Syria (EU Restrictive Measures)

Emma Reynolds Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

I welcome the opportunity to discuss the ongoing conflict in Syria and specifically amendments to the EU arms embargo. I commend the European Scrutiny Committee for calling this important debate.

Right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House are deeply concerned and horrified by the violent and brutal conflict and loss of life in Syria. The death toll has now reached 80,000 people, and the refugee crisis is intensifying, with more than 1.3 million people having fled to neighbouring countries. As the Minister outlined, this is a humanitarian crisis on a scale not seen in decades.

I am grateful to the European Scrutiny Committee for giving the House an opportunity to consider specifically, in detail, the decision made by the Council of Ministers in February to amend the existing EU arms embargo to allow the transfer of non-lethal military equipment to certain groups in Syria.

The debate is timely, given that the EU-wide embargo is due for renewal at the meeting of the Council of Ministers next week. As a result of the Council’s agreement in February, the Foreign Secretary announced to the House on 6 March that the British Government would increase their support for the Syrian opposition and that that would include equipment that had previously been banned under the EU embargo. The change in both the scale and the type of material support from the United Kingdom clearly marked a new stage in the Government’s engagement with the opposition forces.

Since that date, and specifically on 15 April, the Government have informed the House that, among other items, a number of vehicles with ballistic protection, packs of body armour and hundreds of radios have been transferred to the Syrian opposition as gifts from the Government. Equally important, we have received details about the ongoing training of Syrian opposition members in which the UK has been involved. I am grateful for further details provided by the Minister today and by the Foreign Secretary in his statement yesterday.

We welcome measures taken by the Government that help to unite members of the fragmented opposition in Syria, help them to communicate better with each other, help them to gain a better understanding of international law and help them to protect themselves and civilians from the violence being inflicted on them by the Assad regime. However, we are extremely concerned about the suggestion that the EU arms embargo should be amended further, or rolled back completely.

In the light of the February Council decision and the forthcoming Council discussion early next week, I seek further clarification of the Government’s position from the Minister. Will he tell us precisely what the Government will be calling for with respect to any alteration in the embargo next week? It has been suggested that they are considering two options. The first is to seek an exemption from the embargo for the national coalition of Syrian and opposition forces, and the second is to remove the “non-lethal” language to allow lethal equipment. That would effectively render the embargo null and void. Which of those options will the Government seek to secure on Monday and Tuesday next week in Brussels?

What support, beyond that of France, have the Government secured in the other 25 member states of the European Union? It seems clear that Germany and Austria, among others, are opposed to the lifting of the embargo. If no agreement is forthcoming, will the Government veto the continuation of the embargo? Yesterday, in response to an excellent question from the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) about the possible use of the veto, the Foreign Secretary said:

“We will meet as Foreign Ministers in Brussels next Monday to look at those discussions in detail. I can say to my hon. Friend that we are prepared to do that if necessary, but of course we are looking for agreement with other EU member states.”—[Official Report, 20 May 2013; Vol. 563, c. 911.]

Will the Minister confirm that the Government are prepared to veto the renewal of the arms embargo next week? I think that, if they intend to do so, there are further fundamental questions that they need to answer.

First, the Government have spoken of the need to tip the balance in favour of the opposition. Can the Minister give us his assessment of the amount of weaponry that would be required to tip the balance against Assad, taking into account the support that we believe that he continues to receive from other states? Secondly, how will the Government ensure that the weapons supplied do not fall into the hands of extremists groups such as al-Nusra, which is aligned with al-Qaeda? Thirdly, given that the Foreign Secretary said that he could only offer his “best endeavours” to prevent British-supplied matérial from going to groups in Syria for which it is not intended, will the Minister tell us whether the Government would be willing to supply arms without any end-use guarantees? I am sure that the whole House would be cautious—several Members have demonstrated their concern today—about any step towards arming Syria’s opposition without a range of solid assessments and analyses from the Minister and his colleagues in the Foreign Office in regard to the end users of any British-supplied arms.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Is not the weakness in the argument that the arms may fall into the hands of the wrong people the fact not just that we can never give such guarantees, but, above all, that the wrong people already have plenty of sophisticated arms, which are being supplied perfectly legally from Russia, Qatar, Iran and everywhere else because there is no UN arms embargo?

[Emma Reynolds]

History teaches us to be extremely cautious. In the past, the west—ourselves, the US and others—has supplied arms to forces that then turned against us, so we need to learn the lessons of history and be extremely cautious.

[Mr Newmark]

I totally respect the hon. Lady’s position, but history has also taught us that when we stood aside and did nothing in Rwanda, 800,000 people got slaughtered, and it took us four years to go into Bosnia, while, again, hundreds of thousands of people got slaughtered.

[Emma Reynolds]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point about the loss of life in Syria. The problem with the solution that the Government seem to be offering us is that it could lead to an escalation, not a de-escalation, of the conflict by fuelling the fires of the conflict, rather than encouraging a solution.

The opposition in Syria is fragmented. What more can the Government do to help the moderate elements of the opposition unite and work together?

If the Government believe that arming the opposition in Syria is now the best option available to the EU, how will that help halt the violence and secure a peace that lasts? Are there not significant risks now and in post-conflict Syria, and what would be the implications for peace and reconciliation between the country’s diverse religious and ethnic groups after the conflict?

The Prime Minister was in Washington last week, yet in yesterday’s statement by the Foreign Secretary, we heard little detail about what the Prime Minister has discovered about President Obama’s thinking on arming the opposition. Can the Minister enlighten the House on that point? Moreover, can the Minister provide the House with more detail about the format of the US-Russian peace conference and what role our Government will play in it?

Finally, if the Government veto the continuation of the arms embargo next week and after that decide to arm the opposition, will the Minister commit to bringing that future decision before the House, so Members on both sides can vote on what the Foreign Secretary yesterday called a moral issue?

[Sir Menzies Campbell]

The hon. Lady has returned to the veto. Has she, like me, sought to establish whether on any previous occasion the United Kingdom has exercised a veto within the European Union in relation to the imposition of sanctions? If we were to do so in this case, what does she think the political outcome would be?

[Emma Reynolds]

I do not know of any circumstance in which the veto has been used in this area. I agree with the implication of the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s question and his concern: there could be implications for other parts of the world, such as, perhaps, Iran, where we have EU sanctions. That is a point worth making.

I hope what is said in today’s debate and the caution urged by Members across the House will be reflected in the approach the Government take at the Council meetings on Monday and Tuesday. There is real concern across the House that arming the opposition will not guarantee peace in a country where sectarian, tribal and democratic impulses are all present. We are all united in our wish to see an end to the bloodshed in Syria, but serious questions remain about whether the Government’s change in policy will secure that peace. The test of the Government’s action will be whether it leads to a de-escalation, rather than an escalation, of the ongoing conflict and bloodshed.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—