Ukraine (UK Relations with Russia)

Debate between Edward Leigh and Julian Lewis

Thursday 11th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

Yes, in an ideal world it would be, but there is a slight problem with that scenario, namely that the Russians have the power to impose a solution and nobody else is willing to fight them to prevent them from doing so. That is the hard reality. We may not like the situation any more than we liked that in 1968 when Russia imposed its will with the crushing of the Prague spring; but I do not think anybody would suggest even now, with the benefit of hindsight, that it would have been right to provoke world war three at that time. In situations where we are up against people with a lot of power, we have to contain them until political affairs evolve gradually in the direction we want them to go.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

indicated assent.

[Dr Lewis]

I am glad that my hon. Friend agrees with me.

Let me deal with the other two scenarios before drawing my remarks to a conclusion. The third scenario is a split. It would be either a de facto split, which is being referred to as a frozen conflict—in other words, the pro-Russian communities would end up in control of their areas, glaring at Kiev and vice versa—or a de jure split, which would obviously be a less satisfactory solution than an agreed decision to stay together with an appropriate amount of autonomy.

Finally—this is the dread scenario, which really could happen—if we really were crazy enough to offer military assistance to Kiev and encourage it to think that there would be enough military supplies to enable it to overwhelm its adversaries in the pro-Russian parts of the country, it is an absolute certainty that Russia would respond militarily. In any conflict of that sort, Russia would prevail and it would not then be content to confine itself to the pro-Russian areas; it would invade and take over the whole country.

It is what is colloquially called a no-brainer that if the Russians are determined—however wrongly, as my hon. Friends have variously suggested—not to let the pro-Russian provinces go, and they are not prepared to do so, the best outcome we can hope for is an agreed negotiation of autonomy for those areas. Such agreements are not unprecedented. It took us 38 years to reach some sort of agreement even in a province such as Northern Ireland, which was a rather less fraught or challenging situation than the one that we and the international community face in Ukraine.

Ukraine

Debate between Edward Leigh and Julian Lewis

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh]

No, of course I do not. Finland was also occupied by Sweden, but there is no time to debate that. Ukraine is a completely different ball game to Russians than Poland. My point is that Ukraine is an extraordinarily divided country. This is not a simple, liberal argument about a long-standing independent united country and a foreign aggressor. Western Ukraine is fiercely anti-Russian. As I said, it is Catholic Uniate, its capital city is Lviv, and formerly it was largely inhabited not by Ukrainians but 80% by Poles who were forcibly removed by Stalin. Before that it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and was called Lemberg. The whole of western Ukraine is therefore passionately opposed to Russia—quite understandably—and wants to break free.

The eastern part of the country around Donetsk and Crimea is a completely different state of affairs. We must be aware that however many speeches we give, and however many sanctions we impose, this is not just about a tyrant—Putin—invading a foreign country. A great proportion of the Russian population feels very strongly that the west is imposing double standards. The west insisted on self-determination for the Kosovans, and Serbia is very close to the Russian heart as a fellow Orthodox country. The House may not agree with that, but that is their point of view, and imposing any amount of sanctions will not change it.

We must stop playing power games. It is too dangerous a situation, and the west must realise that it cannot tear Ukraine away from Russia. We must stop these games of Ukraine ever joining NATO—thank God Ukraine is not in NATO because we would be involved in a war. We must stop these games.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

My hon. Friend said yesterday in Defence questions what a different position we would be in had we let Ukraine become part of NATO. We must realise and impress on Russia that membership of NATO involves the criterion that an attack on one is an attack on all. If we are not prepared to protect a country in that way, we must not give it bogus guarantees.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Absolutely.

Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures

Debate between Edward Leigh and Julian Lewis

Tuesday 21st January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I am sure that on a Privy Counsellor basis, the Home Secretary would be happy to brief the right hon. Lady. I am speaking as a Back Bencher, but it seems that when the public are concerned, and when there are people who hold such dangerous views, it is not unreasonable for us as members of the public to ask our two parties of state to work together on this.

The memorandum says that the Home Secretary must reasonably consider

“that it is necessary, for purposes connected with protecting members of the public from a risk of terrorism,”

and with preventing or restricting the individual’s involvement in terrorism-related activity,

“for TPIMs to be imposed on an individual.”

