Ukraine, Middle East, North Africa and Security

James Gray Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

These sanctions are having an effect: they are exacerbating an already negative trend in Russia’s economy. Russia’s economy shrank by 0.5% in the first quarter of this year. Its largest bank has downgraded forecasts of growth from 2.3% to 0.2%. Russian sovereign bonds have been downgraded to one notch above junk bond status, and capital flight is continuing, with an estimate that it could reach £80 billion. Although I understand absolutely the hon. Gentleman’s question and his attempt, quite rightly, to analyse the emotional side of Mr Putin’s approach, he will not be able to be blind to the impact these sanctions are having on Russia’s economy.

We have also supported NATO measures to reassure our eastern allies who feel most exposed to Russian pressure, including through the provision of RAF jets to undertake an air policing role in the Baltic area. We are clear about the collective security guarantee that NATO offers to our eastern NATO partners, and Mr Putin should be clear about that, too.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

If Mr Putin were to deploy in the Baltic states the same asymmetric and deniable tactics he has used in Ukraine, would that constitute an article 5 moment under the NATO treaty?

[Mr Hammond]

The engagement of article 5, which eastern partners would, of course, be perfectly entitled to seek if they felt they were subject to threats, can elicit a response at various different levels. It does not have to involve full-scale armed conflict. The response would have to be proportionate. Although this is in its infancy, there is growing recognition that, in a much more complicated world in which cyber-warfare will have a very large role to play in any future conflict, we need to work out how we would respond proportionately and effectively to any given type of attack.

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[Mr Alexander]

Let me make a little progress, then I will be happy to take some more interventions.

The rise of ISIL has now created a threat so extreme that it is apparently uniting previous adversaries, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, neither of which has an interest in allowing it to succeed. Last week’s agreement by Arab League leaders to unite against ISIL is a hopeful sign of progress in the region, which as we have heard is too often divided along sectarian, ethnic and religious lines. That relates to the point that the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) made. We support the decision of our friends and colleagues in France to convene an international conference on Iraq on 15 September, but as a permanent member of the Security Council and its current chair, we believe that the United Kingdom can and should do more to co-ordinate the efforts of key regional allies, particularly Turkey and Saudi Arabia, as well as to engage with Iran. So far, the Prime Minister has hinted at Iranian involvement but given no commitment to facilitate that where appropriate. I hope that the Minister who winds up the debate will give us a little more clarity about what discussions are under way in relation to Iran.

It seems clear from recent statements that the UK Government are still formulating their approach to the threat of ISIL. Obviously they are not alone in that endeavour, given recent and anticipated statements by the US President. Although any strategy for dealing with ISIL will by definition be long-term, that is not an excuse for long-term delay in setting it out. Of course there is a need for operational discretion, but diplomatic and political alliances can be effectively built only on the basis of open and frank discussions about aims and objectives in the days and weeks ahead. I therefore hope that further clarity will be provided.

[Mr Gray]

The shadow Foreign Secretary calls for clarity in the weeks and months that lie ahead. If Her Majesty’s Government were to decide that air strikes against Iraq, or parts of Iraq, became the right thing to do, and if they were—wrongly in my view—to come to the House and ask for a vote on the matter, would the Labour party support the Government?

[Mr Alexander]

First, I do not think it is under contemplation that there would be air strikes against Iraq. If there were air strikes, they would be against ISIL. We have made it clear on many occasions that we would reach a judgment on the basis of any motion brought before the House. That was the position that we took in relation to Libya a couple of years ago and in relation to the vote on chemical weapons in Syria in the House a year ago in August. It is for the Government to set out their thinking and for the Opposition to reach a judgment.

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[Mr Gray]

I intend to return to the point that my right hon. and learned Friend is making in my subsequent remarks. However, does he agree that over the last 1,000 years, the House has had only two such votes before action has been taken? The first such vote was over Iraq, which I think we are all agreed was a disaster, so a vote in the House of Commons does not necessarily lead to a worthwhile war. The second was this time last year over Syria. All the other wars—the Falklands, the Gulf, the first world war and the second world war—were conducted by the Prime Minister and the Government without approval of the House of Commons.

[Mr Clarke]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend—and I am sure the research behind his point will be checked—but I really think that in 2014, in the circumstances of today, to assert that the Executive has the unfettered right to take part in military action without getting the approval of the House is simply indefensible. I would personally be outraged by it.

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[Mr Gray]

The hon. Gentleman draws our attention to the absolute commitment to article 5 made at the NATO conference at the weekend. He will be aware that article 5 specifies that armed intervention would require a collective response. Does he believe that an asymmetric approach, such as that used by Putin in Ukraine, would commission an article 5 moment?

[Martin Horwood]

The hon. Gentleman raises an issue that requires more than five minutes’ discussion, but he underlines the point that I was trying to make. We need to be clear about the definition of our commitment under article 5 and understand what it really means, and we need to communicate that to all the parties involved.

