Foreign Affairs and Defence Debate
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Denis MacShane
Main Page: Denis MacShane (Labour - Rotherham)Department Debates - View all Denis MacShane's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(14 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Hague
The hon. Gentleman has a particular view on Afghanistan, which he often expresses and which we must respect. It would be rather starry-eyed of him to believe that the Defence Secretary agreed with him, however. If anyone had seen our visit to Afghanistan at the weekend, they would have witnessed the total agreement between the Defence Secretary, the International Development Secretary and myself. I will come to the matter of Afghanistan in a moment and deal with the hon. Gentleman’s point.
Mr Hague
I love listening to the right hon. Gentleman, as he knows, but he is so entertaining that I think we should store up his intervention for a little later in my speech. I will certainly allow him to intervene when we need a bit of refreshment.
The Government have established the National Security Council to bring together strategic decisions about foreign policy, security and defence policy and development, and we have appointed a National Security Adviser. Unlike the National Security Committee of the previous Government, which seemed to have little discernible impact, our National Security Council is at the centre of decision making in Government on these issues. It has already met three times in the two weeks since we took office, including this morning at the Ministry of Defence, and it will be a major means of involving domestic Departments—many of which have an increasingly international aspect to their work—in the pursuit of national foreign and security policy objectives, so that foreign policy will run through the veins of the domestic Departments of Government as well as those of the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence.
Mr Hague
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The brief answer to his question is “Yes, we will honour that commitment” and I shall set out in a few moments how we are going to do that. When we were in opposition, we called for more regular reports and quarterly reviews about the position in Afghanistan to be presented to this House. We shall certainly honour that and we will make a major statement on how we see things before the Kabul conference takes place. If my hon. Friend will allow me to develop my argument in a logical order, I will come on to Afghanistan in a few moments.
I was about to say that in the opening days of the new Government, we have reached out immediately to our allies. The Prime Minister has visited Paris and Berlin, and I had extensive discussions with my European counterparts at the EU-Latin America and Caribbean meeting in Madrid last week. As I speak, my hon. Friend the—
Mr Hague
We have not yet reached the desired point, but we are coming to it.
As I speak, the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, my hon. Friend—I think I can call him that—the Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne) is in Madrid for a summit with our ASEAN—Association of Southeast Asian Nations— partners. Within two days of taking office, I met the US Secretary of State in Washington for discussions on Iran and Afghanistan, and over the weekend the International Development Secretary, the Defence Secretary and I made our joint visit to Afghanistan.
Mr MacShane
I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary, who is a good Rotherham man. On the issue of the EU-Latin America meeting and political freedom, will he tell us what was in his mind when, in Cuba this winter, he met, with Lord Ashcroft, communist officials from the Cuban Government while Orlando Zapata was dying in prison under communist torture, particularly given that the EU has a rule that there should be no meeting with communist Cuban officials unless there is also a meeting with the democratic opposition? I do not believe that the right hon. Gentleman, then shadow Foreign Secretary, met the opposition, so does he understand how upset people are about that meeting?
Mr Hague
My hon. Friend will be delighted to know that I am coming to Europe. I am trying to get to that part of my speech so that I can conclude. We have said in the coalition agreement that we will examine the case for that Act. Let me be explicit. The Conservative party was committed to it in its manifesto, but this is a coalition Government: we have to look at the issue with our partners in the coalition, and the agreement says that we will do so. I will state our European approach in a moment, but I am conscious that other people wish to speak.
We remain acutely concerned about the human rights situation in Zimbabwe, Sudan and the horn of Africa. The Government are fully committed to achieving, from 2013, the UN target of spending 0.7% of our gross national income on overseas aid. We will enshrine that commitment in law, as we believe that locking in our commitment is both morally right and in our national interest. That will place Britain in a position of clear international leadership and will encourage other countries to live up to their commitments. Value for money will be central to everything we do. So, the Department for International Development will be completely transparent about the cost and performance of British aid programmes, using independent evaluation and a focus on results to drive a step change in the effectiveness of Britain’s aid efforts.
