European Council

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. With extremism that leads to terrorism, whatever the source, we see that people are trying to divide us in this country. That is why the response to all the terrorist attacks that have taken place in recent months—there being different reasons for those attacks having taken place, of course—has been one of unity and unity of purpose of British citizens to ensure that we drive out this hatred from our country. That is so important. In the discussions, we focused on the internet and in particular the industry-led forum, the setting up of which we and others have been discussing with tech companies. We want to see automatic technological solutions for the removal of material from the internet, because at the moment the process of removing extremist material is too slow and allows too many minds to be infiltrated before it is taken down. We want to see the automatic removal of that material.

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

The Prime Minister has made clear her hostility to the European Court of Justice. What will happen to British citizens living in other EU countries if they are not protected by the Court? Will they become citizens of nowhere?

[The Prime Minister]

As regards the jurisdiction of courts in the United Kingdom, I have made it clear that we should not be subject to the European Court of Justice and that EU citizens’ rights here should be protected in a different way. I believe that one of the things that people voted for when they voted to leave the European Union was for the ECJ not to have jurisdiction here in the United Kingdom.

Northern Ireland

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

That is not part of the agreement, so it is not directly relevant to my statement today, but I am sure that the House will have heard my hon. Friend and will no doubt wish to discuss those matters further.

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

The First Secretary of State said that the funding would go to a restored Northern Ireland Executive. If the Northern Ireland Executive are not restored, will the money still go there, or not until the Executive are restored?

[Damian Green]

At this stage, with three days to go before the deadline, the sensible thing for me to point out is that the Conservative party is completely committed to getting the Executive re-established, as is the Democratic Unionist party. We both believe that decisions about the funding of public services in Northern Ireland should be taken by politicians in Northern Ireland. That is the logic of the devolution settlement that we have with the other countries in the United Kingdom, and that is the position we want to get back to in Northern Ireland as well.

European Council

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I think we can be reassured that the votes that took place in this House and in the House of Lords last night and the granting of Royal Assent to the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill will send a clear message to everybody in Europe that we mean business.

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

The practice and experience in complex negotiations, such as in Northern Ireland, is that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. Does the Prime Minister agree that that will be the case here? If so, and given that she said that no deal is preferable to a bad deal, how can British citizens living in EU countries or EU citizens living in the UK believe that there will be any resolution of the uncertainty?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman cites experience as the model for what will happen in our negotiations, but I do not look at these matters in that way. When we invoke article 50, we will start those negotiations, and we have already been in discussions with other European leaders about the importance of reassuring UK citizens living in the 27 member states and EU citizens living here on their status and their future. As I have said in answer to several questions, including one from the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), I believe that there is genuine good will on both sides on this issue, and that is why I want it to be an early part of the negotiations.

Informal European Council

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I remember as a Back Bencher in Department of Trade and Industry questions that the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) had No. 1, and I rather irreverently called out, “Get in there, Gapes.” Now is his opportunity. I call Mr Mike Gapes.

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

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Prime Minister has referred to her meeting with President Trump, but she has not mentioned her meeting with President Erdogan. Did she take the opportunity to inform other European Union leaders about those discussions, the 3 million Syrian refugees that Turkey is having to take and the support, or lack of it, that President Erdogan feels has come from the EU so far? Did she also discuss with them the customs union, of which Turkey is a member?

[The Prime Minister]

As we were discussing the issue of migration, I was able to make reference to the EU-Turkey deal—indeed, a number of references were made to it—which has seen the number of migrants moving from Turkey to Greece being reduced significantly. When I was in Turkey, I commended the Turkish Government for the support that they have given to the 3 million refugees who are in Turkey.

European Council 2016

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We should be proud of the fact that in this country we spend 2% on defence and 0.7% on international aid. That is recognised not just across the EU, but internationally, and it often enables us as the United Kingdom to take the lead on a number of these issues. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: from everything we saw—from the position and role the UK has played in European Council discussions—it is clear people will want to continue to have a good relationship with the UK, and that puts us in a good place for getting the right deal.

