Britain in the World

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

The answer is no. If the hon. Lady has read the Bill that has been published, she will know that the intention is to operate on the Westminster franchise, plus peers and citizens of Gibraltar resident in the UK. We think that is the right way to proceed on a matter that is reserved and is of importance to the whole United Kingdom.

No one should doubt the Government’s ambition to sustain and strengthen Britain’s role in the world. How, colleagues might ask, are we positioned to deliver on that ambition? In the previous Parliament we made significant process, and I want to pay tribute to my predecessor, William Hague, for reversing many of the mistakes of the Blair and Brown years and laying the sound foundations upon which we are now building. However, I am the first to recognise that there is much more to do in this Parliament to finish the job, as we complete the task of rebuilding Britain’s public finances and reinvigorating Britain’s economy. Our economic security and our national security are two sides of the same coin—without one, we cannot have the other. Our prosperity depends upon Britain remaining an outward-looking nation that is engaged with the world, and strong national security is underpinned by a strong and growing economy.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Has the Foreign Secretary seen the recent reports from The Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria, who points out that the United Kingdom’s inward turn over recent years, moving away from engagement in the world, is folly not just for our country but for the international order?

[Mr Hammond]

There is always a lag in these things. There was indeed an “inward turn” by the United Kingdom, but it took place in the period 2007 to 2010. That is a matter of deep regret that we are now in the process of reversing.

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[Alex Salmond]

I said “almost voted for a ground incursion in Syria.” If the Government had not been defeated, make no mistake, there would be an extreme likelihood of British troops in Syria. If British troops had been in Syria at present, they would perhaps have been simultaneously fighting against President Assad and some of the opponents of President Assad. Keeping that option open can be called many things, but it could not be called a coherent military or foreign policy. I hope that we learn the lessons that Chilcot has to teach and that there is a proper examination of that report, and indeed of those whom it might criticise.

[Mike Gapes]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Alex Salmond]

I will make some progress first.

[Mike Gapes]

Will he give way on that point?

[Alex Salmond]

If the hon. Gentleman will just—Och, I had not realised that it was my old friend and colleague. Please.

[Mike Gapes]

I am very grateful. On the question of learning lessons, it is now 15 years since Miloševic was removed from Kosovo. Does the right hon. Gentleman recall saying in 1999 that it was unpardonable folly to bomb Serbian forces in order to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo? Does he now accept that he was wrong and that that is a lesson he has learned?

[Alex Salmond]

May I just refresh the hon. Gentleman’s memory? It was the Serbian people who removed President Miloševic in an election. The lesson I would learn from that particular episode is the extreme folly of pursing military action without a United Nations mandate. Unfortunately, that lesson was not learned, which is why we have the present nightmare in Iraq.

On the European convention on human rights, those of us who were in the Chamber last Thursday afternoon were treated to a remarkable cock-crowing three times for the Justice Secretary. The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) questioned him three times about withdrawal from the European convention on human rights, and she got three different answers. First, he said:

“The right hon. Lady is getting ever so slightly ahead of herself.”

Secondly, in the same column in Hansard, he said that she was

“evasive when asked about immigration numbers”.

Thirdly, when asked,

“One simple question: European convention—in or out?”,

he said:

“We are in the European convention at the moment.”—[Official Report, 28 May 2015; Vol. 596, c. 291-292.]

That lack of clarity from the Justice Secretary contrasts with the statement we heard from the Foreign Secretary earlier today, in which he seemed to suggest that the option of withdrawing from the European convention was not on the table. That makes it all the more puzzling to see the headline on the front page of today’s edition of The Daily Telegraph, a newspaper that I will not cite too often in these debates—it lives in a parallel universe as far as Scotland is concerned, but no one can doubt that it has sources deep in the heart of Conservative party. It suggested today that both the Justice Secretary and the Home Secretary were lifting the flag of rebellion and telling the Prime Minister that withdrawal from the European convention was absolutely necessary for fulfilling the objectives of the Conservative party and repatriating the powers of the judiciary. Having heard the Justice Secretary refuse three times to give the answer that the Foreign Secretary gave today, I am interested in how deep these divisions run in the Conservative party.

I have known the Justice Secretary for many years, since he was a striking young journalist on The Press and Journal. I am not talking about his copy; he was literally on strike at the time, on a picket line. I remember the occasion well. It was 1989 and he was clutching a copy of the Socialist Worker, or perhaps is was “Das Kapital”—it could have been any one of a range of publications. What I do remember is that on that occasion he was eloquently in favour of both human and workers’ rights.

I must declare an interest, as I now write a column for The Press and Journal. I have encountered no bullying behaviour by management there in recent years, but that was not the case for the Justice Secretary. I recently came across an article from The Guardian on 5 October 2012, in which the then father of the chapel, Iain Campbell, wrote very favourably about the Justice Secretary. He wrote:

“We knew he was a Tory, and our concern was to have a united front. So we spoke to Michael, and he was happy to come on board. He wasn’t a typical striker by any means, but he was very articulate, so we asked Michael to come to the European parliament in Strasbourg to lobby MEPs.”

I accept that the Justice Secretary was a young man at the time, but it is pretty clear that back then he was asserting for himself human and workers’ rights that as Justice Secretary, as regards the European convention and his attitude to trade union legislation, he now seems intent on denying to others. It is therefore reasonable to ask to have clarified in early course whether the Conservative party and the Government stand behind the Justice Secretary and the Home Secretary, or whether the more loyal expression of Europeanism we heard from the Foreign Secretary carries the Cabinet at the present moment.