The European Union is the last major subject that I want to tackle. The Government will be an active and activist player in the European Union. We will be very vigorous and positive in the promotion of this country’s national interests in the EU while working to make the European Union as a whole a success. All the countries of the EU face profound challenges that will require us to work together using the means and institutions of the European Union. Our efforts will be concentrated on Europe’s global competitiveness, on tacking climate change and on global poverty. The current economic difficulties pose questions for each nation, varying with the state of their public finances, but collectively we need to encourage growth and job creation, so we will press strongly for the expansion of the single market and the removal of obstacles to business. It is also in our interests and in the EU’s general interest for the nations of the EU to make greater use of their collective weight in the world. We share many interests and values, and taking common action to advance them is, where appropriate, greatly to our general benefit—Iran’s nuclear programme is an important instance of that.
The EU’s standing in this country has fallen in recent years.
Mr Hague
Or perhaps it was the responsibility of some of those who have been the Minister for Europe. The right hon. Gentleman might reflect on that.
The British public have felt that they have had too little democratic control over developments in the EU. To remedy that and to provide what we regard as necessary protections for our democracy, the Government will bring forward a Bill amending the European Communities Act 1972. The Bill will require that any proposed future EU treaty that transfers areas of power or competence from Britain to the EU will be subject to a referendum. The British people will then have a referendum lock to which only they hold the key. The measure will cover any proposal to join the euro.
We also need greater democratic scrutiny and accountability over provisions in treaties that allow the rules of the EU to be modified or that provide options for existing EU powers to expand without the need for a new treaty. The use of any ratchet clause or passerelle will require an Act of Parliament to be passed, and the use of any major ratchet clause, such as the abolition of national vetoes over foreign policy, will require a referendum for its authorisation.
David Miliband
My hon. Friend makes an important point, founded on the actual experience of going to Afghanistan and talking to people there. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State for International Development is nodding his head, but the Secretary of State for Defence is not. The joining-up clearly has some way to go and the lessons of Afghanistan have not been learned by the Conservative party. My hon. Friend made an important point, which those on the Government Benches would do well to accept.
We will also hold the Government to account for their contradictory, mutually exclusive and incompatible promises on Europe. The Foreign Secretary made great play of his pledge that there would be no further institutional change in this Parliament, but it was agreed at the December 2007 European Council that there would be no institutional change until 2017. However, as a result of the coalition agreement, the Government go into European negotiations with no policy on European defence, which is not mentioned in that agreement, and no policy on European energy, which is also not mentioned. On justice and home affairs, all they can say is that they will review cases one by one—there are no principles or plans at all. The reason is simple: they cannot agree on anything. The result is that Britain is weakened and so is Europe.
Mr MacShane
One of the ambitions that we all have is that Turkey should join the European Union if it fulfils the conditions. That will involve a redistribution of powers within the EU. Under the new Government policy, that would require a referendum, which I do not think would be won in Britain. The Government have just announced the death of our pro-Turkey policy.
David Miliband
I strongly support Turkey’s entry to the EU and it was disappointing that the Foreign Secretary did not manage to mention Turkey’s aspirations to join the EU or the Government’s view of Turkish entry. However, the accession of a country—Croatia is likely to be the next—does not of necessity mean that there will be a change in the balance of power.
There is an important point. We have a fundamental principle in this country that when there are fundamental changes in the balance of power between this country and Brussels, there should be a referendum. That is why we are absolutely clear that there would have to be a referendum on the euro. However, the idea that there should be referendums when there are minor changes, such as how members are appointed to the pension committee of the European Parliament, which came up in the last Parliament, is absurd, and everybody knows it.
The Prime Minister has been threatening vetoes abroad, but the truth is that policy is being vetoed at home. The Deputy Prime Minister has said that
“if we remain outside the euro, we will simply continue to subside into a position of relative poverty and inefficiency compared to our more prosperous European neighbours.”
He also says that the Tory party is allied with
“a bunch of nutters, anti-Semites, people who deny climate change exists, homophobes.”
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister says of the Lib Dems that they want to
“take away Britain’s seat on the United Nations Security Council and replace it with a European one.”
The Foreign Secretary himself has called the Lib Dems
“the most fanatically federalist party in Britain.”
So when it comes to—[Interruption.] That is quite enough from my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), the former Foreign Secretary. When it comes to policy, no wonder they cannot agree, and that hurts Britain.
Here is one example among many. Labour Members support Eurojust and agree with the Crown Prosecution Service analysis, which points out that 80% of non-domestic homicide cases had an element of outside of jurisdiction, resulting in a huge increase in the UK’s use of Eurojust. But the Government have no policy at all—not for it, as the Liberal Democrats want, or against it, as the Tories say. There is nothing at all—no mention, no agreement, not even a review.
