Syrian Refugees

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dykes (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, and her very wise words. I agree with a lot that she has said. Above all, I warmly thank the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, for taking the initiative in launching this debate. It is extremely timely, with the tragedy that has been laid out so clearly in the speeches that we have already heard. I agreed with most of them wholeheartedly, particularly those that set out the tragic statistics of this later stage—the refugees, the deaths and so on—and the great tragedy of the disintegration of Syria, which has always been a very great country. Therefore, it behoves us all to think very seriously about how we resolve these matters.

I am also saddened by looking back at the examples of how the West has miscalculated so much on these foreign policy initiatives in the Middle East and elsewhere, but mainly, and tragically, in the Middle East itself. I am going back a long way now and thinking about the 1 million, or maybe even 1.5 million, people marching down Piccadilly to object to the Iraq war. I was one of them. There is a notion that there was another motive behind the war and not just the ones that were stated at the time. Regime change was hinted at last week by a very prominent international figure who used to be the Prime Minister of this country. That, as we know, is illegal under international law unless it is certificated in advance by the United Nations through the appropriate machinery and resolutions. That did not happen in that case. Saddam Hussein before then had invaded Kuwait and quite rightly was expelled by the international community, with the United Nations leading the way, a year later. I am a life-long admirer of the state of Israel, but I find it rather peculiar, in contrast, that Israel is still in Palestine, 50 years after the 1967 war, because of the way in which the United States has allowed that to happen and international law to be violated in that way by the key democracy in the Middle East, which is Israel.

None the less, we look now at the results of the West’s mistakes in Iraq and what happened there. Whether the eventual judicial murder of Saddam Hussein was right or wrong is a very interesting question and a difficult one to answer properly. The situation in Syria is that Assad is still in power. Even if one finds a regime obnoxious and the leader of that regime even more obnoxious—people have different views on that—it is not for the West to determine who is in charge of running a country or how a country is run; that is for the United Nations to determine. Look at the situation in Libya. Again, having had a friendship agreement with Gaddafi, he was then killed by his opponents in Libya, which was regarded by many as a good thing. But is it a good thing when those countries are now broken countries? They are not operating properly at all, and that is partly the responsibility of the West, led by the United States, which has made many mistakes in the Middle East. Thank goodness that now, at long last, the United States has agreed to let Iran attend the conference. It took a long time to be persuaded, but now Iran and other parties essential to this will be there to try to resolve the problem.

I believe that the problem can be resolved, but only with a different approach. Church leaders, and Christian Aid’s excellent memorandum on the subject, called this approach an “inclusive peace gathering” to achieve peace in Syria. It cannot be selective, with some people excluded and others included. That is a great mistake in the West, and the more we do it, the more mistakes we make. It must be put to an end now.

I make my final request to the Government, echoing what the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, said: we must be more generous in taking more Syrian refugees than the figures that were enunciated for the five-year period to 2020. In comparison with other European countries, this is a very niggardly number. Once again, church leaders are quite right in saying that the number should be at least doubled, and perhaps more than that. There is a lot that we can do to resolve the situation with humanity and common sense.