Ukraine, Middle East, North Africa and Security

Debate between James Gray and Martin Horwood

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[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.

Greenpeace Activists in the Russian Federation

Debate between James Gray and Martin Horwood

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I congratulate the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on securing the debate. He was, to some extent, tactful in what he said about Russia, and he did not mention some of the other significant human rights cases, such as those of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Platon Lebedev and the late Sergei Magnitsky, and the disproportionate treatment meted out to members of Pussy Riot. I understand his reasons for being tactful, but there is an issue for Russia to take notice of: its reputation for human rights abuses, and the damage being done in that regard, is significant and cumulative. It is doing more and more damage to its international reputation through disproportionate responses to events such as those that we are discussing.

Russia’s response is disproportionate, as the hon. Gentleman also, less tactfully, said. There is a level of irritation that comes with politics; he conceded that he is sometimes irritating to me. His ability to remind everyone that we went to school together is one of his more irritating habits, although I suspect that the fact that he went to Cheltenham college does him more political damage in Rhondda than it does me in Cheltenham.

We in this Parliament have been subject to Greenpeace actions. Members of Greenpeace were on our roof in 2009, unfurling banners about climate change. They climbed Big Ben—or the clock tower, in deference to the hon. Gentleman’s reputation for pedantry—in 2004.

[Mr Gray]

The Elizabeth tower.

First World War Commemoration

Debate between James Gray and Martin Horwood

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Westminster Hall

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

I did not originally intend to take part in this debate. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson), who had the initiative to secure it and who introduced it with his customary gravitas and with information that he doubtless learned during his time at Sandhurst and elsewhere. This has been an absolutely fascinating debate. I have been prompted to take part in it because I have distinguished two themes that I think will be reflected in discussions of the first world war across the nation.

The first was ably outlined by the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), to whom I pay tribute. He has made clear his opposition to war and his hatred of it on so many occasions over many years in this place, and he has done so extremely convincingly and with great passion. I might surprise him by saying that I agree with him absolutely. All war is hell. There is no question about it. All war is a disgrace, and it should not occur. How human beings ever thought it up in the first place is hard to imagine. Whether we are talking about people killed in warfare, those who are injured or maimed or those with mental illness as a result, it is an absolute blot on humanity that such things occur. I entirely endorse his hatred of it.

Equally, I agree with the hon. Member for Newport West that most wars occur for all the wrong reasons. We in this place and our ancestors for over 1,000 years have got all wars wrong. Even recent wars, without entering into recent politics, have occurred for all the wrong reasons. They have been ill thought through. As was said about the first world war, lions have been led by donkeys.

Although we should not renege on or stray from that clear theme, it is entirely separate from the one that we have been discussing here, which is how we commemorate those who gave their lives and so much else for their nation. The motto of my own regiment, the Honourable Artillery Company, is “Arma pacis fulcra”, or “Arms are the balance of peace”. Those young boys marched out of the gates of Armoury house in the City of London because they were told to do so by their officers, who were told to do so by the Government. They did so for King and country. They did not set off from Armoury house saying, “I wonder whether this war is right, wrong or indifferent”; they set off because they were acting under orders.

The same applies, incidentally, to those people who have stood on the high street of Royal Wootton Bassett in my constituency on 427 separate occasions during the last few years to pay tribute to the dead bodies returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. The people of Wootton Bassett were not saying that they approved or disapproved of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan; they had no views on those wars. They took the view that this was not the occasion to enter into the politics of it. They knew that it was right to pay their respects to the soldiers who had given their lives in those wars.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Gray]

I am terribly sorry, but I am afraid that I am rather short of time. Mine is such a brain that once I am in my stride I do not want to lose track—oh, of course, go on.

[Martin Horwood]

I am grateful. I understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying, although he might find that modern historians are a little kinder to the allied leadership in the run-up to the war than he suggested. As well as the horror and the courage that will be recognised during the national commemoration of the first world war and its outbreak, it is right that Parliament address the complexities of the politics both inside Parliament and inside Government. It was a first and, for the Liberal party, a traumatic experience of coalition politics.

[Mr Gray]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but I suspect that I absolutely disagree with him. There have been wars for the past 1,000 years, going back to the battle of Sherston in my constituency in 917, when King Athelstan fought off King Canute. Is it right that we in Parliament should consider whether Athelstan was right or wrong to fight that battle with Canute in 917? Of course not. Equally, we should not reinvent the causes of the first world war. That is not a matter for us; it is a matter for historians. We in Parliament must look to the present and the future. Reinventing the thought behind the first world war is not our job at all.