In the last Parliament, the Foreign Secretary had fun at my expense when he was able to say that there had been 50 reviews in three years. He even alleged that there was a review of sun beds, although I must say that I never found that one. However, the boot is on the other foot now and there have been 40 reviews in three weeks from this Government. We want to understand how these reviews are ever going to come to a conclusion on European policy. The truth is that on European policy the Government resemble nothing except Hugh Lofting’s pushmi-pullyu in “Doctor Dolittle”. This is what Lofting wrote:
“They had no tail, but a head at each end, and sharp horns on each head. They were very shy”.
They were very shy indeed—so shy that they could never move an inch. Britain needs Europe, but also, as President Sarkozy made clear to the Prime Minister during their recent meeting, Europe needs Britain—a Britain with strong and clear commitments on Europe, not an internal feud that paralyses discussion and action. Unfortunately for the Foreign Secretary, that paralysis means that he goes into European discussions without any policy at all.
After 18 years of Conservative government in 1997, Britain had halved overseas aid spending, fought and lost a beef war in Europe, and stood on the sidelines when tens of thousands of people were slaughtered on the edge of Europe. The previous Government put that right. We tripled overseas aid, made Britain a leader in Europe and stood up for human rights around the world. We are determined to protect that legacy and prevent history from repeating itself.
We also, for 13 years, put up with bucket-loads of moral sanctimony from the Liberal Democrats, as they complained about everything and gave credit for nothing. Conservative MPs repeatedly said in the last Parliament that the one thing we know about the Lib Dems is that if they are promising something in one part of the country, we can be sure, as night follows day, that they are opposing it somewhere else. In the general election, the Liberal Democrats campaigned for votes under the banner “Keep the Tories out”, then promptly proceeded to put the Tories in. They are, as the Prime Minister so rightly said, a joke.
We know that the Foreign Secretary is good at jokes—but now, for the first time in a very long time, he is in a job that needs judgment, not good jokes. Britain is respected around the world, and we will seek to ensure that he and his motley coalition do not put that respect at risk.
Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
I congratulate the new Foreign Secretary. I agreed with much of what he said in opposition, and I have found myself in agreement with him more on this subject than I did when he was Secretary of State for Wales.
I am particularly anxious to talk about human rights, because the Foreign Secretary said that he deplored human rights abuses wherever they occurred. I hope that that criticism will be carried through into practice. I am pleased that the international development commitment has been ring-fenced. I first stood on this side of the House 25 years ago, and it was a long, hard battle to get the then Government to agree to put money into overseas development. Later, I became the shadow International Development Secretary, and we had to continue the battle to get the Government to agree to move towards a target, which we put in place when we came into government.
Fundamental human rights are important in and of themselves. People everywhere want to enjoy basic rights to liberty, freedom of speech, a fair trial and privacy. People all over the world have suffered in the efforts to secure what they believe is rightfully theirs. Governments throughout the world at least pay lip service to their commitment to rights by signing and ratifying treaties, but it makes sense for us to help those who are still working in their countries, often at great personal risk, to realise those rights.
Countries in which rights are a reality are more likely to be stable, less likely to experience internal and external conflict, less prone to crippling corruption and skewed growth, and more likely to be reliable trading partners. For those reasons, the UK Government should continue to support initiatives that promote wider political participation, the rule of law, the idea that no one in a country is above the law, and the availability to all citizens of redress for serious violations and crimes. The legitimacy of the work of human rights defenders and non-governmental organisations is important, and the previous Government did a lot of work to uphold that legitimacy and respect for minorities. Those of us on the Opposition Benches with a particular interest in human rights will continue to scrutinise Government policy in that light, and I encourage Back Benchers of all parties to do so. I will continue to lobby the Foreign Office with my parliamentary colleagues of all parties through the all-party human rights group, of which I am pleased to be a member. I encourage those who are not already members to join.
I should like to take this opportunity to raise issues in relation to countries such as Iraq, Turkey, Burma and Colombia. Continued engagement with the relevant authorities in those countries is vital if there are to be positive developments. Changing the mentality and the environment so that that results in the realisation of rights takes time. Sometimes we are unrealistic about our timelines.
