Iraq: Coalition Against ISIL

Liz Kendall Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I say to my hon. Friend that we live in a robust democracy where this House of Commons frequently demands and wants, quite rightly, to see Ministers at the Dispatch Box defending their actions and setting out, as I have just done in this now accepted convention, that if there is to be premeditated military action, the House of Commons should be consulted in advance. I have set out where I think there are gaps in that convention, about which I could not have been clearer, and I think that that probably has all-party support.

I will take two more interventions and will then complete my speech.

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

I thank the Prime Minister. He has rightly talked about defeating ISIL militarily and politically, including with help in the region. Will he say something about how we need also to defeat ISIL financially? Which countries are supporting ISIL, including by purchasing oil, and what are the British Government and others going to do about that?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady is absolutely spot on with that point. There are a number of things that we need to do. First of all is action at the UN, which has now been taken, to cut off the financial flows to ISIL. We need to take action to tell the world that ISIL, supposedly the enemy of Assad, is actually selling oil to Assad and making millions of pounds from it. American air strikes have already dealt with some of the so-called mobile oil refineries that ISIL has been using to raise funds, but clearly more needs to be done to persuade those who may have backed organisations such as ISIL in the past, because they were seen as Sunni Arab organisations, that they made a terrible mistake and should not do it again. That was very much what was being discussed around the table at the UN Security Council and is an issue that I would support.