Britain and International Security

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I am laying out some of the case today. However, the Prime Minister has made it clear that we will not return to the House for parliamentary authority to conduct air strikes in Syria unless there is a sufficient consensus behind it. It may be that opinion in this Parliament is rather different from opinion in the previous Parliament. A number of things have changed, not least the attacks that have multiplied and the spread of ISIS itself.

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

The Secretary of State knows that in the absence of an effective Iraqi Government response, the people who have been fighting bravely on the ground are the Kurds—the peshmerga from the Kurdistan Regional Government. At the same time, Kurds in Syria have been fighting bravely against the same forces. Is it not the case that those Kurdish forces have been calling out for heavier weaponry and for military support from this country, as well as from other countries? Why are our Government not giving the Kurds the weaponry and the support that they need?

[Michael Fallon]

As I think the hon. Gentleman knows, we have supplied heavy machine guns to the Kurds. I have seen the training on those weapons for myself. As I have told the House, we are stepping up the counter-IED—improvised explosive device—training that we are offering to the Iraqi and the Kurdish forces. We are now doing that training in all four of the so-called building partner capacity centres.

Let me turn to the domestic front—

--- Later in debate ---

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

I add my voice to those of other Members who have said that it is time for all of us, including our national media, to start to categorise this organisation, which we are against in a wide-ranging international struggle, as what it is: a criminal caliphate; murderous monsters; homophobic horrors; and people who have nothing to do with a state.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

A death cult.

[Mike Gapes]

It is more than a death cult. It is worse than that, because its members are interested not just in themselves dying, but in trying to kill people of all faiths and none throughout the world. There can be no negotiation with such organisations, and that means we have to rethink—sadly—some approaches we have taken in recent years.

In Syria we also have to recognise, as we look back to a century ago, that the system of nation states established as a result of Sykes and Picot after world war one is coming under serious strain. The states that exist in the middle east, many drawn simply as lines on a map by British and French diplomats, are now seriously in question. Arab nationalism was for many years the dominant force in the region, but since the events of 2011—the so-called, misnamed Arab Spring—it is now questionable whether Humpty Dumpty can be put back together again.

In the past few days an embryonic Kurdish autonomous region, Rojava, in northern Syria next to the Turkish border, has come about. The town that was taken the other day, Tal Abyad, by the PYD/YPG, the Syrian Kurdish organisation, has for the first time given it a contiguous series of enclaves.

On the other side, since the justified and welcome decision by John Major’s Government to introduce a no-fly zone in northern Iraq, to protect the Kurds from the murderous Ba’athist, fascist regime of Saddam Hussein, we have had for many years the Kurdish regional Government, with their own flag and armed forces, the peshmerga. The Syrian Kurds and Iraqi Kurds have been fighting Daesh. They have had setbacks, lost many people, and been poorly equipped and outgunned by the most well funded and best armed terrorist organisation that has ever existed. That is mainly because the Iraqi army ran away and handed over American-donated weaponry, but it is not simply for that reason. It is also because that organisation pays people to join it. I heard a story the other day of people leaving republics of the former Soviet Union, having been recruited—young Muslim men, paid thousands of US dollars and recruited to that organisation.

Daesh has an appeal to some disaffected groups and, sadly, within our own society. There is the horrific story of the family of three generations from Luton, of Bangladeshi heritage, who on their way back from Bangladesh via Turkey have apparently disappeared. It is suggested that one of the women was influenced and radicalised, and the whole family—three generations, grandparents and young children, 12 people—have disappeared and are thought to be in Syria.

[Stephen Pound]

My hon. Friend rightly mentions the quality of the weaponry that the peshmerga and the Kurdish forces use. Is he aware of the statement they have just made, to the effect that they are fighting people who have the most modern American equipment while they have to use Soviet-era matériel? Does he feel that we in this country could do more to assist the people who are actually there, on the ground, fighting that murderous, brutal band, which he so accurately describes?

[Mike Gapes]

I agree entirely. That was the point of my intervention on the Secretary of State earlier.

The German Government have provided far more weaponry than we have to the KRG in Iraq, but the United States and our Government are still reluctant to directly provide weaponry. The Syrian Kurds may be getting some limited support, but because of Turkey’s concerns and Baghdad’s objections, the Kurds in Syria and in Iraq are not getting what they absolutely need. These are brave people, and they are putting themselves on the line in defence, in the case of the Iraqi Kurds, of a democratic, pluralistic society that welcomes those internally displaced from the rest of Iraq and refugees from Syria.