That is not unreasonable.

There are two points to consider and I understand the attack from the Labour party. I also understand that the High Court had a problem with relocation, but I would have thought we could find a way through that. If relocation was absolutely necessary from the point of view of protecting the public, I do not think it unreasonable —I have been listening to the shadow Home Secretary—for there to be some requirement for relocation.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I hope my hon. Friend does not mind, but I must finish in a few seconds. I will end with this point, although I would like to be able to give way.

We have a right to know that these six people are now safe to be released on the streets. That is a reasonable question. The Home Secretary’s reasonable point of view is that there must be some new evidence that they continue to be a threat to the public, and we cannot keep someone under a control order for ever on the basis of information that is two years old. I think that is her point of view, and that is how TPIMs differ from control orders. From a rational and objective point of view, that is not an unreasonable stance.

When the Minister sums up the debate, without going into operational details, I would like him to seek, as best he can, to reassure the House that those people have behaved themselves over the past two years, that there is no evidence of new involvement in terrorism, and that in his view, they will not be a threat to society. That would be entirely proper for the Minister to do. Surely all the public want is reassurance that they and their children are safe, and it is the job of us in this Parliament to ensure that those children are safe.

House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Edward Leigh and Julian Lewis

Friday 18th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Yes, I think one of the key elements of traditional Conservative thinking is that we do not necessarily think that in order to be representative and to feel justified we have to have some direct relationship with what happens in a general election, particularly one based on proportional representation.

I therefore think that the Government should get all the extraneous and radical thoughts out of their mind. I know my right hon. Friend the Minister is a great thinker on these matters and he would much rather have extended his speech to include some of his thoughts on these wider constitutional conventions and ideas. I suspect he felt rather constrained—but that, of course, is in the nature of being a Minister.

Although the House of Lords is fundamentally irrational in many ways, it fulfils its central purposes. That is the point my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire was making. When we talk about House of Lords reforms, we focus far too much on structures. We should be focusing instead on this question: does it work? Does it do its job as a revising Chamber? The answer, surely, in terms of both quality of debate and its general ethos is that it does. That point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset. It does not matter if somebody speaks in the House of Lords only once every year—or, I have to say to my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), if they only speak once over 10 years—if they speak with sufficient knowledge from personal experience. That is what they are there to do. We are here in the House of Commons not to speak as experts; we are generalists. We are here to represent public opinion as we see it. Of course our own prejudices occasionally come into play, but we do attempt to reflect public opinion. The House of Lords is not there for that purpose. It is a Chamber of experts, and it does its job in those terms in an excellent fashion.

People should not criticise my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire by saying, “He’s had the opportunity of a whole day for his private Member’s Bill and he could have done something far more radical.” I am sure he could intervene on me to give me a dozen ideas of how he would wish to improve the House of Lords further. Perhaps, like me, he thinks that there should be some sort of retirement age and limitation on numbers, but he knows that if he takes one step too many—if he takes four or five steps, rather than one or two—those who are determined to kill off anything but the most modest of reforms would ensure that this Bill never made any more progress. So he has conducted himself wisely on constitutional reform.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Before my hon. Friend leaves the question of how well the House of Lords does its job, will he cast his mind back to 1984, when he had been in this House for a year and sought to move a sensible amendment to bring in postal ballots for trade union elections? That amendment could get nowhere because it was heavily whipped against, and it was defeated. But in the other place, where people listened to reason, that amendment went through, and so when the legislation came back here, the Government had to listen and take some parts of it on board, which they did, with very beneficial effects over the years that followed.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I agree with that point, and I think the House of Lords performs that function excellently. Those who believe that the House of Lords can have legitimacy only if it is elected forget what the result of an elected House of Lords would be: it would filled with elected politicians. We are called “politicians” because we are elected and too many of us believe that we can feel justification in our life only if we become Ministers. That is why on dozens of occasions, including the one to which my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) alluded, reason has come to see light in the House of Lords, whereas in this place it is almost impossible to defeat the power of the whipping system, because most politicians are naturally ambitious. So let us not focus on the structures or on creating an elected House of Lords; let us focus on the small and necessary steps that this Bill can take, and which a Bill next year might take one step further forward.

