Syria

Lord Soley Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

I congratulate the noble Baroness on getting the debate. It is tragic that it is so short, but she has done an awful lot of work on this and it is very important. I agree with much of what she has said and also with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, too.

I will keep my three minutes to one factor, because we cannot go into all of it, which is Russia, which the noble Baroness touched on. I have felt for a long time that the role of Russia in this is far more important than we have realised. I ask the Minister if we know whether Russia is still arming Assad and whether it is still providing him with intelligence. We underestimated the importance of the intelligence from Russia. We have to remember that it has satellites over the area providing information to Assad’s forces so that he can hold ground that, frankly, he would have lost otherwise. It has always been my view that Assad would not negotiate as long as Russia felt that it could keep him in place.

The third question that I would ask the Minister is this. I think that President Putin now knows that, although Assad might have to be part of the solution, as the noble Baroness said, he certainly cannot dictate it. There is no way that Assad can or should be back in control of the bulk of Syria again, even if Syria can hold together. A very important part of the policy that we have never fully debated in this Chamber is: what role is Russia playing? How close are we to Russia? Despite all the other problems with Crimea and the way that President Putin is behaving in modern Russia, there must be some shared interest in working together to solve this problem. It is not in Russia’s interest to have ISIL winning in that area.

Similarly, although it might not quite see it this way, it is not really in Russia’s interest to see the United Nations frozen out, as it is at the moment because of the attitude of Russia and China against intervention. Syria is a classic example of how, just as intervention can go wrong, as it did in Iraq, so non-intervention can go wrong, too, as it has in Syria—unless people think that it is some wonderful success. The role of Russia is an issue that we need to bring out to some degree. Much of what else has been said could be dealt with in a much bigger way.

My last point is that we are in acute danger of a growing major war in the region involving Saudi Arabia and Iran—and, of course, the split within Islam between Sunni and Shia—which would have a knock-on effect on many of our allies there, which are becoming destabilised. Yemen is the latest example; I always worry about Bahrain, which has been doing remarkably well and deserves a lot of credit when it is in an almost impossible position in relation to Iran and Saudi.

For tonight, I simply would like answers so that I know more about what the British Government are doing with Russia—or is it just that we cannot do very much with it?