I, like the former Secretary of State for International Development, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), visited a refugee camp in Kurdistan in 2013. At that point there were only 250,000 Syrian Kurdish refugees inside the KRG. The KRG has a population of about 4 million, but now 1 million people have gone there to seek refuge and survive. They need humanitarian help, but they also need military assistance, which we should be giving directly to help the Iraqi Kurds in their existential fight against Daesh.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Tobias Ellwood)]

I was in Iraq on Friday. I had an opportunity to speak to the Deputy Prime Minister of Kurdistan, and we are upgrading our military contribution. We have to bear in mind that this is not a competition with NATO allies. We are working together on providing important assistance to the peshmerga, an incredible fighting force, but there are requests for Warsaw pact-calibre capabilities. We obviously provide NATO ones, and we have to be careful about what we provide them.

[Mike Gapes]

I look forward to seeing the details. No doubt, as a Select Committee member in future, I will be able to question the Minister on those matters more directly.

Libya is partly our creation. Members of this House overwhelmingly—I was one of those Members—supported military intervention in 2011 to stop the prospect of mass slaughter in Benghazi. An indirect consequence was the downfall of the Gaddafi regime. There was a democratic process and an election, but it all went wrong, and the weaponry that left Libya can now be found throughout north Africa. I saw that myself when I went to Mali.

Libya has played a major role in the destabilisation of democratic, pluralist, modern Tunisia, and the Egyptians are also facing concerns. We have a responsibility to deal with the situation in Libya and to eliminate the potential for Daesh to use it as a safe area. The former leader of the Scottish National party, the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond), was absolutely right to say that we need to look at Libya. I am not sure whether he was advocating military intervention, but that is one interpretation of what he said. I agree that if we are going to do something in Syria, we should also be considering how we can combat Daesh in Libya.

[Alex Salmond]

As the hon. Gentleman suspected, I was not arguing for military action. I was merely saying that, to justify any such action, we have to identify and be sure about who we are taking action against, and to justify giving support—I am sympathetic to his points about the Kurdish forces—we need to identify and be confident about the people we are supporting.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Gapes]

That is true, although we can never be certain about anything. As we have seen throughout history, Governments change from time to time and bad people come to power. I will not go down that route now, however.

We have major responsibilities, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) pointed out when he referred to our global reach and our international alliances. Major threats are going to arise in other parts of the world, and we need to maintain those alliances and work with our partners, whether in NATO or the European Union, or more globally through the United Nations system. We have responsibilities, and they include the responsibility to defend our country, our values, our ideas and the world system, because that is in our interests.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

Falkland Islands Defence Review

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

We would certainly like more air links to the Falklands. I shall obviously continue to discuss with my hon. Friends at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office what other opportunities or potential there is for different services to other territories to be jointly linked up.

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

The Secretary of State referred in a previous answer to the international context. Will he tell us what discussions the Government have recently had with Latin American countries and the United States about these issues, given the unwillingness of the US to support Britain with diplomacy in the past?

[Michael Fallon]

I am sure that Governments across the region have noted the results of the recent referendum in the Falkland Islands, and that they would respect the right of the Falkland islanders to determine their future. We do have discussions with other Governments in southern and Latin America. I very recently met the Foreign Minister of Brazil, and I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that this subject did not come up.

Defence and Security Review (NATO)

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

That is a significant point. It is true that, ultimately, the theoretical NATO capacity dwarfs that of Russia, but a lot of this stuff is extremely difficult to deploy; many nations are very reluctant to pay the money required to exercise; a lot of this money is absorbed in pension schemes; and our problem is that we are defending an enormous, multi-thousand-mile border, where Russia could, should it wish, cause trouble all the way from the Baltic to the Caucasus. We have to deal with that entire area, which may be very difficult to do, even with the 3.3 million troops we currently have in NATO.

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

The hon. Gentleman referred to Estonia. Clearly, under article 5 of the NATO treaty all the other 27 member states would have an obligation to respond to an armed attack on Estonia, but there is a level of ambiguity, given the hybrid warfare that the Russians are engaged in and have been engaged in—cyber-attacks and others. Given that Putin does not necessarily wish to invoke a major military conflict, how does NATO deal with those hybrid attacks?

