ISIL in Syria

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Philip Hammond)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) on an outstanding exposition of the case for the motion. It will go down as one of the truly great speeches made in the House of Commons.

The proposal before the House is clear, simple and specific: to extend the airstrikes that we are already carrying out against ISIL in Iraq across a border that they themselves do not recognise and into their heartland in Syria. The Prime Minister set out the compelling arguments in favour of taking this action as part of a comprehensive strategy for Syria. In response, the Leader of the Opposition set out his well-known and well- understood principled objections to military intervention, objections that he has developed over many years and which are obviously sincerely held. I respect those objections as such, although I believe them to be profoundly misguided.

It is clear from the shadow Foreign Secretary’s speech, and from those of the right hon. Members for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) and for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) and many others, that for many Opposition Members the real issue of conscience at stake here is our obligation to act in the best interests of the UK and for the protection of British citizens.

For me, one of the most interesting aspects of the Leader of the Opposition’s speech was his repeated refusal to confirm whether it is his party’s policy to support the current action in Iraq, which this House voted for overwhelmingly in September 2014. Not only is he opposed to extending action to protect Britain against Daesh, but we have to assume from his silence that he wants to roll back the action that we are taking in Iraq now to protect the Kurds, the Yazidis and others and to support the steady erosion of ISIL control by the Iraqi security forces and the peshmerga. I ask Opposition Members whether that is now the position of the Labour party, despite its long and honourable tradition of fighting what the right hon. Member for Leeds Central has himself described as fascism. I hope that we will have confirmation as soon as possible that the Labour party remains committed to the current action in Iraq.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

Will the Foreign Secretary give way?

[Mr Hammond]

I will not give way, because time is very short.

I believe that today we saw the House at its best. A total of 104 Members have spoken. We heard forensic analysis and passionate conviction. I think that we can collectively be satisfied that, as a House, we have done justice to the gravity of the subject. With so many contributions and only a few minutes remaining, I hope that right hon. and hon. Members will forgive me if I do not acknowledge them all individually, but I will do my best to try to address the principal themes and questions that have arisen during the debate.

One of the key issues is the need to understand what the military plan is and who will deliver it. I have to say that there appears to be some confusion about that, so let me try to clarify it. We all agree that airstrikes alone will not finish ISIL, but they will deliver immediate benefit. They will reduce ISIL’s external attack planning capability, making Britain safer, and they will, over time, degrade ISIL and force a change in its behaviour. However, airstrikes alone will not create a vacuum.

During the debate, some hon. Members have sought to have it both ways, arguing that bombing ISIL in Raqqa will not make a difference, and at the same time suggesting that bombing ISIL in Raqqa will immediately create a power vacuum. Ultimately, there will need to be a ground assault on Raqqa, supported by continued airstrikes. However, as the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) said, that will come not in days or weeks, but in months and perhaps years, and that is before it even begins, let alone ends. We have had questions about ground forces—where are the ground forces going to come from? The context of this is a comprehensive strategy—a military track against ISIL and a political track against Assad. The time for retaking ISIL’s heartland in Syria will be when the civil war is ended, a transitional Government are in place, and the world can then once again support the Syrian Government so that that Syrian army, the Syrian opposition forces and the Kurdish forces can turn their guns on ISIL, liberating their own country from this evil organisation, supported by the coalition with weapons, with training, with technical support, and with air power.

Much has been made during the course of this debate about the number of opposition fighters available to join in that effort. The number of 70,000 is a number produced by the Joint Intelligence Committee. It is a number corroborated by the evidence of our US allies. But the situation on the ground is complex. There is a spectrum of views included in that 70,000-strong force. Yes, it includes a large element of secularists who have views that we would recognise as democratic, and yes, it also includes Islamists, but there are Islamists in the parliaments of Kuwait and Tunisia. We can work with Islamists who accept the democratic process and are prepared to take part in it.

The second issue that has arisen during the course of this debate is a question about the overall strategy. The Prime Minister was absolutely clear that military action is just one part of a comprehensive strategy. There has to be a political track and there has to be a humanitarian track. It is clear that we have to pursue the political track in parallel with the military. It is the only way to end the civil war in Syria and bring about the defeat of ISIL. Now we have an International Syria Support Group—the Vienna process. That is a major change in the context here, bringing together all the major international players behind a common vision of what is needed to end the war. It includes Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as the US, UK, France, Turkey and China. For the first time, all these countries have accepted the need for Syrian-led, Syrian-owned political transition based on the Geneva principles—a transition that will leave the institutions of the state intact, avoiding the mistakes that were made in Iraq. Of course differences remain between the parties, particularly about Assad how will transition out, but they have agreed together a timeframe for political negotiations, including transitional government within six months and a new constitution and free and fair elections within 18 months.

