Venezuela

Lord Mohammed of Tinsley Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I think I am right in saying, from the last time I spoke to our chargé in Caracas, that he has had contact with Delcy Rodríguez previously. I am not aware whether this contact has been re-established since the events of the weekend. It is only Tuesday, so it is quite possible that that has not happened. But should that be something which would be helpful in moving things forward in a stable way, then that is a role that the UK may be prepared to do, if that should be helpful.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, speaking about the international implications of this, I think that Venezuela is not the only nation that is badly governed and managed, and this sends a signal from His Majesty’s Government, a permanent member of the UN Security Council. If we soft glove our close ally America and allow it to take action, what implications will there be—I am not just talking about Russia and China but in Africa and in the Middle East—and what standing will we have as a country and a permanent member of the UN Security Council to challenge those nations when they will simply point to our actions right now?

Similarly, I talk about the parallels that some people have drawn between President Trump’s desire to get hold of the oil in Venezuela and George W Bush’s aims—it was WMD, but it ended up being oil. How can we learn those lessons from Iraq, so we do not leave Venezuela in a far worse situation than we have inherited at the moment? When I say “we”, I mean the US, not the United Kingdom.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I know what the noble Lord is getting at. As far as parallels go, the UK is judged on the UK’s actions, and I do not think that this makes any difference at all to our ability to make the case for international law to partners—he mentioned Africa—and certainly it would not make our ability to make those cases any different.

I have heard people trying to draw some sort of parallel with events in 2003 in Iraq. Clearly, no two situations are precisely the same, but the situation as it exists today in Venezuela is very different to what happened after the removal of Saddam Hussein and the entire infrastructure in Baghdad. I do not know whether lessons have been learned, and hence the change of approach that we are seeing, but it is well understood that, with the Government in Venezuela, the elite that remains and the way that that Government are still being led today, there is such a different situation. There needs to be a transition; we cannot just leave things as they are, but there is the capability, and the stability is sufficient to allow for that transition. That is the hope, and that is what we need to see.