[Rory Stewart]

The hybrid attacks are exactly what I was getting on to: the asymmetric and next-generation warfare attacks. As the Labour former Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee has just pointed out, the conventional attack is a low-probability, high-impact event. Much more probable is this asymmetric, hybrid warfare. In other words, we are more likely to find cyber-attacks of the kind we saw in Estonia in 2007, and separatists popping up claiming that they are being abused or that minority rights are being abused in places such as Narva, in eastern Estonia. As we saw, 45% of the Russian population of Latvia supported the Russian occupation of Crimea in a survey at that time. So what are we supposed to do? The answer is: it is really difficult and we absolutely need to raise our game in three areas. As has been indicated, those are cyber, information warfare and special forces operations.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage). I agree very much with what she has just said. There is broad cross-party agreement in the House about the importance of the NATO alliance, defence spending and Britain’s role in the world. There are of course a few Members—sadly, they are not in the Chamber for me to provoke—who would disagree. Some of them might be happy to appear, through Freeview, as a modern-day Lord Haw Haw on Russia Today or on other channels putting out Putin’s propaganda into everybody’s front room.

The Chairman of the Defence Committee, the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), referred to the BBC World Service. I absolutely agree that it is of fundamental importance, but there is a serious long-term threat to its future on the horizon. In the past few days, we have started to discuss possible changes to BBC funding arrangements. On 1 April 2014, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office transferred World Service funding to the BBC. No longer is there a grant from the FCO to fund the World Service. As a result, as we move towards the next settlement for the BBC, people might argue that they would rather spend money on reality television shows or sport than on BBC language services, which are an important part of our soft power and influence in the world. The House needs to revisit that question.

The issue was flagged up in Foreign Affairs Committee reports last year and again recently, and it should be part of the discussion of the defence and security review. There has to be a fundamental foreign policy and soft-power aspect to that review. The hon. Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson)—sadly, he is not in his place at the moment—made that point very well. We need joined-up Government and a joined-up approach to this matter. As with the review carried out after the 1997 election, in which Lord Robertson played an important role, I hope that we will have a serious, in-depth review after the coming general election, not one pushed through quickly by the Treasury for some other agenda. We need to look at Britain’s role in the world, our alliances, our involvement, our role on the Security Council of the UN, our partnership with others in Europe and so on.

In the time available, I want to concentrate on a few points. The first is that Putin has not suddenly come to behave very badly. If we look back at reports published by the Foreign Affairs Committee in 2007, we will recall that the British Ambassador in Moscow, Tony Brenton, was harassed and threatened by a group called Nashi, young supporters of Putin, and there was the murder with polonium of Alexander Litvinenko in London. Actually, there was a series of murders from 2002 onwards. A report today says that probably 12 people—some of whom have been prominent internationally, such as Sergei Magnitsky and Anna Politkovskaya—have died in mysterious circumstances, several of them having been shot in the street close to the Kremlin. The Putin regime has operated in that murky world, where the intelligence services have undertaken unattributable actions against the regime’s opponents internally and abroad. We are now seeing how they are behaving in Ukraine.

There is another aspect to the agenda of Putin’s regime: they are not just trying to get useful idiots in the west to pursue their agenda; they are bankrolling people who will undermine the cohesiveness the people they perceive as their opponents. A guy called Alexander Dugin, a far-right ideologue close to Putin, has organised conferences of Nazi, neo-Nazi and far-right groups in Moscow and elsewhere. Putin, via a Czech bank, has been bankrolling the National Front in France, and there is an agenda. People who are against the European Union or collective defence—Putin and those around him perceive such things to be a threat to his project—are supported. Great efforts were made to undermine the association agreement between Armenia and the European Union, and following that, similar efforts got greater opposition in Ukraine. Reference has already been made to attempts to provide financial assistance to countries that might take a different view within the European Union. Greece has been mentioned, but we can also look at loans that were given to Cyprus at a particular time. It is all part of trying to build influence and undermine perceived threats.

It is not just NATO that is seen to be a threat: entirely peaceful commercial relationships that countries might have with the European Union are also seen to be a threat to Putin’s world view, which is to create a Eurasian union and to try somehow to reconstitute elements of what used to exist in the Soviet Union. Why is that? Putin is on record as saying that the collapse and end of the Soviet Union was the “greatest geopolitical disaster” of the 20th century. Think about that. It was not the Nazi invasion of Russia, the Holocaust, or the tens of millions of people killed by Stalin. If he wished to criticise other countries he could have mentioned the dropping of nuclear weapons—there could have been all kinds of arguments. However, he said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest disaster of the 20th century, and that is the mindset we are dealing with.

