cancelled to discuss this issue because it is the biggest crisis we face. The new Minister has only been in the Department for a couple of weeks, so he may not be as up to speed as the Defence Secretary—oh no, he is new as well—or perhaps the Foreign Secretary. Given the severity of what is facing the UK and the world, I thought the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) would be here. I even asked the Leader of the House if he would write to the right hon. Member for Makerfield to ask him to come to the debate, but alas, that seems to have gone amiss, but I am glad that we are having this important debate on Iran.

[Gregory Stafford]

My hon. Friend has danced around the topic, but should we not place it on the record that we are now entirely clear why the Opposition business was cancelled yesterday and we are having a debate in which only two Labour Back Benchers are speaking—

[Chris Vince]

Three!

[Gregory Stafford]

Okay, three Labour Back Benchers. It is because the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) and the Government decided that they did not want scrutiny of the new Prime Minister. It should be placed on the record that that is an absolute disgrace.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) took an intervention right at the end of his speech, which threw me.

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. May I take this opportunity to thank my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey)? As I have mentioned in this place before, he is very much a friend of Harlow. I welcome him to his place and thank him for opening this debate. I join him and others from across the House in paying tribute to our incredible armed forces personnel.

I have said it a number of times in this House, but I am the son and grandson of armed forces personnel, and I know the huge sacrifice that they and their families make to keep us safe. My hon. and gallant Friend has done that on more than his fair share of occasions, and I thank him for that. I think Members across the House recognise the huge importance of debating these issues and the very concerning times that we live in—that is probably putting it mildly—and I cannot think of anybody else I would want to see debating them at the Dispatch Box, other than maybe my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Mr Falconer), who is sitting next to him.

I take the points made by Opposition Members, and it is really important to absolutely condemn the Iranian regime. Let us not forget the way in which the regime has treated the people of Iran. It cannot be right that people in Iran are not able to express their religious beliefs and are not allowed to be the people they want to be. That is hugely important, and we should always frame any debate about Iran in those terms.

[Gregory Stafford]

The hon. Gentleman has very clearly put on the record his own condemnation of Iran. I join him in his comments about the way that Tehran treats its own people, but Iran’s malign influence on civilian populations goes way beyond its own people. It funds terrorist organisations such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, causing devastation and destruction to civilian populations across the region and beyond. Will he also condemn Iran for that?

[Chris Vince]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and I absolutely do, and I will add to that too. I wanted somehow to shoehorn in my support for the BBC World Service and ask Members to bear with me as I am going to do that, because it is also important that we recognise the malign influence of the Iran regime in this country. It was touched on earlier by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns) in terms of the use of bad state actors and malign influences in social media. The BBC World Service is a really important tool in our armoury to tackle that disinformation. Going slightly off on a tangent, when the BBC World Service and BBC Monitoring have been withdrawn from certain countries, Russian media sources have taken that space. It is important that we absolutely condemn the behaviour of the Iranian regime and its proxies, but also that we recognise the malign influence of the Iranian regime in this country, and we need to be prepared to tackle that.

[Gareth Snell]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the malign influence. Following some of the attacks in Iran and the Iranian people seeking to change their leadership, he will have seen the same report as I saw that when the Iranian Government turned off aspects of their domestic internet, hundreds of X accounts in this country, purporting to support far-right activity but also Scottish independence, fell silent. That is hugely important, and we need to look at how malign disinformation accounts in the UK are pursuing domestic political agendas in the UK and being funded and operated by non-existent people—bots—in Iran.

[Chris Vince]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point. I do not mean this response to sound jokey, but if I, for example, wanted to promote Harlow to be the UK capital of culture—sadly, we got rejected—the way to achieve that might not just be to directly say to people, “Come on, let’s get behind Harlow.” I am not suggesting that these bad actors are pro-Scottish independence necessarily, but you use views that are not your own to slowly manipulate people. [Interruption.] I see a Scottish National party Member on the Benches opposite. I am not trying to suggest that they are trying to promote Scottish independence—[Interruption.] Okay, maybe they are. What I am saying is that—[Interruption.] I have started an argument. If you want to try and—

[Gareth Snell]

Will my hon. Friend take an intervention?

[Chris Vince]

Yes please.

[Gareth Snell]

I believe the point my hon. Friend is making is that the Iranian state is sponsoring these bot farms that are pumping out political points in the UK, which are a perfectly legitimate debate point, but are not underpinned by real people expressing real views. They are done in the most reductive way to stimulate dissent rather than discussion.

[Chris Vince]

You are absolutely right, and if you want to put forward your—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman keeps saying “you.” In this Chamber, “you” means me. Please do not ascribe those views of the Iranian Government to me.

