Foreign Affairs and Defence

Debate between Liam Byrne and Andrew Mitchell

Thursday 18th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and welcome to the Chair.

May I warmly congratulate the Defence Secretary on his new role, and strongly endorse the comments he made about Britain’s armed forces? My own regiment has recently been on the frontline in Estonia, and I want to strongly endorse the words he used. I also endorse the advice he gave to new Members sitting on these green Benches. I first sat on these green Benches—on the Government side—37 years ago, and I strongly agree with what he said. I feel that sense of honour and privilege every day in this House.

I had hoped to start by welcoming the Foreign Secretary to his place. I wanted to wish him well in discharging the immense responsibilities of the office he now holds. I have to say that I was dismayed to hear the Foreign Secretary answer questions on the “Today” programme this morning that should more properly have been answered in this House—a view that I believe Mr Speaker shares. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that the Foreign Secretary will be very well served by the outstanding civil servants at the Foreign Office. I want to express my gratitude to our ambassadors and high commissioners around the world. On overseas visits throughout my tenure, I was superbly served and looked after. I also want to thank the outstanding young officials who worked in my private office.

I should like to pay a special tribute to my noble Friend Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton. He demonstrated clear strategic thinking about how British foreign policy needed to adapt to the world as it is today and injected real energy into British diplomacy. I hope the whole House will acknowledge that to persuade a former Prime Minister to serve as Foreign Secretary was a real benefit to our country. It was also a pleasure to serve alongside the former Members for Berwick-upon-Tweed and Macclesfield, who I am very sorry are no longer sitting alongside me on the Front Bench. They were both superb Ministers, who worked diligently at the Foreign Office.

I cannot recall a more perilous period in international affairs. I entered the House of Commons just two years before the momentous fall of the Berlin wall, which precipitated the demise of the Soviet Union and the consequent end of the cold war. It is difficult to overstate, having lived with the terrifying spectre of nuclear confrontation, the collective relief we all felt. Yet the world is once again in the grip of a galloping escalation of tensions and dangers, where the international institutions created on the heels of the second world war to defend our values and protect mankind are being undermined, the narrow nationalism that so disfigured our continent is once again rearing its destructive head, and despots and dictators increasingly ride roughshod over democratic freedoms and the rules-based order.

Putin’s brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine has brought war once again to the European continent. The Israel-Gaza conflict is devastating and risks regional conflagration. Poverty and debt stalk the global south. Yet covid taught us that no one is safe until we are all safe, while climate change is the greatest existential threat of our time. Never have we faced dangers so grave when our fates are so closely entwined. So at the very time when we need an international rules-based order to tackle these common threats—climate change, migration, terror and pandemics—we are more fragmented than ever. Divisions are hardening and debate is coarsening.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North) (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the right hon. Member, my constituency neighbour, for giving way and I am delighted to see him in his place—on the Opposition side of the Chamber. Can I take it from his remarks that he subscribes to the view that we need not only a rules-based order, but a rights-based order? Here in our country, and indeed in Europe, the framework for those rights is the European convention on human rights. Are we to take it from his remarks that it is the policy of His Majesty’s loyal Opposition that we should remain a member of the ECHR?

[Mr Mitchell]

That is certainly the policy of the Opposition, and I hope it is common across the House that we should remain part of the European convention.

I was talking about divisions hardening and debate coarsening. Public discourse is increasingly vitriolic, be it in pursuit of single issue causes or broader agendas, from the left or the right, or driven by motives that may or may not be religious and may or may not be well-intentioned. The challenge this presents to British foreign policy is immense, but Britain has punched above its weight precisely because of our leadership role in the international system.

As His Majesty’s Opposition, our role is to hold the Government to account, but also to give the strongest possible support where we can. I hope that we can work constructively, as our two parties have done hitherto. In opposition, we will continue to make the case that Britain must be a force for good, that it is outward-looking and global in perspective, that we stand up for internationalism and co-operation, that we stand against populism and isolationism, and that we stand with the world’s poorest and most vulnerable. I am very proud of the Conservative party’s record in government on all those fronts. We stood firmly behind Ukraine, and we worked day and night with international partners to maximise the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, while supporting negotiations to secure the release of the Israeli hostages. We produced a groundbreaking White Paper on international development, which drew in the support of all political parties in tackling global poverty in a complex geopolitical environment.