For the past seven years—under two Prime Ministers—I have been the special envoy on human rights in Iraq, and been involved in a wide range of human rights issues in that country. I am sorry that Iraq is being used as a political football for those running for the leadership of the Labour party. I continue to stand by my view, which I have articulated in the House on many occasions, that the action we took in Iraq was correct. I argued for such action for 25 years, and I have not moved from that point of view. Of course, like everybody else, I regret the loss of British and Iraqi life, and of the lives of many others who took part in that action.
Mr MacShane
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Kurds, who in other parts of that region have suffered terribly throughout almost all of our political and adult lives, now—at last—have in Iraq a degree of freedom, autonomy and control over their lives? That is very precious. Whatever else one says about that conflict, the Kurdish people of Iraq have emerged as the winners.
Ann Clwyd
I quite agree with my right hon. Friend. Obviously, I have been involved with the Kurds for longer than I have been involved with the rest of Iraq, because it was possible to travel to Kurdistan in 2001, and as far back as 1998, when it was not possible to go to the rest of the Iraq. The Kurds are now semi-autonomous within Iraq, and have elections and an active Kurdish regional government. Everybody who compares Kurdistan now with how it was will realise that the Kurds have made enormous economic, political and democratic progress.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), who has shown great consistency over the years, both in participating in these debates and in successfully fulfilling his responsibilities as Chairman of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs. I am sure that he will be leaving that post with a pang.
I must say that it was slightly unexpected to find myself speaking on defence from the Back Benches, after so many years speaking from the Front Bench on the subject. Nevertheless, all conflicts have casualties, and some of us must accept the fact that those in my position are what the military historians would describe as “collateral damage”. Collateral damage should always be minimised, but sometimes it cannot be avoided entirely.
When I used to sit on the Opposition Front Bench, people used to ask me how I managed to retain my air of imperturbability and cheerfulness, after so many years as a shadow Armed Forces Minister. I shall now share with the House a slight confession. The confession is that I discovered something that Opposition Members are only just about to discover, which is that if they sit on the Opposition Front Bench just by the Dispatch Box and look to their left, every time the door into the Chamber opens they will see pointing at them, perfectly framed in an aperture, the great statue of Margaret Thatcher. I found that desperately inspiring. Whether they will have the same reaction, as they sit thinking about what they are going to do against this great new coalition Government, may be open to doubt.
I wish to say a few words about nuclear weapons, but not many; I wish to say rather more words about Afghanistan. The few words that I wish to say about nuclear weapons relate to something that the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) mentioned, when he raised the possibility of perhaps having a nuclear deterrent based on cruise missiles carried on Astute class submarines. I have to tell him—or I would tell him, were he still in his place—that that really is a non-runner. Cruise missiles have a single warhead and a limited range. Cruise missiles have not even been designed yet with a warhead that could be fired from Astute class submarines.
What would happen if we had cruise missiles on Astute class submarines as our nuclear deterrent? First, the submarine would have to become a much closer inshore weapon, because cruise missiles do not have the range, so the submarine would be more vulnerable. Secondly, we would have to have many more cruise missiles, because there is only a single warhead on a cruise missile. That would be much more expensive, not only because we would need more cruise missiles, but because we would need more submarines, in order to deploy enough cruise missile warheads. Thirdly, there is a slight problem when a cruise missile is fired, in that whoever it is being fired at cannot tell whether it has a nuclear warhead or a conventional warhead. So, to put an end to this facile nonsense, let me just say—
Dr Lewis
I am on the Back Benches; I am not bound by this stuff. Cruise missiles are more expensive and less effective, put the submarines at risk and could start world war three by accident—but apart from that, it is a really great idea.
I am about to break a rule that I have never broken before and which I hope never to have to break again. I am going to quote from one of my own speeches—not much; just a little bit—but there is a special reason why I have to do so. I am going to quote from the last speech that I made as a shadow Defence Minister from the Front Bench, in the debate on defence policy on 15 October last year. I was responding to an hon. Friend who had pointed out that the anti-opium campaign was failing in Afghanistan, that the promotion of women’s rights was failing, that democracy was failing and that corruption was rife. I said that that was to suggest that the objectives of our presence in Afghanistan were to get rid of the opium trade, assert the rights of women, create a democracy and root out corruption. I pointed out that those were worthy and desirable aims, but that they were not the reason why we were there. The reason why we were there was, of course, that an attack had been launched by al-Qaeda militants against American cities. Our response was to ensure, once and for all, that that could never happen again from Afghanistan.