[Chris Vince]

I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I get really annoyed when others do that but I have just done it as well. I will move swiftly on and get to the main point of my speech.

Since the beginning of the crisis, the Government and Prime Minister have been clear that our approach has been guided by what is in the best interests of the British people and our country’s security. Unlike some Members across the House, the Prime Minister was clear that we would not be dragged into a US-led war with no apparent plan and without reflecting on the impact.

I am also proud that the Foreign Secretary convened more than 40 countries to help build international pressure to open the strait of Hormuz. I was chatting to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Selly Oak prior to this debate. It is hugely important that we build those international alliances because we cannot do that on our own. I ask the Minister to address in closing the economic impact on the UK of not getting the peace process back on track and trade flowing through the strait. This recent conflict shows the regime in Iran has no scruples about hijacking the world economy by blocking the strait, and we have seen the consequences. And, again, we should of course condemn the Iranian regime.

I said that I would mention Raytheon UK, based in my constituency, and I am proud that it is leading the consortium that has won a £20 billion contract to build the British Army’s new AI training systems. Training like that is now key to the nature of war and how we fight war, and I am very proud that my town is going to play its part in that endeavour.

Finally, I pay tribute to the Prime Minister for his leadership, which has put Britain back on the international stage. Working with our allies is the only way we can deal with these issues.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

Absolutely, and we all have a role to play in talking to the country and making people realise what is happening, but I do not think they want to believe it. Too many people, especially from some of the right-wing parties, are quick to jump in and say that we must defund the BBC, but why? People say to me, “I hate the BBC.” No, I think they hate BBC News because it does not agree with their opinion. I think that they are being fed the view online that the BBC is wrong and is lying.

I agree with the hon. Member for Harlow about the importance of the World Service, to which I listen a lot. In fact, I recommend to people, if they can find the time, that they listen to “Newshour” for half an hour a day to hear about what is going on in the world. Some of those stories eventually break through to the mainstream news, but it really gives us a picture of what is going on in the world, and we should trust it.

I am not making excuses for the BBC. Boy, oh boy, has it got it wrong in some areas in recent years, and that undermines faith, but that is exactly what the Russian bots pick up on, and they feed on that and further undermine faith.

[Chris Vince]

I liked the right hon. Gentleman saying earlier that he and I have discussed Ramsay MacDonald in the 1930s, over a tea and no other beverage. I very much messed up my words when I was trying to answer my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell). I was trying to make the point that the problem we have with these malign influences and hostile states is the drip-feeding of disinformation. It does not come all at once and say that people should support Russia. This drip-feeding is really concerning, and that is a real challenge for us to tackle, is it not?

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that.

The point I am driving at—bringing all that together about how this lack of confidence is slowly starting to build in society through what such people are doing—is that that is why we now have to take some really unpopular decisions. The Leader of the Opposition—the leader of the Conservative party—has made it clear that we would cut welfare to fund defence. These are unpopular decisions, but it has to be done because we are not going to convince people about the threat. History shows that people are never convinced until something happens. People do not understand geography, and think that Ukraine is so far in the distance that it does not affect us. However, as has been said by so many Members, it affects all of us through the energy crisis.

The hon. Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman) and I have debated with each other in this Chamber many a time, and I have huge respect for him, because he takes a view, with which I fundamentally disagree, about not spending money on defence but spending it on welfare, meeting societal needs and so on. He is clear and honest about it, and he backs up why he believes it. However, I believe that if we are not ready to go to war, we cannot have a peace, and if we do not have that peace, we are going to go to war. Such a war does not necessarily mean bombs raining down, because it could well mean cyber-attack, when the areas on which he thinks we should be spending would collapse anyway. Our society would collapse, so we have to make that investment, because Ukraine shows the enormous loss of GDP—50% of its GDP has been lost—because of the invasion by another country.

Turning to the hon. Member for Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber (Brendan O’Hara), I have always taken issue with SNP Members when they call Trident a nuclear weapon. In my mind, and I think in the minds of many people, Trident is not a nuclear weapon, because it is called the nuclear deterrent. People say they would never use Trident, but we are using it every single day. We have used it continuously at sea every single day for nigh on 60 years. Yes, it is creaking; yes, we are sending people out for too long; and, yes, there has been a ridiculous delay in getting out the Dreadnought class because of the lack of reactors when we needed them. However, it is absolutely vital that we invest in it because it is a deterrent, and it is the best example I can give of why we have to invest in defence.

The Iranian conflict shows just how much our world can be affected. I could go on forever about the energy situation, and why I believe that the actions of the Energy Secretary have put this country at enormous risk. I do not want to try the patience of the House or you, Madam Deputy Speaker, after being on my feet for 18 minutes—