After the drunken Yeltsin regime, we had illusions and thought that at last there was stability in Russia and that somehow there was someone we could do business with. Unfortunately not. The world we are facing today means that we can have no illusions, and I suspect it will be many years—potentially decades—before we can go back to the benign thoughts that we had when Mikhail Gorbachev was there and the Soviet Union was peacefully ended. Let us be clear: we must not recognise the seizure of territory, and just as we stood by the Baltic states and never recognised their seizure by the Soviet Union, so we must not accept the seizure of the territory of Ukraine.

Al-Sweady Inquiry Report

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

That is already part of the training that our servicemen and women now undergo, but the hon. Gentleman makes an important point. The House should wonder whether the Taliban or ISIL would rush to provide bottled water before they were asked to do so if they had British detainees in their custody, or indeed if those detainees had survived to be in their custody.

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

The Secretary of State said that the cost of the public inquiry was £31 million, but that of course is not the total cost. Can he give us a figure for the total cost, including the costs before the public inquiry? Does this come out of the MOD’s budget or the Ministry of Justice’s budget? How many ships, planes and service personnel have we lost as a result of those firms taking this money?

[Michael Fallon]

I cannot give the hon. Gentleman the figures for the earlier costs. The figure of £31 million is specifically for the public inquiry. As he said, that is a huge and unacceptable amount. It comes directly from the defence budget and he is right—it could otherwise have been spent on providing more equipment for our troops and on many other things that people might have regarded as having a higher priority.

UK Armed Forces (Iraq)

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I agree with both my hon. Friend and the President of Iraq, in no particular order. The President of Iraq himself has said that he does not want British or any other foreign combat troops involved, which is why we need to make it absolutely clear that we are not proposing to return combat troops to Iraq. The effort that we are making is relatively small-scale and should be seen alongside the contributions being promised by others, including the Germans, the Spanish, the Danes, the Italians, the Australians and the New Zealanders, all of whom are considering what effort they can make to help with training and equipment.

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

Does the Secretary of State agree that if we are to defeat this ISIL criminal caliphate cult, or Daesh, it will have to be done not just in Iraq but in its headquarters and heartlands in Syria? What is the international coalition of 40 countries to which he referred going to do about that?

[Michael Fallon]

The hon. Gentleman, who has some experience of these matters through his chairmanship of the Foreign Affairs Committee, is right that in the end ISIL can be defeated only if it is defeated in both countries, Syria and Iraq. That is why we welcome the strikes that other members of the international coalition, including the United States but also our allies in the Gulf, have undertaken against ISIL, particularly in the north of Syria. That helps to disrupt ISIL’s supply lines into Iraq. Our part—it is all that the House will allow us to do at the moment—is in Iraq, but we have plenty to do there through airstrikes, surveillance, the supply of equipment and the consideration that we are now undertaking of further training.

Afghanistan

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, and he is right that there is occasional criticism of the Ministry, but I will be delighted to pass on his congratulations. This was a huge logistical exercise, and there were many who told us at the time that it simply could not be done and the matériel would not be brought out safely—that the convoys would be attacked and the lines interdicted and so on—but that did not happen. That is in very large part due to the skill, commitment and professionalism of the planners and logisticians, as well as to civil servants in my Ministry, who sometimes do not get the praise we rightly accord, of course, in the first place, to our combat troops.

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

May I add my voice to that of the Secretary of State concerning the appalling terrorist attack today? Does he agree that this shows that it is not just our military but many civilians and locally engaged people and people in the various private security organisations who put their lives at risk in trying to help the people of Afghanistan, and that we should recognise that this is a threat not just in Afghanistan, but throughout the world?

[Michael Fallon]

I certainly endorse that. A huge number of people have been helping in the effort to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan—as the hon. Gentleman says, civil contractors, locally employed staff and others—and it is right that we acknowledge not simply their commitment, but the fact that they, too, have been willing to put themselves in harm’s way to work for a better future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Not all the Governments of our key allies in the middle east have such an understanding of the democratic process as we do. It is very clear to us in this country that it is not for us to comment on who should be the Prime Minister of a country following a democratic election. It is clear that the Government of Iraq need to be inclusive, and in direct answer to my hon. Friend it would be fair to say that there is a range of different views among middle east countries about the appropriateness of various individuals to lead such an inclusive Government.