I also pointed out something else. I said that we needed to wage a campaign in Afghanistan
“in which we do not take levels of casualties that the public are not prepared to bear,”
and that that, above all,
“is the single reason that people in this country are dissatisfied with the campaign in Afghanistan. It is not a question of a lack of patience, or of not spending enough money,”
but
“The country will not put up with a disproportionate cost in lives for a campaign that shows no sign of ending.”
I also ventured to suggest—I was a little worried when I made this remark—that
“if our enemies in Afghanistan focused on a strategic objective of ensuring that they killed two or three British service personnel every week, keeping that up for a sufficient length of time would be enough to harden opposition to the continuance of the campaign.”—[Official Report, 15 October 2009; Vol. 497, c. 534-35.]
Why have I broken my rule and quoted from my own speech? The reason is very simple: because I am going to develop that theme in the short time available, and I do not want anyone to say that I am saying what I am about to say only because I am speaking from the Back Benches and that I never said it when I spoke from the Front Bench. We have got a dilemma in Afghanistan, and nobody knows which of two courses to take. My argument is that there is a third course.
The first of the two courses being put forward says that we need to get out of there as soon as we reasonably can. The other one says that winning a counter-insurgency campaign means that we have to go on for the long haul. Those words were used on the Front Bench by the Minister for the Armed Forces, the hon. Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey), in his capacity as Liberal Democrat shadow defence spokesman. We also have to reform the society so that it will be self-sustaining.
We are not going to turn Afghanistan into a self-sustaining society that will be able to reach a deal with the reconcilable elements of the Taliban if we simultaneously say, as President Obama has, that we will start withdrawing our troops from the middle of next year. We cannot have it both ways.
The trouble is that that is to assume that the only way to be present in Afghanistan is to micromanage the country as though it were our job to rebuild that society and hold it in place. That is why we are engaged in the folly of sending our troops out from forward-operating bases. I have friends in those bases: they go out day after day and week after week, over highly predictable routes and wearing uniforms that say, “Here we are. We’re a target. Snipe us, blow us up.” That is insane. We are fighting on the one ground where our enemies are able to defeat us by inflicting on us a level of casualties that our society will no longer be willing to bear. The answer is not to follow the policy of micromanagement in Afghanistan, which has been followed up until now.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I am very pleased that we are having this debate so early in the discussion of the Queen’s Speech. For the past years, this House has been dominated by the issues of Iraq, Afghanistan and international law. I opposed both the Iraq and the Afghanistan wars from the very beginning, and I ask the House to consider the damage that they have done to this country’s standing around the world.
The wars have undermined international law and the UN. Vast numbers of people, both military and civilian, have laid down their lives in both countries. The overwhelming public opinion in this country is that the Iraq war was simply wrong. It has done enormous damage to my party and to this country’s standing around the world. I had hoped that the Foreign Secretary would give us a clearer answer on the possible dates for a timetable of withdrawal from Afghanistan.
What would constitute a victory in Afghanistan? When that question is raised, it is very difficult to get an answer. It is clear that there is still terrible poverty in that country, that drug dealing is rampant and rife, and that corruption is even more so. It is also clear that the war has spilled over the border into Pakistan.
I hope that we can set a very rapid timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan and recognise that this is a war that cannot be won. Our continued presence there does not make this country or any western capital safer: to the contrary, I think that the war makes us more vulnerable and puts us in greater danger. We have to understand that, if we wish to be a player in the world, we have to play by international law, in accordance with the UN.
As the Foreign Secretary and others have noted, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty review conference is going on this week in New York. I want to make two points about that.
First, the 1970 non-proliferation treaty places an absolute requirement on the five permanent members of the UN Security Council—the holders of nuclear weapons, of which Great Britain is one—to take steps towards nuclear disarmament. Many of the countries represented at the NPT review talks have not developed nuclear weapons and have no intention of doing so. They feel very aggrieved that the five permanent members of the Security Council continually lecture them about not developing nuclear weapons and about pursuing nuclear disarmament, while at the same time talking about nuclear rearmament. In our case, that means developing a new Trident nuclear submarine system.
