Libya

Henry Smith Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Let me say again that I think it was right to re-form a relationship with Libya when it gave up weapons of mass destruction, but we had to do that in the right way, and I do not believe we made enough progress on issues such as the murder of Yvonne Fletcher, and I also do not think that the al-Megrahi case was handled in the right way.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Five years ago, the then Government invited two of Gaddafi’s sons to visit SAS headquarters, which I think was quite appalling. What lessons can we learn about the appeasing of abusive dictatorships?

[The Prime Minister]

I have a feeling that if they invited him again, they might treat him rather differently this time. As I have said: it is right to have a new relationship but wrong to be quite so gullible in how that was carried out—and, for all the reasons that have been given, I also think that helping to complete PhD theses is probably not a role Ministers should enter into in respect of other countries.