Libya

Debate between Edward Leigh and Lord Hammond of Runnymede

Tuesday 19th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

May I say to the right hon. Gentleman, whose question, I am sure, is well motivated, that he is approaching this in exactly the wrong way? We are not likely to get the buy-in we need if we, as a bunch of Europeans, go to Libya and say, “Here’s our priority agenda. What are you going to do about delivering it?” What we must do, and what I suggested to my European colleagues last night that we should do, is package the objectives that we want to achieve with the objectives that are priorities for the Libyans. That is the only way that Prime Minister Sarraj will be able to sell to the Libyan people a package that in any way questions Libya’s territorial sovereignty and that allows foreigners to operate in Libya’s waters. We must be acutely sensitive to the concerns in Libya about foreigners. I am in a rather strange position in that, on the one hand, I have one bunch of people in this House who are primarily concerned to ensure that we do not have any foreigners going into Libya, and, on the other, the right hon. Gentleman who is desperately keen to get some foreign naval forces into its territorial waters. The truth is that we must balance this very carefully and get a package that works for the Libyans as well as for the European agenda.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

The Foreign Secretary and the shadow Foreign Secretary speak in grandiloquent terms of Prime Minister Sarraj, a Government of national accord and even a House of Representatives. Any member of the British public watching “News at Ten” last night would have seen our Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister of national accord holed up in a naval base, unable to leave because they control none of the country. Apparently, they now control three ministerial buildings in a country the size of western Europe. Can we have a reality check, please? Can the Government at last realise that their bid to undermine authoritarian leaders such as Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, who had a deal with the Italian Government to return migrants, and now Assad has just involved the region in death and destruction? Can we just learn the lessons, try and find a strongman, and do what the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee wants—and what we all want—and find a way of creating some kind of safe haven for migrants to be returned to?

[Mr Hammond]

The Chinese have a saying that a journey of 1,000 miles starts with a single step. I urge my hon. Friend to view this process in that context. Self-evidently, I did manage to get out of the naval base in Tripoli yesterday and return to these shores.

My hon. Friend is being a little harsh on Prime Minister Sarraj and what he has achieved. There is a process going on whereby militias—who, only a couple of weeks ago, were threatening to shoot down any aircraft seeking to enter the airport in Tripoli bringing his Government back into the city—are now patrolling the streets outside that naval base and were present on the ground when I landed in Tripoli yesterday. They have recognised and given tentative consent to this Government process to go forward. Its success will depend on Prime Minister Sarraj making the right judgments and being patient enough to bring all the relevant parties with him as he develops a plan for his Government.

European Affairs

Debate between Edward Leigh and Lord Hammond of Runnymede

Thursday 25th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Yes, it has. First as Defence Secretary, and now as Foreign Secretary, I have seen how, in practice, working with EU partners is an important tool in our armoury. Of course, the EU will never, in any way, replace the security benefit that we get from NATO; it does a different thing. However, we have seen in the conflict over Ukraine that economic sanctions—which, in reality, are the only practical weapon available to us in responding to the challenge of Russia—when properly honed and consistently used by the European Union, will prove to be a very important weapon in our armoury against Russian aggression.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

This Government have rightly been critical of previous Governments for not having an independent audit of our national finances, and they have set up the Office for Budget Responsibility. [Interruption.]

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Well, back to my theme. We have set up the Office for Budget Responsibility. The Foreign Secretary is rightly doing a sort of cost-benefit analysis of this issue. Why do the Government not institute an independent study, by a genuinely independent body, to go in some detail into the effects of a Brexit, plus or minus, on, say, GNP? That would surely be very useful.

[Mr Hammond]

The problem with the challenge my hon. Friend presents—it is going to be a recurrent theme in this debate, I suspect—is that we simply do not know what the counterfactual is. We do not know what Britain’s situation outside the European Union would be. We do not know whether a deal could be negotiated with the remaining 27. We do not know what free trade agreements could be negotiated with other parties, and we do not know on what timescale those could be achieved. We do not know what damage would be done to our economy in the meantime. I fear that the objective analysis my hon. Friend is seeking might be very difficult to achieve.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Edward Leigh and Lord Hammond of Runnymede

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I very strongly agree with the right hon. Gentleman that now is not the time to send Russia any signals of compromise or of pulling back. The only language that Mr Putin understands is the language of strength and, I am afraid, the language of confrontation. When unacceptable behaviour on the scale that we have seen in Syria occurs, we have to stand up to be counted, however inconvenient that may be for some who have to be counted.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Whether we like it or not, Russia is an essential prerequisite to any successful talks. The American Secretary of State has a close working relationship with the Russian Foreign Minister, talking to him nearly every week. When did the Foreign Secretary last talk to the Russian Foreign Minister and what is he doing to improve his personal relationship with him?

[Mr Hammond]

Our relationships with our Russian counterparts are difficult. I last spoke to Sergei Lavrov on 11 February during the Munich International Syria Support Group meeting where he and I had some prolonged and robust exchanges around the table. I do speak very regularly with the US Secretary of State, most recently meeting him on Saturday morning, so I am very much aware of the discussions that he is having with our mutual Russian counterpart. The problem is that Russian policy on Syria is made not in the Russian Foreign Ministry, but inside a tiny cabal around President Putin at the heart of the Kremlin.