As I was saying, the major strength of the British parliamentary system not just in the past century, but over 200 years, is that it bends rather than breaks. It does move very slowly, and people often criticise us for the slowness of our constitutional change, but its very slowness is its major strength. If we were to enact legislation to codify a convention—if my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire were to say that, as we have excellent conventions regulating the relationship between the two Houses, we should codify them—we would, in essence, kill it. We do not know how any of the proposals for House of Lords reform will upset the conventions, which time, tradition and compromise have erected. Time, tradition and compromise are the essential agreements of any successful constitutional change. That is a conservative principle—a Burkean principle—and it lies behind what my hon. Friend is doing, and it is on those terms that I wish the Bill well in its passage.

Points of Order

Debate between Edward Leigh and Julian Lewis

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. There are certain politicians who arouse very strong feelings both in favour and against their political initiatives. One such politician is Lord Tebbit. I wonder whether there is any way within the rules of order that we may place on the record our appreciation of his long political career on this his 80th birthday, noting that he has gone from bovver boy to blogger in successive generations.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Although you are impeccably impartial, I know that deep in your heart there still lurks a little Tory. You will know the love and esteem in which Lord Tebbit is held on these Benches. May we not have some suitable memorial erected to him—perhaps a bicycle draped in the Union flag and carved in solid British oak?

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973

Debate between Edward Leigh and Julian Lewis

Monday 21st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I have some reservations about what we are doing. I am pleased to see the Foreign Secretary in his place; I hope that he will answer some of the reservations that have been voiced today.

My first point is a House of Commons point, because I received an absolute assurance from the Leader of the House two weeks ago on the Floor of the House that before we went to war in future, there would be a substantive vote in the House of Commons. When we went to war in the Falklands, the House of Commons sat on a Saturday. We have to establish the principle—this is not just a House of Commons point; it is a serious and important constitutional point—that in future when we go to war, the House of Commons should vote first.

Secondly, I have a number of questions about what we are doing in this operation. I voted against the Iraq war, because although it was ostensibly about dealing with weapons of mass destruction, in fact, as we know, it was about regime change. A lot of people have said that the current situation is very different, but is it? We are told that it is about humanitarian objectives, but is it not, in fact, about regime change, just as in Iraq? We need to ensure that our objectives are entirely and only humanitarian, and about protecting the people in Benghazi.

In one sense, the current situation is very different from the situation in Iraq, because at least there we were determined to go in and achieve regime change. Speaker after speaker has asked what we are going to achieve with the current operation. People say that we cannot always foretell the future and that that is not an excuse for doing nothing, but surely if we set off on a journey, it is generally a good idea to know the destination. Planes do not occupy ground. Missiles can destroy tanks, but they do not destroy regimes. Bombing Tripoli might bolster the regime’s support among the population there—indeed, it already has.

I have already asked the Prime Minister on the Floor of the House—no answer can be given—what will happen if the current operation just produces a stalemate. What will we do then? Will we be able to resist the moral pressure to get more and more involved, and to send in troops? There is absolutely no enthusiasm in this country for getting involved in a third war in the Muslim world. Aircraft can stop things happening—they can stop tanks entering Benghazi and I will support the operation to that extent—but they cannot make things happen.

A lot of lazy thinking has gone on along the lines that the regime was so unpopular that simply imposing a no-fly zone would make it fade away. Will that happen? Where is our strategic interest in Libya, which after all is 1,500 miles away? What are Egypt and Tunisia doing? They are its neighbours. Why is there not a single Arab plane in action at this moment?

We know that the first casualty of war is truth. The second casualty may well be a UN resolution, so that we are sucked into something far beyond what we have voted for. What are Russia and China doing, or rather not doing? Why is Iran silent? Is it because it supports Islamist irregulars in the east and is already there? Why would Gaddafi need to contest a no-fly zone if he can simply infiltrate troops? Is this a humanitarian war or is it a military war to change the regime? Will our efforts simply make Libya into another long-term brutal Sudan-type war?

It is often assumed that there are good guys and bad guys, but in fact Cyrenaica, in the east and controlled by the rebels, has always been separated from Tripolitania in the west. The two parts only became one state in 1934 and there has been a long-term dispute or semi-civil war between them for a long time. Indeed, in the 18th century Tripolitania invaded Cyrenaica and there were many massacres. History is extremely complicated; this region is very complicated, and we need to understand what is going on.

