Syria

Douglas Alexander Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Douglas Alexander (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for his statement and indeed for advance sight of it this morning. Coming to the House ahead of the parliamentary recess acknowledges that there are strongly held opinions and deeply felt concerns on both sides of the House about events still unfolding in Syria.

I welcome the Government’s steps to provide vital humanitarian support to those affected by the conflict and the continuing efforts to secure additional funds from the international community. Those humanitarian efforts are necessary but insufficient to alleviate the suffering. The level of ongoing violence in Syria today represents the greatest diplomatic failure of the international community in the 21st century. We support the Government’s continuing efforts to convene a second Geneva conference, but we remain of the view that a contact group could assist in that endeavour, given the present difficulties in securing the attendance of the warring parties.

Members on both sides of the House stand united in their revulsion at and abhorrence and condemnation of the use of chemical weapons in this ongoing and bloody conflict. It is a conflict that means that Syria is disintegrating as a nation state. That disintegration risks destabilising not only Syria’s immediate neighbours but the region as a whole.

Two weeks ago, the votes of this House on Syria reflected real concerns that the country was being pushed too quickly towards military action, on a timetable set elsewhere, without due process being followed and the necessary steps being taken. Moments after the Government motion was lost—a rejection of the Government’s rushed judgment in relation to the use of British military force without precedent since perhaps the case of Lord North in 1782—the Prime Minister stood at the Dispatch Box and read from a sheet of paper the following words:

“It is very clear tonight that, while the House has not passed a motion, the British Parliament, reflecting the views of the British people, does not want to see British military action. I get that, and the Government will act accordingly.”—[Official Report, 29 August 2013; Vol. 566, c. 1555.]

The suggestion has since been made that the decisive voice influencing the Prime Minister’s apparently predetermined decision to rule out the use of British military force in Syria if the Government motion was lost was not that of the Foreign Secretary but that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Therefore, in his capacity as Foreign Secretary, can the right hon. Gentleman offer the House any examples of circumstances in which the Government will seek to come back to the House on the issue of the use of British military force in Syria? The Foreign Secretary has just told the House: “The United Kingdom will make every effort to negotiate an enforceable agreement”, so he clearly agrees with me that it is preferable, if it is possible, to remove the threat of chemical weapons from Syria without having to resort to the use of force.

Two days after those votes were cast in the House of Commons, President Obama specifically referenced the British Government’s failure to secure the support of Parliament when explaining his decision to delay the use of force in Syria and indeed to take the matter to Congress, so I ask the Foreign Secretary this question. Is it not abundantly clear that if the Government’s motion had been passed by this House two weeks ago, the United States military force would in all likelihood have already been used in Syria and the diplomatic path that he now advocates with such conviction would never have been reached?

None of us has any doubt about the murderous nature of the Assad regime, and no one should have any illusions about the fact that since the start of this conflict the Russians have provided not only weaponry but significant diplomatic cover to the Assad regime. The challenge confronting Secretary Kerry and Foreign Minister Lavrov today in Geneva is indeed daunting. Their task is to find ways to evidence that a goal that is desirable is also doable. That would mean agreeing a credible plan in circumstances not just of low trust but of violent conflict; a means to identify, verify, secure and ultimately remove those weapons from Assad’s possession, with the final goal of destroying them altogether. While these critical negotiations are taken forward, the UK must continue its work to help alleviate the suffering and engage constructively with partners in the Security Council.

[Mr Hague]

There is strong agreement about everything I said in my statement, judging by what the right hon. Gentleman said, although disagreement about one thing that was not in the statement, which I will come back to.

I welcome what the right hon. Gentleman said. I think that there is strong unity across the House on the importance of our humanitarian contribution. He said that everything that we and other countries were doing was necessary but not sufficient to alleviate the suffering. That, sadly, is true, because only the end of the conflict will truly alleviate or give us the opportunity to alleviate the suffering of millions of people. He rightly welcomed the diplomatic efforts that we continue to make on bringing about a second Geneva conference. There is no shortage of discussion in the international community about how to do this. We have regular discussions with all our colleagues on the Security Council, including Russia, about how to bring it about. Ideas are floated about different diplomatic groups that might bring this about, but the essence of the problem remains that we need all appropriate parties to be ready to fulfil what was agreed at Geneva. There is no evidence that the regime is in a position to do that as things stand, but we will continue to work on that.

I take what the right hon. Gentleman said as agreement in the House on the approach to the negotiations now taking place about an international agreement on chemical weapons. He said that a credible plan was needed in an atmosphere of low trust and violent conflict. That is correct, and it strikes the same note as the one that I was striking—that we must take this seriously and make every effort to make it successful, but that to be successful it has to be an enforceable agreement that credibly, reliably and promptly deals with this issue and places the regime’s chemical weapons stocks under international control for destruction.

I need to disagree with the right hon. Gentleman about only one thing that he said, which is a rather extraordinary claim that none of this would have come about had the Opposition not voted against the Government motion two weeks ago, which is a rather self-obsessed view of world developments. It is like the story of the cockerel who thought its crowing brought about the dawn. He will remember that the motion we put before the House said that, far from being in a rush, the Government would await the report of the UN inspectors, which has not yet come out, before taking any military action, that they would make every effort to secure a Security Council resolution, and that there would be a second vote. That is the basis on which the United Kingdom was proceeding, and there is no sign at all that this development would have taken place had Governments around the world not been debating those issues and had the United States not been debating whether to take military action.