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

Twenty years ago, John Major’s Government supported the Kurds and quite rightly protected them against Saddam, while Tony Blair’s Government did the same. Is it not now time for the British Government to recognise that the Kurdish region of Iraq, which is democratic, pluralistic and inclusive, needs support to defend itself against al-Qaeda-linked terrorism, and to support the pluralism and democracy that will grow from that region into the rest of Iraq?

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman will know that the Foreign Secretary went to Erbil on his recent visit to Iraq. The British Government’s position is clear: we need to keep Iraq as a unified state. The one thing that I heard in every one of the capitals I visited in the Gulf is that Iraq needs to remain a unified state. We should devote our efforts to trying to achieve that outcome—a unified state with a pluralistic Government.

Afghanistan

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I am very happy to join my hon. Friend in praising the unstinting work that 3 Mercian has done. I can remember, long before I came into this job, listening to those reports on our televisions every night and thinking that the Mercian Regiment seemed to suffer a disproportionate number of casualties. It has given a great deal to this campaign, and the nation will remain profoundly grateful to it.

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

The Secretary of State referred to the porous nature of the border with Pakistan. Is there any prospect that a newly elected leadership in Afghanistan—perhaps disputedly elected, as last time—will be any more likely to recognise the Durand line as an international border, or will we have this continuing problem of the open, free movement of terrorists from either side to the other?

[Mr Hammond]

I do not claim to be an expert on the complexities of Afghan politics, but it would probably be suicidal for any elected Afghan politician to recognise the Durand line, which the Afghan people do not recognise as a fair definition of the boundary of their country. Having said that, it is not disputes over the Durand line that make the border porous; it is the nature of the terrain, which is just about the most inhospitable it is possible to imagine. Flying over it, the only thought in one’s mind is: “How on earth could anybody possibly live, let alone move around, in this kind of territory?”, but those who wish to, manage to.

Deployment to Mali

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and I agree with the sentiments that he expressed. The Prime Minister has made it clear that we have no intention of entering a combat role in Mali. The French have taken the lead and supporting them is the sensible and the right thing to do.

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

Thirteen years ago I went to Sierra Leone with the Defence Committee and saw British troops and Gurkhas training the Sierra Leonean armed forces. I am therefore very pleased that Sierra Leone is one of the countries that is prepared to take on the African mission, but does not this raise a wider question of long-term co-operation between the European Union and the African Union to make sure that we do not have to have ad hoc intervention forces, which might take a year or maybe longer to establish, but that when necessary we can intervene to preserve democracy and defend people against extremism?

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely good point. The EU training mission in Somalia and the support arrangements for the African Union intervention in Somalia have come to work very well, but they took a while to get together at the beginning. Now we are embarking on a new activity on the other side of the continent and we are starting from scratch again. His point is well made. Is there a mechanism by which we can create some standing apparatus to ensure that when the need arises for local or regional intervention, supported by outside expertise and resources, we can provide it quickly and effectively? I am happy to pass on those thoughts to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary.

Nuclear Deterrent

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Nick Harvey]

The truth of the matter is that none of us knows. If we retain a nuclear deterrent of any description and any scale, it is an insurance policy against the unknown. I am saying that the current nuclear deterrent is scaled specifically to overcome the threat that we believed the Soviet Union posed in 1980. As we look to an unknown future over the course of this century, we have to decide what proportion of our defence spend and effort should go into this one part of our defence livery, and the opportunity cost of doing that.

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

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if we move to some form of cruise missile-based nuclear weapons system, that would be destabilising internationally and positively dangerous?

[Sir Nick Harvey]

I am waiting for the Trident alternatives review, which is being conducted by the Cabinet Office and is looking at exactly those sorts of issues. When it reports, I look forward to coming back and debating them with the hon. Gentleman. As a considered study of exactly these sorts of issues is nearing its conclusion at the moment, the time to debate those details will be when the report has been published.

