United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973

Debate between Jack Straw and Martin Horwood

Monday 21st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

Two weeks ago, I re-watched “Hotel Rwanda”, the chilling film portrayal of the massacres of the defenceless civilians who were hacked to pieces by the so-called forces of law and order because they had the misfortune to belong to the wrong ethnic group. In July 2005, when the UK had the EU presidency, I went to Srebrenica in Bosnia for the 10th anniversary commemoration of the day in 1995 when 10,000 unarmed civilians were brutally murdered by the forces of law and order because, in that case, they had had the misfortune to belong to the wrong religious group.

In Rwanda and Bosnia, the UN solemnly considered what it should do. In both theatres, there were already blue-hatted UN troops on the ground, but they stood by as the massacres took place in front of them. Those troops were there as peacekeepers, but there was no peace to keep—rather, peace urgently needed to be made.

Doing nothing in the face of evil is as much a decision with consequences as doing something. This resolution is historically significant not just on its own terms, but because, as we heard from my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, this is first occasion on which the Security Council has acted decisively upon the words relating to the responsibility to protect, which were agreed in the UN General Assembly in 2005, and in Security Council resolution 1674 2006.

[Martin Horwood]

I worked for Oxfam at the time of the Rwanda crisis and I strongly remember the awful situation in which UN forces found themselves. I hope the right hon. Gentleman was not implying fault on the part of the blue hats themselves, because their rules of engagement constrained them. The progress that the international community has made leading to the responsibility to protect is of course very positive.

[Mr Straw]

I was implying no such criticism of the blue hats. The responsibility for what did not happen in Rwanda and Bosnia rested and rests with the Security Council and the international community, which failed to take action in the face of what amounted to genocide.

I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) for twice mentioning that former Prime Minister Tony Blair, in his groundbreaking speech in Chicago in 1999, laid the foundation for what six years later became the agreement on the responsibility to protect.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Jack Straw and Martin Horwood

Monday 13th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Straw]

Yes, I accept that. It will not be a pre-emptive decision for me to take, but one that will be taken in the usual way by the shadow Cabinet as a whole and the parliamentary party.

I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) will make his own point about this next matter when he addresses the House. He chairs the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, which is an all-party Committee with, I believe, a Conservative majority. It has been very clear about what he has described as:

“The severe lack of time which the Committee has had to scrutinise this…Bill”.

He continued by saying that this

“is not only frustrating but very disappointing.”

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

The right hon. Gentleman is scrabbling for excuses to oppose the Bill on the grounds that it is being rushed. Is there not a risk that if we did not rush it we might end up in the embarrassing situation of a supporter of fixed-term Parliaments who had been 13 years in government but never got round to introducing that?

[Mr Straw]

I have simply explained to the House, while the hon. Gentleman has been sitting there, that we are not opposing the Bill tonight and the reason is that we agree with the principle of fixed-term Parliaments. What I disagree with is the manner in which it has been introduced. I also disagree with some very important detail, part of which needs to be amended, not least to bring it into line with Liberal Democrat policy. I will explain that, because one of the consequences of their going into this coalition has been the complete amnesia that has affected the whole of the Liberal Democrats’ policy.