I agree with the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) that the defence review absolutely must include the whole issue of nuclear weapons and the Trident replacement. The system is very expensive and, in my view, immoral. It will not increase this country’s safety and security, and its cost is so astronomical that there can be no justification for it whatsoever.
However, nuclear weapons cannot be abolished by the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. There was an excellent piece of investigative journalism in The Guardian on Monday that demonstrated how Israel had involved itself in trying to arm apartheid South Africa with nuclear weapons. The fact that Israel has 200 nuclear warheads at the present time means that, unless there is to be an acceptance of nuclear weapons in the middle east, it is very hard to say that no other countries in that region should ever consider acquiring them if they feel threatened.
I do not want any country, in the middle east or anywhere else, to develop nuclear weapons. I absolutely do not want Iran to do so: for that matter, I do not think that it should develop nuclear power, but my personal opposition to nuclear power means that I would say that about any country.
However, a nuclear-free middle east means that a nuclear weapons convention must be developed. Israel and all the other countries in that region would have to involved. When the NPT review talks in New York conclude this week, I hope that the need for a nuclear weapons convention will be accepted. If we do not develop such a convention, the likelihood becomes ever greater that countries beyond North Korea, India, Pakistan and Israel will develop nuclear weapons before the next quinquennial review in 2015.
At the heart of that, of course, is the issue of Palestine and the middle east. Both Front-Bench speakers referred to the situation facing the people of Palestine, and in particular to the isolation of the people of Gaza at the present time. Along with my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) and a number of parliamentarians from countries all across Europe, I took part in a delegation that went to Gaza earlier this year. Two things hit us, and the first was the isolation and poverty of the people of Gaza. We were also struck by the shortages of food, medicine and everything else that they are suffering, and by the sheer hopelessness of the situation facing many young people. The blockade must be lifted, and the EU has an important role to play in that by imposing trade sanctions on Israel, if necessary, to encourage that.
Mr MacShane
Does my hon. Friend acknowledge that there is also an Arab country blockading Gaza—namely, Egypt? Does he agree that many of these problems would be solved if Egypt were to lift its blockade?
Jeremy Corbyn
Egypt does indeed maintain a blockade of Gaza, but it is not the country that is threatening or trying to occupy Gaza. The crossings between Gaza and Israel, where there are endless restrictions on UN trucks, food, medicines, building supplies and everything else, make life intolerable for people in Gaza. At the moment, a peaceful flotilla of vessels is going from Turkey to take aid, support, succour and comfort to the people of Gaza. I hope that the British Government will put all the pressure that they can on the Israeli Government not to interfere with that flotilla and to allow it to land, so that the people of Gaza can receive the support that is being offered by peaceable people from all over the world.
We are not going to solve the problems of the middle east region by further rearmament. I am concerned that the United States’ policy, announced last week, of giving a further £150 million for a new missile defence system for Israel is a provocative act that will only encourage further armament within the region. The same applies to the deployment of Patriot missiles all along the Gulf. There must be dialogue, negotiation and debate on all the issues, including human rights, with Iran and every other country to bring about peace in the region. We will not achieve it by rearmament, by nuclear weapons or by turning a blind eye to what happened in Operation Cast Lead or to the abuse of Palestinian rights by Israel in its process of occupation.
The Foreign Secretary made a strong point about human rights being the core of foreign policy. Indeed, the previous Foreign Secretary made much the same point. There are many issues that could be raised on human rights, but I just want briefly to say that, if we go down the road of lifting the universal jurisdiction that applies in British courts to people against whom there is prima facie evidence of war crimes or the abuse of human rights, we diminish ourselves in the eyes of the rest of the world and undermine the whole principle of international law and international jurisdiction. If there are people in any country against whom there is such prima facie evidence, they should be brought before a court and tried for war crimes or the abuse of human rights, as appropriate. If we start being selective about this because we like or dislike a particular person or country, it diminishes our standing in the world. I also ask the new Government to pay attention to the deportation of people from this country to countries that have not signed the various protocols on torture and the abuse of human rights. I ask them to stop the process of such deportations.
I want briefly to mention three other issues, which I hope the Minister will be able to respond to later. There is massive abuse of human rights and massive loss of life going on in the Congo. This was not mentioned in the speeches of those on the Front Benches. It is the largest loss of life in any conflict anywhere in the world at the present time. Millions have died, and tens of thousands—if not hundreds of thousands—of women and families have been abused in the eastern part of the Congo. The Government have a decision to make on the future deployment of the MONUC force, and I hope that they will do that with sensitivity. I also hope that they will recognise that human rights abuses have not gone away just because we have good relations with the Government in that country, or indeed because the Congolese army is in the east of the Congo—I have to say that the reverse is the case.
