Syria: UK Military Action

Lord King of Bridgwater Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)]

My Lords, I recall that many years ago, as a young man of 16, the noble Lord, Lord Hague, stood up at a Conservative Party conference and said that some of us there would not be around in 30 years’ time. Well, I am one of those who is still around 30 years later, having listened to him from the platform. I remember also campaigning in Richmond 29 years ago, when I thought we had a promising young MP on the way who might do quite well. He made an absolutely outstanding maiden speech, which all noble Lords in this Chamber will remember. We look forward very much to hearing him again.

So much has already been said with which I entirely agree, and I am not going to emphasise the points about the obscenity of Daesh or the urgency and importance of the threat. I just want to say one thing. The duty of many noble Lords in this House is to bring any experience to bear on this debate. It is the value of this House, perhaps, over the other place. I spent a lot of years fighting terrorism. One thing I know about terrorism is that it needs money. One of the major challenges in Northern Ireland was trying to switch off the money coming from America—trying to stop the funding of the arms and equipment that was coming out of Libya, paid for by certain well-meaning benefactors who did not realise where their money was going. That is the background against which I approach this.

That is why I welcome the emphasis on dealing with economic forces in the speech from my noble friend the Leader of the House. I am not sure whether the figure she gave for daily income was in pounds or dollars, but whatever it was, it was a huge figure. There is also the amount of weaponry sloshing around in the world, particularly the large quantities from Slovakia, for some reason. Daesh is undoubtedly well equipped and does not seem to have any shortage of ammunition or weaponry, and no shortage at the moment, sadly, of markets in which to dispose of its oil. These are the areas we need to tackle—particularly oil, but also donations from unsuitable quarters that may be coming to it, and compulsory taxation of the populations in some of the towns it presently occupies.

The noble Baroness leading the debate for the Opposition said that, perhaps in some ways, just a marginal increase was being proposed. What we are talking about is doing in Syria what we are already doing in Iraq. Our allies have asked for our help in that respect. To hear some people talk, you would think we were proposing carpet-bombing the whole of Raqqa and the whole of Syria. Importantly, the beauty of Brimstone, which some noble Lords have talked about, is not just that it is extremely precise and accurate and can hit moving targets, but it actually has a rather small explosive charge. It is not a great bunker-busting bomb that sends shrapnel flying in every direction, killing men, women and children.

What have we learnt so far—what have we learnt from Iraq? The Minister has just been to Baghdad, and I know she will not mind me quoting the tribute that was paid to the RAF for its minimising civilian casualties. It has shown that it can do it there. This is what we need to do. This is not a major change, but it would be a very major change if we refused to support our allies.

I will say just one thing to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace. He said, “Get the Gulf Cooperation Council—the countries in the region—to play their part”. If we did not say yes today, it would be that much harder to persuade those countries to play their part. This is a step and, having taken it, we can then turn to them and say, “Right. We’re now all in this together”. That is the way we can really make progress against a very evil organisation that threatens us all.