Ukraine, Middle East, North Africa and Security

Madeleine Moon Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Ms Gisela Stuart]

rose—

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Hammond]

I will take one more intervention and then I must make some progress.

[Mr Hammond]

When I talked about a military difference between Iraq and Syria, I was referring to the different air defence systems that protect the territory in those two countries. In Iraq, the skies are open over ISIL-controlled territory, whereas in Syria a sophisticated integrated air defence system protects the whole of the country’s airspace and would make air strikes complex and difficult to deliver.

[Mrs Moon]

rose—

[Mr Hammond]

In view of Mr Speaker’s strictures, I must make some progress. I will allow the hon. Lady to intervene later.

Having established a heartland in Syria and advanced into northern Iraq, ISIL is seeking to extend its reach with the openly stated objective of building a so-called caliphate embracing all the Muslim populations of the region in a single fundamentalist state that would subject its population to a brutal and barbaric regime while waging perpetual war against the infidel beyond the caliphate’s boundaries. This is a dangerous force that if left unchecked could transform swathes of the middle east into a haven for international terrorism.

ISIL’s barbaric acts in the areas it controls have included targeted killings, forced religious conversions, abductions, trafficking, slavery and systematic sexual abuse on the basis of ethnicity and religion. It has forced hundreds of thousands of Iraqis of all communities—Shi’a, Sunni, Christian, Yazidi—to flee their homes in fear as its forces abuse, brutalise and kill anyone who stands in the way of their advance. Their actions and poisonous ideology are not only abhorrent to our values and principles and, indeed, to the values and principles of all decent people, including the overwhelming majority of Muslims, but represent a direct threat to Britain’s national security.

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that has been precisely the thrust of a British initiative at the United Nations to cut off financial and other lines of support to ISIL. We will continue to pursue that route.

[Mrs Moon]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his confirmation that we are using the United Nations to point out the importance of cutting off financial support to ISIL. Is he talking to Governments around the world and ensuring that the Treasury is equally engaged in ensuring that messages go out to banking systems and individuals that it is not a good thing to channel funds to ISIL and that, if they are not cut off now, these murderous individuals will come into their countries?

[Mr Hammond]

Yes, we are delivering that message and our partners around the world are active. We have seen action over the past few days in many countries, with people providing support networks to ISIL being disrupted, arrests being made and so on.

In seeking to establish its extremist state, ISIL is already seeking to use the territory it controls as a launch pad from which to attack the west, including the United Kingdom. The unprovoked attack on the Jewish museum in Brussels, the brutal beheadings of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and the explicit threat to the life of a British hostage have made it clear that ISIL will not hesitate to attack western citizens wherever it has the opportunity to do so. As the House will know, our intelligence agencies estimate that more than 500 British nationals have travelled abroad to fight in Syria and Iraq for extremist groups, particularly ISIL. On the face of it, one of those individuals, nominally British although sharing none of our values, was responsible for the beheading of the American journalists. The potential return to the shores of hundreds of these radicalised jihadis, some of whom will have undergone training in the conduct of terrorist atrocities, represents one of the most serious threats to our national security and was directly responsible for the decision to raise the threat level for international terrorism from substantial to severe.