Lord Benyon
Main Page: Lord Benyon (Crossbench - Life peer) Foreign Affairs Committee
Lord Benyon Excerpts
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin). Probably seared on to all our memories—I would be surprised if hon. and right hon. Members have not seen this—is the moving interview that the hon. Gentleman gave to the television news in which he talked about being able to look his father in the eye. One can understand entirely the passion with which he has spoken, and I am grateful to him for it.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin), as Chairman of the Committee of Selection, said very helpfully that it is up to the House to decide on the merits of the motion. He moved the motion as, effectively, the servant of that Committee in a way that has come to typify the approach that he adopts in these matters, and the House should be grateful for that.
I very much echo the closing point made by the hon. Member for Dudley North about the role of Select Committees. We all get ourselves frightfully hot under the collar when people are badgering us in the Tea Room saying, “Will you support us on this?”, “We’re going for that,” and so on. But when the Select Committees get up and running, the epithets of party political allegiance seem to disappear. I have served on only two Select Committees, the Procedure Committee and the Welsh Affairs Committee, but I never really felt that I went into meetings as a Conservative member of the Committee. I went in as a Member with an interest in the subject. Each Committee is almost a mini House of Lords, if you will—a receptacle of expertise where people motivate themselves to sit on the Committee because they have an interest in, or experience of, that particular area. It is of course the job of Select Committees to hold the Executive to account, and sometimes the Executive get a bit of a clobbering. It is always worthwhile remembering that it was a Conservative Government who brought in Select Committees as we know them, through the Thatcher/St John-Stevas reforms.
Nobody could doubt the record of the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes): he was Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee between 2005 and 2010 and a member of the Committee from 1992 to 1997, and of course he also sits on the Committee now. I have only been in this place since 2015.
Simon Hoare
My right hon. Friend should try looking at it from where I am standing; it seems like 40 years, rather than four.
I hope that the hon. Member for Ilford South will take it in the spirit in which it is intended when I say that I watched the TV news and the proceedings in this place long before coming into the House, and when the hon. Gentleman spoke on foreign affairs, I did not say to myself, “Oh, there goes the Labour Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.” I said to myself, “Here is somebody who speaks with authority, interest, passion and a breadth of experience that the House is well advised to listen to and take heed of.”
I agree with the assessment of the hon. Member for Dudley North. When I read the Order Paper initially—of course, this is the Labour party’s second stab at this—I thought to myself that this was one of the most mealy-mouthed, vindictive and small-minded motions.
Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)
I am moved by the speech of the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh). Those were extraordinarily courageous words to say in this extraordinary Parliament, where we find ourselves in unfamiliar territory in so many ways, with a new fluidity in politics that we need to reflect. I will detain the House for only a very short moment.
As the leader of the UK delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, it has been my good fortune to work with the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes). At the moment, when we go to these forums, parliamentarians from across the world—in our case, from across the NATO alliance—ask, “What is going on in the United Kingdom?” We try to explain, which at times I find almost impossible. If they are confused by our actions in this Parliament and our inability to get through a certain matter, they will be doubly confused when they see that somebody of the hon. Gentleman’s standing and stature in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly is being excluded from a Select Committee on which he has extraordinary experience and of which he is a former Chair. If he were also to be removed from our delegation, that would be extraordinary, and I simply would not be able to explain it to the many parliamentarians who look to this Parliament for inspiration and feel that there is a basic sense of fairness and decency, which we should uphold. I am grateful that the Government’s whipping allows me to do what I was going to do anyway.
Angela Smith
Does the right hon. Gentleman—I think he is right honourable—not think that this Parliament, in removing someone like my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) from the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, would be sending out a message to the international community that Britain no longer stands for fairness and justice?
Richard Benyon
The hon. Lady makes a very important point. I do think that the membership of a Select Committee or of a delegation—although, out there in the real world, it is not what they are talking about in the Dog and Duck—is an indication of the kind of politics we do in this place, and to me, it matters.
The machinations of the Labour party are something that, in one sense, we on the Conservative Benches could just not be part of. Personally, however, I am saddened if a great internationalist party does not still have people on its Benches—they have now moved to a different arrangement—who really understand the importance at this time of that internationalist approach and have an understanding of the dynamic of foreign affairs. If we are to define global Britain, it is not just going to be done by the people on the Conservative Benches; it has to be something on which Members of this Parliament engage across a whole range of different forums.
Alec Shelbrooke
Would my right hon. Friend summarise it in this way? The UK delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly is one of the most respected delegations because of the strength and depth of its knowledge, and if this was to pass, along with changes to the NATO PA delegation, we would diminish ourselves on the world stage.
Richard Benyon
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend.
I will conclude by saying that the hon. Member for Ilford South does the work, chairs committees and understands how these things work, and I hope—
Richard Benyon
I will not, because I have made a promise that I am going to shut up.
I just want to say that I have huge respect for the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) as well. He and I have worked on issues relating to Russia and Magnitsky, and I know his knowledge and understanding, and his courageousness as well. For goodness’ sake, let us be a Parliament that raises ourselves above this. Let us just be a little bit mature and reflect on the fact that, even if we were talking about people who had been on the Conservative Benches, we would actually stand up for something more important than what we are talking about today.