EU Council, Security and Middle East

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I very much agree with the right hon. Gentleman that we of course need to learn the lessons of the past but must not be imprisoned by decisions that were taken in the past. I think the whole tone of the debate today is that, yes, it is for those in the region—principally the Iraqi Government and the Kurds and neighbours—to lead the charge against squeezing this appalling organisation ISIL, but Britain, America, France and others should use all the tools in our toolkit to help them to do that. We have to make a judgment about how we best help those on the ground, and to date that judgment has been to provide aid and political support and to help with certain military aspects. The Americans have gone further and provided air strikes. I think that is the right way to approach this problem.

On the issue of control orders, let me quote again what the independent reviewer of terrorist legislation said:

“There is no need to put the clock back. The majority of changes introduced by the TPIMs Act have civilised the control order system without making it less effective.”

We have to understand that control orders were permanently being run ragged in the courts. We needed a new system and now we can improve it.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Does the Prime Minister share Henry Kissinger’s analysis that to address the utterly appalling consequences of the collapse of central state authority in much of the middle east and north Africa, we are going to have to get competing nation states to co-operate? That means that Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Russia are going to have to be got in a place where they can co-operate with the United States and the European Union. It will involve ugly ethical compromises, which we have already made over Egypt. Will the Prime Minister set his Government the policy objective of getting those nations in the same place to have a policy that can begin to address this disaster?

[The Prime Minister]

I agree with what my hon. Friend says about the importance of getting nations that have not previously co-operated to co-operate with each other. I agree that we should get them to step up to the plate and do more to deal with the problems in their own area. However, as the former Labour Cabinet Minister, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), has just said, there are also times when we have to look to our responsibilities, and we should do that at the same time.