Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Lord Howard of Lympne Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howard of Lympne]

My Lords, the use of chemical weapons has been illegal for almost a century. Their use was banned by the Geneva protocol, which was agreed by the international community in 1925. That ban was agreed because, as we have seen in the past week, the use of these weapons has particularly dreadful and horrible consequences. It is a ban that should be respected, observed and enforced. That is why President Obama was right, in his much criticised speech of several weeks ago, to declare that the use of chemical weapons would constitute a “red line”. That red line has been crossed.

Therefore, the questions that have to be answered are these. Should the use of chemical weapons in breach of that ban go unmarked? Should no action be taken to enforce the ban? Should those who use them be able to cock a snook at the rest of the world and continue to use them with impunity? I believe that the answer to all those questions is no. As the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition said, there is a strong moral case for enforcing the ban against the use of these dreadful weapons.

It is precisely this kind of situation that has given rise to the evolving doctrine in international law of the responsibility to protect. To suggest that in order to achieve a badge of legality any response to the use of chemical weapons must have the support of the Security Council of the United Nations is to confuse law with the kind of realpolitik that determines the way in which countries vote in relation to decisions of this kind. No one believes that all the permanent members of the Security Council will reach their decision on the basis of a dispassionate and objective assessment of the evidence on the use of chemical weapons in Syria last week. That is what you would need if you wanted to see the Security Council as an indispensable part of a legal process. It is manifestly not what we have.

Of course, I understand that in the light of what happened in 2003 there is a good deal of scepticism about the intelligence the Government have produced. Indeed, I warned in the aftermath of the Iraq war, not least in the debate on the report of the committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Butler, that the way in which the intelligence was misrepresented then would make it more difficult for Governments to take action in the future. However, as the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition has said this afternoon, we should not allow ourselves to be paralysed by Iraq. We must not allow ourselves to be paralysed now by what happened then.

My noble friend the Leader of the House has set out the further diplomatic steps which the Government intend to take, but there will come a time when decisions have to be taken, the material information that we need is available and the time for asking questions is over. I understand why the Prime Minister, in his desire to act on the basis of consensus, agreed to postpone the decision-taking moment in the other place, but for the Labour Party, having asked for and been granted that delay, to threaten to vote against the Government's Motion this evening is, I am afraid, a descent into party politics of the worst kind.

We are in danger of allowing the United States and France to act as the conscience of the world while the United Kingdom stands on the sidelines wringing its hands. That would be an unbearable humiliation for a country with a history such as ours. I hope that we can avoid that fate, and I commend the Government's position to your Lordships.