I know that there are those who question the commitment of the United States or the engagement of Russia in this process, so I want, if I may, to quote from a letter that I have received this morning from the United States Secretary of State, John Kerry. He says:

“The United States has long believed that while military action can reinforce diplomacy there can be no military solution to the civil war in Syria. We have to pursue a political track. And at the same time there can be no political deal with Daesh. They have to be degraded by military force.”

He goes on to say that

“the Vienna process presents the best opportunity in four years for an agreement that can establish a ceasefire and create a political process leading to a new constitution and democratic elections.”

Importantly, he concludes by telling me this:

“Senior Russian officials have helped lead the effort to find a common way forward and have expressed firm commitment to the Geneva principles. Russian leaders have indicated both publicly and privately on numerous occasions that they are open to a political transition, including a new constitution and elections.”

The third issue that came up several times during the course of today is the question of whether airstrikes will make a difference. The right hon. Member for Leeds Central and several other Members made the point that they were effective in halting the precipitate advance of Daesh in Iraq last year and are now contributing to the erosion of Daesh positions in Iran. The UK already provides a significant element of the high-precision strike available to the coalition, and that high-precision strike will be vital to the campaign in Raqqa.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) asked about the rules of engagement. Rules of engagement are classified, but I can tell him that the UK’s rules of engagement are among the most restrictive in the world. Bringing British discipline, British skills and British precision weapons to bear will save lives as we prosecute this campaign. We will minimise civilian casualties. There is no military logic and no moral logic to prosecuting ISIL in Iraq but not targeting its HQ in Syria.

Finally, I want to turn to the fourth issue that has arisen during the course of this debate: will Britain’s taking part in airstrikes increase the threat to our security? In 2014, there were 15 ISIL external attack plans. This year, so far, there have been 150. The scale of this problem is rising exponentially. ISIL already poses a direct threat to the United Kingdom: 30 British tourists killed on the beaches of Tunisia, what could have been a British plane downed over the deserts of Sinai and seven different terrorist plots disrupted by the security services in the UK in the past 12 months.

The judgment of the Joint Intelligence Committee and the director general of the Security Service is that the UK is already a top tier of ISIL’s target list. They hate us for who we are, not for what we do. We have to be clear—I think the right hon. Member for Derby South was the first to say this—that the risks of inaction are far greater than the risks of action. We have to act now to degrade this threat to our security, and we will do it by targeting their heartland and their control centre.

We are not debating tonight, as some would have us believe, whether or not to “go to war”. Fifteen months ago, this House voted overwhelmingly to begin airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq. The simple question that we are deciding tonight is whether to extend those operations to tackle ISIL in its heartland in Syria—targeting the head of the snake. This is not a fight that we have chosen. By the atrocities it has committed, by the murderous regime of brutality and terror it has inflicted on the people of Iraq and Syria, and by its clear intent and capability to strike us in the UK and at British citizens abroad, ISIL has made that choice for us. To answer the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), yes, ISIL does represent a direct and imminent threat to the UK and to British citizens.

The decision tonight is this: do we take the fight to them, or do we wait for them to bring the fight to us? Do we strike them in Syria, or do we wait for them to strike us on the streets of London? What kind of country would we be if we refused to act in the face of a threat to our security as clear as the one that ISIL poses? Indeed, what kind of country would we be if we were unmoved by the murder, the rape, the beheadings and the slavery that ISIL imposes on its subjects? And what kind of country would we be if we ignored the calls for help from our nearest neighbours even as they grieve for their dead? We cannot contract out the responsibility for our national security. We cannot rely on others to take actions to protect our citizens that we are not willing to take ourselves.

The threat is clear. Our ability to respond to it is undoubted. The moral imperative to act is compelling. The legal case to do so is watertight. We do not propose military action lightly and we do not propose it in isolation. We will vigorously pursue the Vienna process to ceasefire, transition and a new representative Government in Syria. We will lead the international community in planning and delivering post-conflict reconstruction. Let us tonight give a clear and simple message to our allies, to the enemy and to our brave armed forces, who we are asking to do the job for us. Let us show beyond doubt what kind of a country we are by endorsing decisively the motion before us this evening.