I was pleased to see the Defence Secretary in his seat. The old adage from Theodore Roosevelt is:

“Speak softly and carry a big stick”,

but we have been in danger of speaking loudly and breaking our sticks in two in the strategic defence review. Reading the British press, one would imagine that the whole world is hanging on to our words. They are not. I was reading the French press, and there was little mention of Britain. In Italy, no doubt, they believe that Berlusconi is taking the lead. There is only one capital that matters and that is Washington.

Oratory is not enough; we need air power. How many Tornados do we have? I believe that the strategic defence and security review was a disaster—as big a disaster as the Nott review, which was finally overtaken by the Falklands war. I hope that this operation overtakes the disastrous defence review. France has an aircraft carrier; Spain has an aircraft carrier; Russia has an aircraft carrier; the USA has 11 aircraft carriers; and we have to fly a round trip of 3,000 miles to impose our military force. By the way, all we have done is send three Tornados and two cruise missiles.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I am glad that my hon. Friend raised that point, which I did not have time to raise. Although it is true that in this case we can get by from land bases, when it comes to the fuel costs of flying a single mission, a Harrier from a carrier would have cost £5,750, one from Sicily or southern Italy costs about £23,000 and one from the United Kingdom costs £200,000.

[Mr Leigh]

My hon. Friend makes the point. We could have had a carrier just 100 miles off the coast. The Prime Minister could have been sending our power. The Army is primarily a projectile of the Royal Navy and the defence review has been an attack on our traditional maritime and air power. I hope that we will use this operation to learn lessons about that.

In conclusion, I believe that we should review the strategic defence review, and that we should state firmly that our operation is simply and only a humanitarian exercise to save people in Benghazi and that there is absolutely no intention of our trying to achieve regime change.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Edward Leigh and Julian Lewis

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Leigh]

Exactly.

There was a meeting yesterday—perhaps I am giving away what was discussed in a private meeting, but so what, as it adds interest to the debate—and someone from the no campaign came along and said, “Well, we have done all our calculations and we think that we are now perhaps more likely to win if the referendum is on the same day because the C2 vote is likely to be in our favour”—but who cares? Stuff these sorts of arguments. When we pressed this man, he was not able to adduce any firm evidence one way or the other. The fact is that nobody knows whether their side of the argument is more likely to win on 5 May or 2 June or whatever.

Surely what is important is that the arguments around AV are complex. I know that you would immediately rule me out of order, Mr Hood, if I started rehearsing all the arguments in favour of or against AV. I am sure that the Committee accepts, however, that at first sight the issue looks quite easy. It might be said, “Well, we have this first-past-the-post system, which is clearly not proportional and seems unfair to one party, the Liberal party, which gets many more votes nationally than can be justified by the number of seats it gets in this House, so we should have a fairer system.” At first sight, then, someone might think, “Well, I am a progressive and fair person”—actually, the Committee might not agree that I am a progressive and fair person, but I can be if I try, as I do occasionally, to behave myself—“and should accept the change.” Looking at the issue in more detail, however, it gets more difficult.

A document from the Library details how an individual election might pan out, which might lead us all to start scratching our heads. Do we all know that the Government’s favoured option is for “optional preferential voting”? How many members of the public have got their heads around “optional preferential voting”? Indeed, how many Members in their places in Committee now—apart from the lone Liberal or couple of Liberals, whom we know to be anoraks—understand it? We all know, of course, that the optional preferential voting system is an AV system that does not require the voter to give preferences for every candidate, but there are other AV systems, and those arguments have to be teased out. Would it be fairer to force people to vote for every candidate? Would it be fairer to have the system used in the London mayoral elections, where one or two candidates are voted for? Or should we vote for the system that the Government are proposing? As we can start to see, the issues are complicated. Should we not therefore have a chance to tease out these issues over three or four weeks, given that we are changing the entire way of voting for the House of Commons?

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Or hopefully not.

[Mr Leigh]

Or hopefully not changing it, as my hon. Friend has said.

It does not necessarily help the argument to question what happens in Australia, Finland or the USA. It is what happens here that is important, because we care about this place and we want to create our own system, which we want to be discussed and understood by the public. We also want to make a judgment that will be considered fair.