Report of the Iraq Inquiry

Debate between Edward Leigh and Lord Austin of Dudley

Wednesday 13th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ian Austin]

No, I will not give way, because other people want to speak.

Tony Blair’s critics on the hard left opposed every attempt to use British forces, not just in Iraq or Syria, but even in Kosovo, where the UK intervened to prevent thousands of people from being slaughtered. The right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) described that at the time as “unpardonable folly”, even though Britain was intervening to prevent genocidal slaughter. I will take no lectures from the SNP on these issues.

The leader of the Labour party was a founder member and chair of the Stop the War coalition—an organisation that, under his leadership, praised what it said was the “internationalism and solidarity” of ISIS, and compared it to the international brigades. It supported what it called the Iraqi “struggle” against British troops “by any means necessary”, and among many other appalling things, it said that it stood with Saddam Hussein, compared Assad to Churchill, and promoted or provided a platform for Assad apologists. For the hard left, the world is a simple place: all the problems are caused by the west, and the solutions are easy.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ian Austin]

No, I will not give way. Of course we must learn the lessons from Iraq, but let us make sure we learn the right ones. For me, the central lesson is that taking action can lead to terrible consequences, and military action anywhere in the world involves huge risks. However, there can also be terrible consequences from not intervening. If we learn the wrong lessons, we might have fewer Iraqs but we could easily have more Syrias. Perhaps we ought to consider a Chilcot-style inquiry into the consequences of not intervening in Syria, where people have been slaughtered or displaced in their millions.

Ukraine

Debate between Edward Leigh and Lord Austin of Dudley

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Absolutely.

[Ian Austin]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I must finish shortly as others want to get in.

An attack on one NATO country is an attack on all of them. Poland is a completely different state of affairs from Ukraine. As I have said, we must stop the power games of trying to detach Ukraine from Russia. It is not going to happen. Russia will not allow it to happen, any more than we would allow an integral part of what we consider to be important to our soul and our history to be detached from us. It is a dangerous game—[Interruption.] Well, somebody has to give an alternative point of view. There is no point in the House of Commons if we all agree with each other all the time. I am trying to explain the Russian point of view.

Encouraging Ukraine to join NATO is obviously absurd, but it is also extraordinarily dangerous to encourage Ukraine to join the EU. As I said, I am neither pro-Russia nor pro-Ukraine, and I am in favour—this may be a cliché—of peace and humanity. I want Ukraine to have a devolved system of administration so that the west can run itself, as can the east. Ideally if we can think in terms of free-trade areas and Ukraine having some sort of free-trade agreement with the EU, that is positive, sensible and acceptable to Russians. However, we should please not take any step further, because we will be indulging in extraordinarily dangerous power games.

Finance Bill

Debate between Edward Leigh and Lord Austin of Dudley

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ian Austin]

rose—

[Mr Leigh]

I am not going to give way, because the House wants to come to a decision on this.

The House is held in such contempt because we make pledges and then we do not carry them out. We made a solemn pledge before the election, and we repeated it after the election—

[Ian Austin]

Nonsense!

[Mr Leigh]

I will not be shouted down by the hon. Gentleman. He was not here for most of the debate anyway.

We made that pledge, and we should now respect it. I was hoping to be able to say that the new clause was defective, and that we would be quite happy to withdraw it and to redraft it to enable civil partnerships to be recognised. We would be quite happy if the Minister then said that it could be introduced during the course of this Parliament. However, he has not said that. I am afraid that he has not answered the points that we have put to him. We had an hour’s speech by the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), most of which did not address what we are trying to say. I want to end by saying that none of us is trying to penalise two-earner families or single parents. We are simply trying to remove the severe penalty that this country imposes on one-earner families. The United Kingdom is completely out of step with most of the world in that regard. Nothing in our proposal is radical; it is sensible and it is right, and I think that we should now have a Division on it.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

The House proceeded to a Division.