First, again, I agree strongly with the hon. Member for Newport West that all wars are bad. Of course there are lessons to be learned; we are considering whether to sell arms to Syria. We should remember that all wars are bad. Secondly, we should also remember that all wars are badly thought out; that applies today as before. Thirdly, the purpose of today’s debate, leaving aside all the politics and history, is that it is right that we in this place should say to the people to whom we give instructions, “You are doing the right thing. We respect and honour what you do, and we honour the fact that you have given your lives, livelihoods and very often your health or your mental welfare under order from us. It is right that we should pay you respect for doing so.”

I enjoy the occasions when, twice a year, each brigade returning from Afghanistan enters Carriage Gates and we as a Parliament pay our respects to those soldiers. We are not involving them in politics or asking them to endorse our views on Afghanistan; we are thanking them for all that they have done in Afghanistan as soldiers under our orders. That is what we must do with regard to the first world war. Those boys, and a few girls, gave their lives, their livelihoods and their health. We must thank, respect and honour them for what they did for us.

European Council

Debate between James Gray and Martin Horwood

Thursday 8th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Martin Horwood]

I do not think that it comes from the fact that we are in a coalition. I do not want to risk my Liberal Democrat credentials by agreeing with the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) as well, but I think that this issue is worthy of a debate on the Floor of the House. I know that his Committee refers matters for scrutiny to departmental Select Committees, and it is not good enough if those Committees are not prepared to scrutinise those matters. They have the expertise and the Committee experts who can make a serious contribution to the scrutiny process. I restrain myself from suggesting that that might remove the necessity for the European Scrutiny Committee, but the point is that we need wider and deeper discussion of European matters in this Parliament, and I entirely agree with that.

One of the healthy things about being in a coalition is that we can bring different points of view on issues such as Europe, as well as others, to the table without actually having to conceal them and pretend to be coming from exactly the same place, which the previous Government had to do. None the less, it is slightly frustrating. I thought that we had settled quite a lot of the issues that are being debated at the moment. When we discussed at inordinate length the European Union Act 2011, which has already been passed, we spent countless hours debating when to hold a referendum and when to look at renegotiation of powers. We came to a conclusion and a settled view, as a coalition and as a Parliament, which was pretty clear. It represented something of a compromise between the Liberal Democrat and the natural Conservative positions, which seemed quite acceptable: a treaty change should be subject to an Act of Parliament, but if that treaty change involves a fundamental and significant shift in powers from the British to the European level of government, then that should be automatically subject to a referendum. Yet now, only a matter of months later, this whole issue seems to have been reopened. That is a problem, because it makes it more difficult—let us put it no more strongly than that—for Ministers to negotiate with confidence, knowing what position they are representing back in this country. We are not so much sending them naked into the debating chamber, as sending them so wrapped up in unrealistic expectations that they cannot move, which is a problem.

Ministers need to focus on the issues at hand in the Council, which are threefold. The eurozone is not the only issue, because there are two other important topics for discussion. On energy, if I can put it in the language of this debate, I speak from a nuclear-sceptic point of view. There is the welcome process of independent scrutiny, at European level, of the safety of European nuclear programmes. In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, which will potentially cost the Japanese economy hundreds of billions of pounds, it is incredibly important that the process is ongoing and rigorous. If I have a concern that I would like to be raised at the European Council, it is that the Commission report makes the case for tighter safety rules but does so in a limited way, even though it concedes that many of the regulations that were already in force before the Fukushima disaster in March are still not being applied throughout the European Union. Some states, including the UK, Poland, Slovakia and Belgium, have not updated national legislation in line with a European directive from 2009. At present, there are no common safety standards or criteria for nuclear power plants across the European Union. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) says, from a sedentary position, “Good.” He may have a lot of confidence in British nuclear safety regimes. I hope he has exactly the same confidence in Polish safety regimes and in the safety regimes of other European nations. The bad news for him, I am afraid, is that radioactivity, as we found out after Chernobyl, is no respecter of national boundaries.

[Mr Gray]

Does the hon. Gentleman recall that Chernobyl is in fact in Russia?

[Martin Horwood]

It is not, actually; it is in Ukraine. It was in the Soviet Union at the time, but the point is that it is only quite recently that some farms in Wales have had all restrictions lifted as a result of the radioactivity that swept right across Europe. The point is that the wider we can spread safety regulations on this the better. The European Union is an important vehicle for doing that. I hope that that message about a tighter safety remit and tighter safety monitoring regime has been well taken.