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

I congratulate the French and British diplomats in New York who got the Security Council resolution today, but is the Prime Minister aware that the Assad regime’s representative immediately denounced it? It is quite clear that the Syrian Government are not going to be happy about this. Will she take practical steps to ensure the resolution is actually implemented, and particularly to protect those people who are witnesses to crime and those who, like the White Helmets, have been so brave in east Aleppo but now could be at risk from Hezbollah, Iranian militias or the Assad regime?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to congratulate UK and French diplomats, who worked very hard to make sure this resolution would be accepted by the Security Council. We now have to ensure it is put into practice. He refers to the evidence of crime, and we have been taking action to make sure people are equipped and trained to gather evidence of crimes that have taken place, so that they can be properly investigated.

Chilcot Inquiry and Parliamentary Accountability

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Skidmore]

The hon. Gentleman is right that there are lessons for modern-day conflicts. I hope that this debate will give Members the opportunity to put their views across on which lessons should be learned. We had three days of debate on the Chilcot report itself, and I hope that we can move forward by coming up with proactive, positive recommendations.

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

The Minister mentioned the establishment of the National Security Council as one thing that followed from the situation in Iraq. I draw to his attention the recent report of the Foreign Affairs Committee on events in Libya in which we were critical of Prime Minister David Cameron’s failure to use the NSC properly and of the lack of detailed input into the situation in Libya, that was considered by the Government at that time.

[Chris Skidmore]

The hon. Gentleman has put his comments on the record. I understand that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will formally respond to the Committee’s recommendations, so I will leave it at that.

The National Security Council is a dedicated, standing Cabinet Committee that meets regularly at both ministerial and senior official level and has the right range of information to take forward informed decisions and to hold collective responsibility at the highest level. It provides collective strategic leadership on national security and crisis situations, with a built-in challenge function, making clear recommendations to Cabinet on military interventions, and formally recording both decisions and operational actions. The Attorney General attended the NSC regularly until April 2016, when he became a full member, and formal written legal advice is now provided and discussed at relevant NSC meetings and presented to Cabinet before any decisions on military intervention are taken.

The Government have integrated their overarching strategic approach with pragmatic, costed delivery mechanisms, including for military equipment, in a national security strategy, and strategic defence and security review, which is refreshed and adjusted in the light of developments every parliamentary term. The SDSR and refreshment of the national security strategy in 2015 brought this work together in a single integrated document. Cross-Whitehall working continues to improve, with creative policy making designed and delivered collectively across national security Departments and agencies to ensure that we understand, as far as is possible in dynamic and evolving threatening situations, what we want to achieve, and the implications for and impacts on ourselves and others. In support of this work, we set up joint units and taskforces where issues cut across several departmental responsibilities.

The Government are committed to understanding and acting on the important lessons drawn by Sir John Chilcot and his colleagues, but we recognise the need to continue to improve, whether working across the national security community or the wider civil service, hence the importance being given by the collective senior leadership to civil service reform and learning.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts) on an outstanding maiden speech. I have a history of sometimes disagreeing with hon. Members from Witney, but on this occasion it was fantastic to be able to nod in agreement and pleasure at every remark he made. He has got off to a tremendous start in this House, and I am sure he can tell from the reactions of Members on both sides of the House the good wishes that flow to him today. Make the most of it!

I welcome the fact that Scottish National party Members and other parties’ Members have chosen to bring forward this subject for debate today. I speak as somebody who voted and spoke in favour of toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003 and who has come to believe that that was entirely the wrong decision to take. It is therefore with a degree of humility that I address the two reasons that I voted and spoke in the way I did: first, because I believed what I was told about weapons of mass destruction; and, secondly, because I had a naive view that if Saddam Hussein were removed we might see something like the emergence of democracy in Iraq—and of course we saw nothing of the kind.

[Mike Gapes]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dr Lewis]

I will, but I am conscious of the informal time limit we have been given.

[Mike Gapes]

I am extremely grateful. Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that if Saddam Hussein had not been removed, it is very likely that his son Uday, or someone else of a similar nature, would have inherited, and that the problems we have seen writ large in Syria since 2011 would have been even worse in Iraq?