I want to look at the pressures that will face Defence Ministers in the years when the large capital expenditure that I have described would have to be spent. In the same period of time, we will have to put the joint strike fighter aircraft on to the two new aircraft carriers and build the Type 26 frigate. Whatever the next generation of remotely piloted air systems and whoever we do that with, it will fall in the same time frame. Bearing in mind that HMS Ocean is due to leave service in 2018, any future generation of amphibious shipping will have to be paid for in exactly that time frame; and whatever we equip the Army with for the 21st century—it has been the poor relation in the equipment budget for many years—and bearing in mind how little seems to be left of the original future rapid effect system, as conceived by the previous Government, again, it will fall in that time frame. If we decide to give the nuclear deterrent a bye and think it has some magic claim on the money, an opportunity cost will have to be paid across the rest of our defence systems.

I listened to my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) talking quite rightly about the part that Plymouth plays in the nuclear deterrent, but I put it to her and my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) that if we commit all our money to one system, the opportunity cost will be felt above all else by the Royal Navy. The Royal Navy might fight—and win—to keep the nuclear deterrent on its current scale, but the price will be paid in the scale of the conventional surface Navy, which, in my view, is already trying to do far too much with far too little.

The UK has a sensible range of military capabilities at the moment, and with that we can take part in international operations. We have global interests and ambitions, and uniquely we have the will to use military power when we need to in pursuit of those interests. Ours is still the fourth largest defence budget in the world. Our place on the top table does not depend on our being a nuclear power; we are there in our own right, and besides which any change to the line-up of the UN Security Council would require the UK’s assent, which we could simply withhold.

We must make a contribution to disarmament. That is an obligation we have under the non-proliferation treaty. We must wait and see whether the Trident alternatives review can find another system that offers us a way of sustaining a credible deterrent. It would not have the same capability, but there might be a way of doing something at a lesser cost. We should keep an open mind about trying to do that.

--- Later in debate ---

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

Reference was made earlier in the debate to the period of the Reagan-Gorbachev Administrations. General Secretary Gorbachev in the 1980s called for a nuclear-free world by 2000. Remember that? Of course, the Soviet Union ended and the world we live in, as many speakers have commented, is much more complicated now than it was at that time. None of us knows where we will be in 30 or 40 years, and the decisions that are to be taken make assumptions about a future that we cannot predict.

We have heard references in the debate also to the continuation of NATO. I am a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. I have serious doubts whether in the next 20 or 30 years the United States will give Europe a global commitment of extended deterrence in the way it did at the height of the cold war.

Nobody has so far mentioned China in the debate. China is modernising its military assets significantly. It has nuclear weapons. At some point this century it will become a global power with projection all round the world, not just within its own coasts and the seas off its coasts.

If we are looking at the future of the world, I do not think any of us can be very confident about what the outcome will be. What we do know is that the non-proliferation regime is under serious threat, not just from countries such as North Korea, which have left the NPT, but from countries that are still within the NPT, such as Iran, and other countries that will follow any decision to weaponise a nuclear capability by the Iranians at some point. In 15 or 20 years’ time, there could be 10, 15 or 20 more countries with nuclear weapons. The world that we are going into requires international action. My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) mentioned the Labour party’s policy review in 1989. I was the secretary of that review, which changed our policy to deal with the realities that we were confronting at that time rather than the debate that had gone on theologically in the past.

We now need to make renewed efforts, and I wish the Minister and shadow Front Benchers would talk a little more about what role we can play with our nuclear weapons in facilitating new international disarmament negotiations, because they are not happening now. Despite President Obama’s Prague speech in 2009, the vision of a nuclear-free world is blocked because the Russians are not interested so long as missile defence is on the agenda. There is the danger of a proliferation of warheads to overcome missile defence if it is ever deployed. I conclude there to give others a chance.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Mr Corbyn, I think you know that that is not a point of order either, particularly seeing as the Backbench Business Committee’s determination of business in the House is not a matter for the Chair. I am sure that when the Committee reads Hansard, it will take his remarks as an early bid, particularly if he has greater support for such a debate.

[Mike Gapes]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Given that the Government will publish—at least internally—and consider their review on the alternatives to Trident, perhaps the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne), who is in his place, will give the House a commitment that we will have the chance to debate the review in this House very soon.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Well, Mr Gapes, perhaps the Minister could do that, but I do not think he will. That is not a point of order. I would like to make progress with business, because I am sure there are not any other relevant or pertinent points of order to take this afternoon.