The implications of withdrawing from the European convention or revoking the Human Rights Act are of course serious. There is no majority in this House for withdrawal and no majority in the House of Lords for withdrawal. There is absolute opposition in the Scottish Parliament, where the European convention—the Human Rights Act—is embedded into the devolution legislation. There is little support for it in Northern Ireland, where the European convention is part and parcel of the Good Friday and St Andrews agreements. With all that clearly impinging on the Government’s abilities, then surely it is time to abandon this nonsense of reneging on these obligations to human rights.

I am not certain that many Members will know this, but there is in the Strasbourg Court a framed copy of the Declaration of Arbroath. There are also, if I remember correctly, plaques to Ernest Bevin and to Winston Churchill in the walkway to the Strasbourg Court. It is at least arguable that many of the justices in the Strasbourg Court know rather more about the Scottish legal system than many Members of this House. There would be huge implications for how our legal system, our Parliament and our society relate to the European convention, even if the rather sleekit option were pursued of revoking the Act as opposed to withdrawing from the convention.

I want to turn to the European issue. In the past few days, the Prime Minister embarked on a grand tour of Europe, although as far as I can make out only four European capitals were visited over the weekend. However, I did see a favourable release on his activities saying that he had breakfasted in one capital, lunched in a second and dined in a third. Never have so many menus been translated for any single Prime Minister in history. It was considered a success that the German Chancellor seemed to indicate that it was not impossible that a treaty change could be effected. Therefore, in fairness, on the conclusion of this debate, we should be told by the Government whether a treaty change is the objective of the negotiations. What is the treaty change that the Government want to see effected? I would rather hope that it is a treaty change to substantially change the common fisheries policy. I would support that treaty change, but I have not seen the Prime Minister mentioning the common fisheries recently in any of his utterances. We should be clear what is the treaty change that the Government seek and the German Chancellor seemed to indicate might, under some circumstances, be possible.

What is the Government’s negotiating position? We are told that negotiations have started, with the whirlwind tour of the Chancellor and the Prime Minister of European capitals, but what is the negotiating position? Are we going to be told the negotiating position after the negotiations have taken place? If my memory does not betray me, in the 18th century there was launched in the South sea bubble a company whose purposes were to be hereafter determined. The Prime Minister seems to have launched a negotiation whose purposes will be hereafter determined. The endgame in the South sea bubble was that it burst, and I think that the Prime Minister’s European negotiations will burst as well.

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[Dr Lewis]

We, however, rely on the combination that involves lay people who become Ministers being guided by the expertise of the professional civil service. Now, the civil service has adopted a policy of opening up the possibility of more top jobs to its most high-flying people, but if they are not to be the experts, who is?

I shall now say something about my second topic—the nature of defence reviews—which may not make me entirely popular with those my own side. I have said it before, and I intend to go on saying it: the 1997-98 Labour strategic defence review went about things in a better fashion than our review did in 2010. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) was good enough to acknowledge that ours was Treasury-driven. By gum, yes, it was.

[Mike Gapes]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dr Lewis]

Of course I will, but only briefly.

[Mike Gapes]

Is it not a fact that the Labour Government’s review, which took about a year and a half, had a foreign policy focus at its centre and was not just about bean counting?

[Dr Lewis]

The answer is yes, and the hon. Gentleman has saved me from uttering the sentence I was going to utter next, but the point about that review, of course, is that although it was truly strategic, it was not properly funded. Ours went to the other extreme of being properly funded but not truly strategic. We have to try to get a balance between those two methods.

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[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron). He and I served on the Foreign Affairs Committee in the last Parliament, and I want to begin by paying tribute to two other of my colleagues from that Committee, Frank Roy and Sandra Osborne, who were assiduous Members of the House, but who were, sadly, swept away by the nationalist tsunami in Scotland.

In the four minutes I have, I wish to concentrate on something very sad: the total lack during the general election campaign of debate about Britain’s role in the world and about foreign policy—there was not even a serious debate about our future in Europe. We were obsessed with micro-issues, and, from the Labour side, we had no narrative, no vision and no sense of where our country was going. Unfortunately, that allowed our opponents to set the agenda far too much.

I made my maiden speech 23 years ago during the Queen’s Speech debate on foreign policy. I am pleased that, at this election, my constituents in Ilford South gave me the best result Labour has ever achieved. I got 64% of the vote—up from 49%—and a majority of 19,777. That is in London—multicultural, multiracial, diverse London, which is the greatest global city in the world.

Labour did not do badly everywhere in the election. We did not lose the election in Scotland, but in England. [Interruption.] We lost it overall to the Conservatives in England. The Labour party has to win back a majority in England, but we will not do so by chasing an agenda that fails to recognise that globalisation is a fact, that immigration is a good thing and that, if the brightest and the best from Europe and elsewhere in the world wish to come, as they have for centuries, to live, work, contribute and study in our country, we should welcome them. There is no future for a party of the left in following a mean and nasty agenda.

There is also no future for the Labour party if we concentrate on a debate about the past. We must have a vision for the future, and we must talk about Britain’s place in the world—yes, our role on the Security Council, our role in the European Union, our links with the Commonwealth and our role as a global trading nation. However, foreign policy is more than that. We have a narrow, mercantilist Government, who believe that the role of the Foreign Office should be simply to boost trade with the BRICs—Brazil, Russia, India and China. The reality is that this country has a moral responsibility: we defined international standards in 1948, and British diplomats played a key role in establishing the United Nations and the universal declaration of human rights, so we should be at the forefront of trying to defend and strengthen those today.

Labour should be proud to be a global, internationalist party, and we as a country should be internationalist and open in our approach. I am delighted that UKIP got only 5% of the vote in my constituency, and I look forward to that being the case elsewhere in the country in years to come.