ISIL in Syria

Gareth Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Johnny Mercer (Plymouth, Moor View) (Con)]

We have heard a lot about the complexities around this very difficult question, so I stand with humility not to add any particularly clever intellectual insight into the debate, but to lay out very briefly my view—and I hope, by extension, the views of most of those whom we ask to conduct these operations—of what this means for our country and the choice we face tonight.

I feel very strongly about national security. I have seen the threats that we face with my own eyes and I have felt them with my own hands. We have a privileged way of life in this country, with a free democracy, a free-speech society, and a healthy economy. We are privileged for reasons too numerous to enter into now, but chiefly blessed because throughout our generations we have had men and women who believe so much in this nation that they have taken difficult political decisions, and some have even taken up arms and sacrificed everything, to protect this way of life. I have become worried of late that we have lost some of that spirit—something that makes us recognise the dangerous threat to this precious way of life and resolve to deal with it appropriately. We must always remember how privileged we are in the sea of humanity of which we are a part. We earned this privilege through the years, from generation to generation. We protected this gift, and it is time to protect it again.

We are under threat from a group of individuals who seek to destroy our very way of life in this country. They hate everything about us and work night and day to disrupt and kill us whenever the opportunity presents itself. This is not the Iraq problem of 2003.

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that at the heart of this matter is that only last month one of our closest allies suffered the most horrific terrorist attack, that that same ally is asking us for military help, and that therefore quite the wrong message for us to send out would be simply to turn our back on one of our closest allies at this time?

[Johnny Mercer]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I completely agree. This is a hugely complex issue and there are no easy answers, but I do think we are in danger of almost over-complicating what it is—a threat to our national security, the capability of individuals to project force into this country, and the duty we have to defend it. These individuals have demonstrated that they have strategic reach. They can reach into our homelands, into our communities and into our families, and destroy all that we hold dear.

I understand the avalanche of questions from colleagues, and I think that in the history of this House it would be impossible to find a Prime Minister who has done more to answer them. We will add to the mission in that part of the world militarily. We will operate in a way that will—not might, but will—accelerate—