[Dr Lewis]

I accept the first part of what the hon. Gentleman says. It is highly probable that if Saddam Hussein had not been removed, things would have gone on in Iraq in the brutal, dictatorial way in which they had gone on previously. The problem is, as we have learned from what happened in Iraq and in Libya, that one can remove these brutal dictators, but instead of seeing democracy emerge one sees re-emerging a deadly conflict, going back more than 1,000 years, between different branches of the Islamic faith. The hon. Gentleman knows my view on this because, as I hope he remembers, in the arguments we had when the same proposition was put forward to deal with President Assad as we had dealt with Saddam Hussein, I made the same argument then as I make now—that in a choice between a brutal, repressive dictator and the alternative of a totalitarian Islamist state, I am afraid that the brutal dictator is the lesser of two evils. If we have not learned that from what happened in Iraq, then we truly have not learned any lessons from Iraq at all.

At the Liaison Committee meeting on 2 November, we had the opportunity to speak to Sir John Chilcot in person and to ask him directly to interpret the results of his own inquiries. I was particularly struck by the fact that of the two arguments I mentioned earlier—the one about the weapons of mass destruction and the one about the naive belief that democracy would emerge if we got rid of the brutal dictator—he was more censorious on the latter than on the former. He said that if the Prime Minister of the day had not exaggerated the certainty of his claims about weapons of mass destruction it would have been completely clear that he had not misled the House in any way. Sir John said:

“Exaggeration—placing more weight on the intelligence than it could possibly bear—is a conclusion that we reached on the Butler committee and reached again with even more evidence in the Iraq inquiry.”

He went on to say something rather curious. I put it to him that one argument that I had found convincing was when Mr Blair had said that there was a real danger of the weapons of mass destruction that were believed to exist in the hands of dictators getting into the hands of terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda. Sir John went on to say:

“On the other hand, I do not know that, in putting forward the fusion argument, Mr Blair related it very directly and specifically to Saddam passing weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups.”

I was surprised that Sir John made that statement. In the debate in March 2003, Tony Blair had said that

“there are two begetters of chaos: tyrannical regimes with weapons of mass destruction and extreme terrorist groups who profess a perverted and false view of Islam…Those two threats have, of course, different motives and different origins, but they share one basic common view: they detest the freedom, democracy and tolerance that are the hallmarks of our way of life. At the moment, I accept fully that the association between the two is loose—but it is hardening. The possibility of the two coming together”—

that, I think, is what Sir John meant by fusion—

“of terrorist groups in possession of weapons of mass destruction or even of a so-called dirty radiological bomb—is now, in my judgment, a real and present danger”.—[Official Report, 18 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 768.]

We discussed in the debate on the Chilcot report the fact that there were plenty of references in the documents of the Joint Intelligence Committee and other intelligence organisations to the intelligence services’ real belief that Saddam still retained some weapons of mass destruction. I share Sir John’s conclusion that Tony Blair was guilty of exaggeration of the certainty with which knowledge was held about Saddam’s supposed possession of WMD, but that he was not guilty of lying to the House about that belief.

I have real concern with regard to the second argument, and it is on that argument that I believe the then Prime Minister Tony Blair will be held to have rather seriously misled the House. I revert to my exchange with Sir John Chilcot on 2 November, in which I said to him:

“I would like you to tell us to what extent Mr Blair was warned of the danger that, far from democracy emerging, Sunni-Shi’a religious strife would follow the removal of the secular dictator, who gave these warnings, and how and why they were ignored. In particular, I would just quote back to you a briefing note from your report which Mr Blair himself sent in January 2003 to President Bush.”

I ask the House to pay particular attention to this note, which Mr Blair sent to President Bush before the war began. The quote is as follows:

“The biggest risk we face is internecine fighting between all the rival groups, religions, tribes, etc. in Iraq when the military strike destabilises the regime. They are perfectly capable, on previous form, of killing each other in large numbers.”

I put this to Sir John:

“Mr Blair knew that and he said it to President Bush, so why did he ignore that terrible possibility that he himself apparently recognised?”

