Education: Bahraini Students Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLord Tebbit
Main Page: Lord Tebbit (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Tebbit's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(13 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberAs far as I am concerned, I am always free to do that—of course—and I suspect from the noises that I hear around me that that would be a good move. Let us work to see if we can find time to get together and move ahead on that basis.
My Lords, at the risk of striking a discordant note, could I put it to my noble friend that the business of the Government is governing this country rather than telling eternally almost every other Government in the world how to govern theirs?
I am very surprised that my noble friend is striking a discordant note, but he makes the perfectly serious point that we cannot resolve every issue in every corner of the earth. However, there are our interests—and our interests happen to be rather acute in this very sensitive area of the Middle East, where not only does one of our major allies have a huge fleet and we have our contact and communications operations for trying to control the piracy that is a direct affront to our interests, our shipping and our prosperity, but there are many other British interests as well. I think that we are entitled to look after our interests in a reasonable way without—my noble friend is quite right—interfering in every conceivable situation.