I also want to mention the right of return of the Chagos islanders to the islands in the Indian ocean, which has been fought for through our courts. The case is now going to the European Court of Human Rights. I hope that the Foreign Secretary will intervene, withdraw the case from the European Court and accept the inalienable right of return of those people to the islands from which they were so brutally dragged away in the 1970s and 1980s.
Finally, there is a group of people living in refugee camps in Algeria who were driven out of Morocco in the 1970s as part of the war waged by the Moroccan forces against Western Sahara. Western Sahara remains a territory occupied by Morocco. Unfortunately, Britain acceded to the European fishery agreement, which means that fishing takes place off the coast of Western Sahara, mainly to the benefit of Spanish vessels. The people of Western Sahara remain in those camps. Let us make some effort to ensure that a referendum takes place that allows peace to return, and allows those people to return. They must be allowed to exercise their right under decolonisation statutes to decide on their own future. Whether they become independent or not, they should at least have that free choice. It is simply not right to have left them living in refugee camps for more than 30 years. We can do better than that, and it is up to us to make sure that we do.
Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier), who over many years has illuminated the House with forceful thoughts on these questions. I hope that he and some of the other defence experts who have spoken are listened to, because, as I shall seek to argue, we need some serious new strategic thinking.
First, let me pay tribute to the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), the hon. Members for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris) and for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) for their remarkable, warm, witty, passionate and lovely speeches. They reminded me of my first time 16 years ago. Frankly, I am as excited and nervous now as I was then. We have heard from hon. Members who will make a big contribution to the House of Commons.
Before I focus on Afghanistan and NATO, I want to invite the House to consider that the Prime Minister, unfortunately, misled the House yesterday—inadvertently, I am sure. He said, in response to a question of mine, that
“Labour’s allies in the European Parliament”
include
“the Self Defence of the Republic of Poland party, whose leader, Andrzej Lepper, said that
‘Hitler had a really good programme’.”—[Official Report, 25 May 2010; Vol. 510, c. 48.]
While we have been sitting today, I have received an e-mail from Dr Rafal Pankowski, the expert on these matters in Warsaw, saying:
“Did he really say that? I find it incredible the British PM could have shot himself in the foot in this way. Self-Defence as such is no longer in the”
European Parliament,
“but its surviving leading ex-member, (Ryszard Czarnecki) is in the ECR Group!”
For the benefit of Members, the ECR group is, of course, the Conservative-created European parliamentary group, the European Conservatives and Reformists. So, there we have the Prime Minister, inadvertently I am sure, misleading the House because he is relying on party propaganda. He has not yet adjusted to the fact that he is the Prime Minister of our nation and must be absolutely accurate in what he says.
Let me quote another sentence from yesterday’s Loyal Address debate. When talking about Afghanistan, the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) said:
“I…can barely stop myself crying out, ‘Enough. No more. Bring them home.’ I know that we cannot overnight abandon commitments to allies and the Afghans themselves, but I urge my right hon. Friends to scale back our aims realistically and bring our young soldiers home with all due speed.”—[Official Report, 25 May 2010; Vol. 510, c. 36.]
I have for several years sat and listened to the tributes to the dead and fallen, weeping internally, as many Members have. I think again and again of a poem of Siegfried Sassoon, which I have altered slightly:
“‘Good-morning; good-morning!’ the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead,
And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
‘He’s a cheery old card,’ grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Helmand with rifle and pack.
But he did for them both by his plan of attack.”
Mr MacShane
I see that the hon. Gentleman knows the words as well as I do.
It is time to assert the principle that war is too important a matter to be left to generals. We need to assert the authority of this House and the authority of a politically elected Government over the lack of strategy in Afghanistan. The Canadian Parliament has done that. Canada’s Conservative Foreign Minister, Mr Lawrence Cannon, has confirmed that, “In 2011, we’re out.” So, Canada, our closest English-speaking ally, is saying that enough is enough.