This is Sir John’s reply:

“I cannot give you the answer as to why. You would have to ask him. But what is clear from all the evidence we have collected is that this risk and other associated risks of instability and collapse were clearly identified and available to Ministers and to Mr Blair before the invasion. I can cite all sorts of points, but you will not want me to go into that detail now. It is in the report.

There were other signals, too, from other quarters. Our ambassador in Cairo, for example, was able to report that the Egyptian President had said that Iraq was at risk—it was populated by people who were extremely fond of killing each other, and destabilisation would bring that about.”

UK's Nuclear Deterrent

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I say that it is not a choice. This country needs to recognise that it faces a variety of threats and ensure that we have the capabilities that are necessary and appropriate to deal with each of them. As the Home Secretary has just made clear in response to questions on her statement, the Government are committed to extra funding and extra resource going to, for example, counter-terrorism policing and the security and intelligence agencies as they face the terrorist threat, but what we are talking about today is the necessity for us to have a nuclear deterrent, which has been an insurance policy for this country for nearly 50 years and I believe that it should remain so.

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

rose—

[The Prime Minister]

I would like to make a little progress before I take more interventions.

I know that there are a number of serious and very important questions at the heart of this debate, and I want to address them all this afternoon. First, in the light of the evolving nature of the threats that we face, is a nuclear deterrent really still necessary and essential? Secondly, is the cost of our deterrent too great? Thirdly, is building four submarines the right way of maintaining our deterrent? Fourthly, could we not rely on our nuclear-armed allies, such as America and France, to provide our deterrent instead? Fifthly, do we not have a moral duty to lead the world in nuclear disarmament, rather than maintaining our own deterrent? I will take each of those questions in turn.

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and for the support that he and his colleagues will show tonight.

[Mike Gapes]

I congratulate the right hon. Lady on becoming Prime Minister. Will she confirm that, when the Labour Government of Clement Attlee took the decision to have nuclear weapons, they had to do so in a very dangerous world, and that successive Labour Governments kept those nuclear weapons because there was a dangerous world? Is it not the case that now is also a dangerous time?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Of course, the last Labour Government held votes in this House on the retention of the nuclear deterrent. It is a great pity that there are Members on the Labour Front Bench who fail to see the necessity of the nuclear deterrent, given that in the past the Labour party has put the British national interest first when looking at the issue.

I want to set out for the House why our nuclear deterrent remains as necessary and essential today as it was when we first established it. The nuclear threat has not gone away; if anything, it has increased.

First, there is the threat from existing nuclear states such as Russia. We know that President Putin is upgrading his nuclear forces. In the past two years, there has been a disturbing increase in both Russian rhetoric about the use of nuclear weapons and the frequency of snap nuclear exercises. As we have seen with the illegal annexation of Crimea, there is no doubt about President Putin’s willingness to undermine the rules-based international system in order to advance his own interests. He has already threatened to base nuclear forces in Crimea and in Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave on the Baltic sea that neighbours Poland and Lithuania.

Secondly, there is the threat from countries that wish to acquire nuclear capabilities illegally. North Korea has stated a clear intent to develop and deploy a nuclear weapon, and it continues to work towards that goal, in flagrant violation of a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions.

--- Later in debate ---

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

My hon. Friends the Members for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) and for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) referred to their mothers, who were at Greenham common. So was I. I did not meet their mothers, or at least not as far as I am aware, but there were tens of thousands of us who protested against nuclear weapons and the decision on the Cruise missiles, the Pershings and the SS20s. CND had hundreds of thousands on demonstrations. At that time many people believed that we faced the possible advent of a nuclear war. There was real fear in society.

The leader of the Labour party, Michael Foot, has been compared in some debates with our current leader. I worked for and with Michael Foot. He was a great patriotic anti-Fascist. He stood up to the generals—the junta that took over the Falkland Islands—and he spoke in this House on a Saturday morning and made the case for why we had to liberate the Falklands from Fascism. I believe that Michael Foot tried his very best to unite the Labour party, even though he had divisions in his shadow Cabinet. He would not have taken the position that is being taken today by the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn).

Michael Foot strove for international agreement and he worked for disarmament, but I and many others who were parliamentary candidates in 1983 know that we went into that election with what became known as “the longest suicide note in history”. In Ilford North where I was the candidate, the Labour vote almost halved and I only just kept second place from going to the new Social Democratic party. The Conservatives were rampant.

