Military Action Overseas: Parliamentary Approval

Geraint Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I was able to share more evidence with the House after the attack than I would have been able to share before the attack, and it is not possible to share with the House all the intelligence on which we base our judgments.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Prime Minister give way?

[The Prime Minister]

No, I am going to make some progress.

The third reason is our need to work together with our closest allies. A year ago, following the despicable sarin attack at Khan Shaykhun, the US immediately sought to deter further chemical weapons attacks by launching 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the airfield from which the Khan Shaykhun atrocity attack took place. But Assad and his regime have not stopped their use of chemical weapons, so this weekend’s strikes needed to be significantly larger than the US action a year ago and to be specifically designed to have a greater impact on the regime’s capability and willingness to use chemical weapons. That was firmly in the British national interest. Working together with America and France, and doing so at pace, was fundamental to achieving that effect.

If I had come to the House in advance of this operation to set out the totality of our effort, I would also have had to share with Parliament the breadth of our allies’ plans, for this was a combined operation where the totality of our effort was key to delivering the effect. Not only would this have constrained their flexibility to act swiftly, but it would have fundamentally undermined the effectiveness of their action and endangered the security of our American and French allies. In doing so, we would have failed to stand up to Assad in the face of this latest atrocity. We would have failed to alleviate further humanitarian suffering by degrading Assad’s chemical weapons capability and deterring their future use, and we would have failed to uphold and defend the global consensus that says these weapons should never, ever be used.

The fourth reason is that the legal basis for UK action has previously been agreed by Parliament. As the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) said so movingly during the statement yesterday, there is a long tradition on both sides of this House that has considered that military action on an exceptional basis—where necessary and proportionate, and as a last resort—to avert an overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe is permissible under international law. The three criteria that I set out in my statement yesterday are the same three criteria used as the legal justification for the UK’s role in the NATO intervention in Kosovo. As I also explained, our intervention in 1991 with the US and France and in 1992 with the US to create safe havens and enforce the no-fly zones in Iraq following the Gulf war were also justified on the basis of humanitarian intervention.

So it was right for me, as Prime Minister—with the full support of the Cabinet, and drawing on the advice of security and military officials—to take the decision on this military strike last weekend, and for Parliament to be able to hold me to account for it. By contrast, a war powers Act would remove that capability from a Prime Minister and remove the vital flexibility from the convention that has been established, for it would not be possible to enshrine a convention in a way that is strong and meaningful but none the less flexible enough to deal with what are, by definition, unpredictable circumstances.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

It is a privilege to follow such a thoughtful and principled speech by the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson).

Most Members of this House—certainly myself and certainly the Prime Minister—are naturally cautious about deploying members of our armed forces and putting them in harm’s way. There is of course a risk in intervention, which has been well-articulated in the last 24 hours in this House, and we pay the price of past interventions that have been wrong, but there is also a price in not intervening, and we need to understand the dynamics of events when Governments decide whether or not to deploy our troops.

In doing so, we need to understand the nature of conflict. We think too often that conflict is between two opposing armed forces, with one seizing and holding ground. Such conflicts are easy to understand, but we now live in a world where there is hybrid warfare and there are counter-insurgency operations, and we could be talking about an operation to rescue a downed pilot or a drone attack against individuals who present a direct ability to harm our constituents, and decisions have to be taken very quickly. So this comes down to the nature of our leaders and what goes through their minds and how they make decisions at such times.

There is a perfectly honourable tradition in this country of pacifism. There were pacifists with whom, had I been around at the time, I would probably have profoundly disagreed but who had a certain nobility when in 1914 they stood up against an enormous rush to war and said, “No, we think this is wrong,” and many of them paid a huge price for doing that. The Leader of the Opposition has been a frequent visitor to Greenham common in my constituency and has spoken with pride about his mother’s time spent outside the wire there. He has also spoken about visiting the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston. I can both respect and totally disagree with him, and indeed his mother, for the decisions they were taking at that time, but I can respect them. I would respect him more if he came to the House today and said, “Look, this is where I am from. I will not support this country going to war and I will therefore constrain not only this Government but future Governments from doing that.” I would have so much more respect for him if he did that.

I have sat through many debates, and I have participated in many debates in which we have made the wrong decision, as well as those in which we have made the right decision. Too often, those debates come down to arguments about tactics. What this House should do in those circumstances is consider strategy. To me, the strategy in the last few days has been obvious. It is about whether we condone—and, by our inaction, shrug our shoulders and walk away from—the grotesque image of children coughing up blood and spittle because they have been gassed in a cellar by a monster. That is the image. We can talk about process, as hon. Members on both sides have done today, but that is the thought that we have to hold in our minds.

[Geraint Davies]

The right hon. Gentleman might be interested to know that a Syrian doctor in Swansea approached me to say that his wife’s family had been involved in a gas attack in which their two-year-old died in front of them. He says that the doctors in Douma have been told by the Syrians at the point of a gun: “Unless you give a testimony that there was not a gas attack, doctor, we will kill your children.”

[Richard Benyon]

I think the hon. Gentleman needs to look at a lot more of the open-source material that I have looked at. For example, the other night, the BBC was interviewing the parents of children there. He can follow some of the rather eccentric people who were in Parliament Square yesterday, or he can follow the facts. I strongly suggest that he does the latter—[Interruption.] I am sorry. I am told that I might have misunderstood the hon. Gentleman. If I have made that mistake, I do apologise to him.

The Leader of the Opposition spoke about the Survation poll. I would just ask him to consider whether the 54% of people in that poll were given details of the exact measures that the Government were having to take, and of the complications involved in controlling an operation with two other nation partners. Were they told about the difficulties of trying to put together an operation that sought to minimise the risk of collateral damage? Were they told about the need to ensure the secrecy of the targeting? The measures needed in these events are so complicated that to talk about them in terms of a public opinion poll involving a binary decision, and indeed in the context of debates in this House, is extremely difficult. What sort of debate would we have? I have sat through debates in which people have said, “I will not walk through the Division Lobby with the Government until I have had more details of the operations that are planned, and unless I hear that x, y, and z measures will be taken.” Anyone who has had anything to do with military operations will know that the plan falls apart when the first shot is fired, and that we are then in the hands of events.

When I was a member of the Executive, I found coming to this House or being quizzed in front of a Select Committee quite tiresome at times. I immersed myself in the details of the issues, and being held to account was sometimes not much fun. Now, as a Back Bencher, I find holding the Government to account enormous fun. I find it very invigorating, but that does not preclude us from trying to do what is right. The problem is that there are some elements in this House for whom this has become a vanity operation. This is more serious than that, however, and I hope that we will therefore tread very carefully when it comes to doing this. We have the complication of an article 5 commitment, whereby if a NATO nation is invaded, we are treaty-bound to respond. I therefore urge hon. Members on both sides of the House to think carefully before going down the path presented today by the Leader of the Opposition.