We began yesterday, as we have begun every Prime Minister’s questions since June 2003, with the Prime Minister reading out the names of the dead. We cannot continue, Wednesday after Wednesday in this Parliament, reporting the blood sacrifice of our young soldiers and officers. I want to help the new Prime Minister so that he can come to the Dispatch Box without that grim piece of paper to read out. That is why we need to say clearly to the generals, “Your strategy is wrong.” We need to move from a policy of confrontation to one of containment. Our strategy must absolutely be based on finding a political solution. We need more jaw-jaw, and less war-war.
Before the election, there was, frankly, a general briefing by too many generals against the then Prime Minister about what was happening in Afghanistan and the support for the Army there. Sadly, the Secretary of State for Defence was part of that shameful and shameless procedure. He is now known around the region as 13th-century Fox. His breathtaking insult of the Afghan people has caused huge damage in the region. He shows the colonial mentality of a Lord Salisbury. President Karzai is an obsessive reader of the UK and American press. The 13th-century insult of the Secretary of State has set back good relations not just with Afghanistan but with other countries in the world. Instead of apologising for his insult—I hope that he will have the grace to do that when he winds up tonight—the Secretary of State has tried to defend and downplay his remarks. That is a disastrous start and it would be no bad thing if he were transferred to another post where he could do no harm.
I also appeal to the Conservative press to stop always simply supporting the generals and to start supporting the soldiers. I have, or had, here a front page of The Sun from February, but I cannot lay my hands on it. “Blitzed Taliban on run” screams the front page of The Sun on 15 February 2010 about the Marjah offensive, and it quotes a Major General Messenger saying:
“Nothing has stopped the mission from progressing”,
yet only last week another general, General Stanley McChrystal said of the Marjah offensive that it is “a bleeding ulcer”.
We need some British generals who will tell the truth, like General McChrystal. We need an Alanbrooke, a latter-day “master of strategy”, to quote the inscription on Lord Alanbrooke’s statue outside the Ministry of Defence. I wonder whether General McChrystal knew that he was echoing the very words of Mikhail Gorbachev 25 years ago, who described Afghanistan not as a bleeding ulcer, but as a “bleeding wound”. It is time to admit that we are not going to win this war. Our object must now be to change and to support our boys, not the generals as they send them to be IED fodder.
What should that strategy consist of? In a word, statecraft must replace warcraft. We need a political solution that will involve compromise. Of course we must ensure that al-Qaeda does not return, and we must work in close collaboration with the United States and with our NATO partners, but NATO is doing itself no good talking up a war it cannot win. We need long-term thinking. It is absurd to have army chiefs rotating every six months. Instead of one six-year war, we have 12 six-month wars.
The Taliban are not stupid. Why fight face to face when planting an IED is just as effective? Yes, our soldiers will always chase them out and behave heroically as they do so, but it is like squeezing a balloon. The can-do, will-do powerpoint style of the generals must be replaced by a real feel for the tribal and political reality and relations of the region. The MOD must allow a fuller discussion by all officers, including junior officers, of their real views and thoughts. We have to accept that Pashtuns will not be told how to run their lives by outsiders in uniforms, and that applies as much to Tajiks as to NATO soldiers.
We must widen out our reach regionally. China has invested $3.5 billion in copper mines in Afghanistan. Iran wants a stable Afghanistan, because Iranians are suffering from huge drug epidemics. Above all, we need to get India and Pakistan talking and working together successfully to find a solution to Kashmir. We heard talk about Afghanistan and Pakistan from the Foreign Secretary, but he did not mention the Pakistan-India link. Until India and Pakistan are at the conference table finding a solution to Kashmir, where 70,000 Muslims have been killed since the state was put under Indian army control 20 years ago, we will have no solution in Pakistan.
That requires regionalising the conflict. We need to get the UN more involved. Can Britain promote a south-west Asian version of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe so that China, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan can work out some problems together? We need to show more respect for India, Pakistan and Afghanistan publicly––unlike the “13th century” remark––but use tougher language privately. The United States, the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth, our European Union partners and our other main partners must come together to draw up a common strategy. The start of a new Government is a chance. The hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) put forward his innovative idea of a sovereign strategic base in the country to prevent al-Qaeda coming back, but no longer trying to fight and die.
There are other issues to do with NATO, the Baltic states and Poland that I would like to have addressed, had time permitted. However, this is the most important turning point in our military history this century. We must get it right. I hope the Government will do so.