Afterwards, I was working in the party’s headquarters on the defence policy. We tried to square the circle by producing a policy document called “Defence and Security for Britain”. It had a Union Jack on the cover. We emphasised strong conventional defence. We called for a defence diversification agency, and we thought that that would be sufficient under Neil Kinnock, our leader, to do much better in 1987. We did do better, but defence policy was still a factor in our losing in 1987. So we had a policy review, which included visiting Moscow, which we did in 1989. Gorbachev was talking about a nuclear-free world by 2000. In that context the Labour party shifted its policy towards one of independent steps, but within a global multilateral framework.

That policy was denounced by the historian E. P. Thompson. I do not have time today to elaborate on this, but I will write about it. In 1989 he denounced the Labour party for going back on its unilateralist position. I wrote in the CND magazine, “What is this unilateralism? Is it a tactic to get something better or is it a quasi-religious totem for left-wing atheists?” I stand by that description of some of the views that we hear today. It has become a quasi-religious totem, rather than a practical means to take measures that bring about real and profound international change. That is why I will be voting for the Government’s motion this evening.

Report of the Iraq Inquiry

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Of course it is right that the people who took the decision have to bear the responsibility. That is absolutely right.

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

I voted for the action in 2003. It was a difficult decision, but I do not apologise. I believe that we were right to remove the fascist regime of Saddam Hussein. The Prime Minister referred to what has happened in Libya and Syria. Can he speculate about what might have happened in Iraq if Saddam or Uday Hussein had been in power in 2011? Is it not likely that the Ba’athist fascists in Iraq would have killed more than the 500,000 dead Syrians and created more than the 11 million refugees who have fled their homes and been displaced in Syria?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman asks a question that it is impossible to answer. I can say only that just as there are consequences of intervention, there are consequences of non-intervention. We have discovered that with Syria, where there have been appalling numbers of deaths and displacements of people, along with the booming industry of terrorism. One could argue in many ways that that is the consequence of non-intervention rather than intervention, but I cannot answer his question.

Outcome of the EU Referendum

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for his kind remarks and for the spirit in which they were given.

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

The Prime Minister said that there is now collective Government and Cabinet responsibility. In that context, will he say on behalf of the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) and the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) that we will have a vote in this House before article 50 is triggered?

[The Prime Minister]

First, on a technical issue, my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) is not a member of the Government—an important point. To answer the hon. Gentleman’s question directly, I cannot give that guarantee. The decision to trigger article 50 will be for the next Prime Minister and Cabinet, and the arrangements that are put in place must be for them to decide.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[John Penrose]

I am intrigued that the hon. Lady thinks she knows what has happened to individual constituencies’ electoral rolls, because the final versions will not be published for another week or 10 days. Whatever the outcome of that publication, it cannot be right that we carry on with the existing political constituency boundaries, which are based on the electoral rolls from 2001 or, in some parts of the country, from 2000. They are shockingly out of date and we absolutely need to update them. I can, however, reassure her that there will be updates every five years, rather than every 10, and that constituency boundaries will be more up to date and accurate than they have been in the past.

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

7. Whether the agreements reached at the anti-corruption summit in May 2016 will be applied to other countries.

[The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Matthew Hancock)]

This Government and this Prime Minister have taken a global lead on tackling the scourge of corruption. Each delegation at the anti-corruption summit signed up to the commitments set out in the communiqué. In addition, 42 countries and eight international organisations issued statements setting out further measures that they will take.

[Mike Gapes]

In April 2014, the Prime Minister said:

“I believe that beneficial ownership and public access to a central register is key to improving the transparency of company ownership and vital to meeting the urgent challenges of illicit finance and tax evasion.”

Will the Minister explain why the Government are no longer calling for public registers of beneficial ownership in the British overseas territories?

[Matthew Hancock]

We are calling for them. The Prime Minister was absolutely right then, and we are delivering on that now. Later this month we will publish the beneficial ownership register for the UK. All the overseas territories have signed up to beneficial ownership registers, and we urge them to make them public.