For the people of Russia, there is also a risk. There is a risk of economic decline, of diplomatic confrontation and of a descent at domestic level into a kind of quasi-democratic authoritarianism. I pay tribute to those within the Russian political system who are brave enough to confront Putin and his tendencies. They include members of the Liberal Democrats’ sister party, Yabloko, who are being profoundly brave in challenging Putinism in Russia.

For the international community, the crisis puts at risk 70 years of painstaking building of a rules-based international system. In the 20th century, millions of lives were lost in two world wars, and in the 19th century, countless lives were lost in conflicts between the great powers and as a result of the interplay between people exercising the principle that might was right. We hope that the 21st century will be a century of peace, in which the authority of the United Nations and international law are established and in which nations stand by their international obligations. We can now see, however, that that precious creation is perhaps more fragile than we had realised.

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[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

There is one thing on which every single speaker in this debate and everyone who is watching it from outside will agree—at this moment we live in an extraordinarily dangerous, difficult and complex world, a world we do not understand and in which all our livelihoods, interests and ways of life are under threat. I pay absolute tribute to the very heavyweight, well informed and passionate speeches that we have heard so far, typified by the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd), who has great knowledge of Iraq.

I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart). I stood against him for the post of Chairman of the Defence Committee, and this is my first opportunity to say that I am very glad he won. He is doing an extremely good job of it and I congratulate him on that.

I hope that I will not reduce the high quality of the debate if I do not focus on Ukraine, Syria or the rest of the difficulties mentioned in the topic of this debate as much as on two procedural points. I hope they will not be unduly dry for the House, but there are many others better qualified than I to speak on the substantive matters that we are debating.

First, I very much welcome the fact that we have this full day’s substantive debate. That would not be the case if it had not been announced by the Prime Minister during PMQs last week and that is quite wrong. We usually have to compete with Backbench Business Committee debates on very worthy and worthwhile things such as animals in circuses. We used to have full, substantive debates in this House on foreign affairs and on defence, and I very much hope that we can find a way of returning to those days. At times like this, we ought to be certain that we can have full debates on these matters.

The second procedural matter I want to raise involves me in what might be described as a putative declaration of interests. Later this afternoon I will be launching a book that I have written entitled, “Who Takes Britain to War?” I have not earned a single penny from it so far. Indeed, most of my friends probably reckon that I will not earn very many pennies from it in future either, and may never have to declare it. None the less, it is pertinent to the remarks that I intend to make.

It is very easy to say that we should have a vote in this House before we deploy soldiers. Of course, that is an easy and a populist thing to say—most people would agree with it. In the past 500 years, we have taken part in umpteen wars. There is only one year since the second world war when a British soldier has not been killed on active service—1968. In every other year we have lost a British soldier on active service. We have taken part in dozens of wars over the years, but on only two occasions have there been substantive votes prior to the deployment of troops. The first was in 2003, when Mr Blair took us to war in Iraq; there were three votes on that occasion. I suspect that not a single person listening to this debate believes that that was the right thing to have done. The second vote was this time last year, on Syria. It may well have had the right outcome, but frankly it was something of a procedural shambles, and I am not certain that we would necessarily want the same thing to occur in future.

My view, and the view I advance in the book, is that there are substantial difficulties in calling for a vote in the way that is very easily done. First, Back Benchers have to be alerted to often secret intelligence, the strategic position and the tactical position on the ground. The Government’s legal advice has to be shared with people like me. We have to rise above vulgar considerations such as votes in a forthcoming general election and do what is right for the nation and for the world. I am not certain that politicising warfare in that way is at all the right thing to do.

My co-author, Mark Lomas QC, thinks that it is wrong to have a vote in this House on every single military action. He would like us to preserve the royal prerogative that we have always used for the past 500 years. I think that genie is out of the bottle and we cannot go back to the days when the Prime Minister and the Executive simply did what they wanted to do. None the less, there are substantial difficulties involved in having substantive votes. For example, if we have the new NATO rapid reaction corps that the Prime Minister announced last weekend, it will have two days to go into action, and it will do so under the control of NATO, not of this House. What if this House disagrees with NATO—or the United Nations, for that matter?

I am therefore seeking to advance the thesis that we must find a new way of doing this. The solution I propose is that we write into law the parameters under which we would go to war. The easiest one would be the age-old theory of just war. That lays down the reasons for warfare, about which we could have a huge debate, including the parameters under which we would decide to go to war. It also lays down the way in which we conduct war—the Geneva conventions are based on the theory of just war—and the way in which we conclude wars: what we do after a war has ended and how we treat enemies and those who have been defeated.

Such theories are as old as the hills and as good as they ever have been. If we were to write them into the law of the land in this House, we would allow the Executive and the Prime Minister to take the country to war as they do at present, but they would no longer do so under the royal prerogative; they would do so under what I would like to call the parliamentary prerogative. It is this House that would lay down precisely what the Executive should do in the future. I think that is a much better way of doing it than bogging ourselves down in votes that we might or might not win.