NATO

Debate between Mike Gapes and Jeremy Corbyn

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Of course piracy off the coast of Somalia is not a good thing. Instability in Somalia is very bad, but surely one solves that problem by political support for changes in Somalia—to some extent that is happening and considerable changes are taking place. I sometimes get the feeling that NATO spent the 1990s and early 2000s looking for something to do, and that it was more than pleased to get involved in Afghanistan and present itself as the armed wing of the United Nations. It may be that the UN should have its own force, and that is a matter for consideration and debate. However, when NATO calls itself the arm of the UN, what does that say to countries that are not in or aligned to NATO, or indeed are deeply suspicious of NATO and its activities? Members who talk about NATO as being the effective arm of the UN should think carefully about the implications of what they are saying.

The costs of NATO membership are considerable—probably far greater than those of membership of the European Union, which seems to excite massive debate on the Government Benches. NATO requires 2% of our gross national product to be spent on defence, and Members complain that other countries do not meet those demands. Presumably, NATO membership requires a level of expenditure that many countries simply cannot afford, yet they are required to make that expenditure and, for the most part, to buy those arms from the United States or approved suppliers that produce NATO-issue equipment. We must think far more seriously about why we are in NATO and what it is achieving.

Let us consider Afghanistan from 2001 onwards. Yes, 9/11 was a dreadful event and an act of murder against civilians, but was it an appropriate response to invade Afghanistan? Twelve years later, 400 British soldiers, a larger number of American soldiers, and a very much larger number of Afghan civilians, and others, are dead. Drone aircraft are operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and there is a real threat to the civil liberties of everyone in the world from Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary rendition and anti-terror legislation. That has not made the world a safer or more secure place.

[Mike Gapes]

Does my hon. Friend accept that in 2001, an estimated 10,000 terrorists came out of training camps in Afghanistan from areas that the state had effectively handed over for al-Qaeda to operate in? Was there not a need to protect communities around the world by removing those terrorist bases from Afghanistan?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I question the figure of 10,000 and I would take my Friend back a little further. In 1979, Soviet support for the then Afghan Government provoked a massive US response and arming of the mujaheddin in Afghanistan. Massive amounts of US money went into Afghanistan from 1979 onwards and—hey presto!—the Taliban were formed with US weapons. Al-Qaeda was founded by US trainers. What goes around comes around and we should think more carefully about instant information and instant sending of vast amounts of weapons to opposition groups. The same may happen if we decide to send arms to one group in Syria. Where will those arms end up? A little bit of historical analysis might be helpful.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Gapes]

I am grateful for that intervention.

Let me turn to some of the other issues that have been raised. An important point was made about the internet and cyber-warfare. NATO has a facility in Estonia—I have visited it with the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs and I know that the NATO Parliamentary Assembly has also visited it—to bring together best practice for dealing with cyber-warfare. As we have seen from the media headlines in the last few days, we will face significant challenges, not just from states but, I suspect, over the coming decades from private interests and private companies spying and stealing data and commercially sensitive material. We also know of reports—I am not in a position to say whether they are true—that the Iranian nuclear weapons programme was seriously set back because of the activities of some countries and the so-called Stuxnet, and there are other areas where these matters are also of great importance.

International security is enhanced by co-operation, not just in hardware and personnel but in intelligence and security sharing. We need to be honest: these are not issues that can be dealt with by simplistic headlines in The Guardian or any other newspaper. They have to be looked at seriously. There needs to be international co-operation to deal with threats to our security, which might come not from terrorist bombs but from somebody sabotaging a banking system or undermining the supply of electricity or water to our major cities by making a minor change to a software programme, albeit one with potentially disastrous consequences. We need to look at those issues. I believe that NATO has a role in that respect.

My final point relates to the United States, which has already been referred to several times. We have heard about the so-called pivot towards Asia, President Obama’s strategy of leading from behind and all the other concerns that we have as Europeans. The NATO Parliamentary Assembly provides one of the few forums for members of the US House of Representatives and the Canadian Parliament to come to meetings at which we can have regular discussions with them. Sadly, given the nature of the insane political system in the United States and two-year elections to the House of Representatives, it is difficult for its members to get abroad very often, because they have to spend all their time raising election campaign money or fighting re-elections, normally in their primaries.

The NATO Parliamentary Assembly is important, because it means that there is a group of Americans from the Republicans and the Democrats who have had contact with and learnt about European politics. In the same way, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly provides a way for people from European countries to understand the politics of other countries better. The current President of Turkey, Abdullah Gul, was a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly for many years. I am sure that that was important, given that he comes from the AK party, which comes out of an Islamist tradition. He has clearly learnt a great deal and built confidence and understanding with other European parliamentarians and those from across the Atlantic.

The forum that is provided, the specialist committees and the reports that the NATO Parliamentary Assembly publishes provide members of Parliaments in different countries with vital information that they would not always get from their own Ministries of Defence—I am glad that the Minister is in his place to hear this. In the more than 10 years that I have been attending meetings of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, I have found that the access we get to high-level meetings and the information we get in those meetings is often far superior to the level of information I used to get as a member of the Select Committee on Defence or the Foreign Affairs Committee. That is not something to be proud of.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Can my hon. Friend say—I am genuinely interested in this—what degree of influence over NATO policy and strategy the Parliamentary Assembly has?

[Mike Gapes]

Without straying too far from what I was going to say, I can say that the NATO Parliamentary Assembly produces reports which are published online and are published in draft form before final versions are produced. Every year the NATO Secretary-General produces a response to the points made. It is a bit like the relationship between Select Committees and the Government. Recommendations are made, reports are published and then the NATO bureaucracy—the Secretary-General, on behalf of NATO as an institution—responds to the assembly’s recommendations. The Secretary-General and other senior NATO figures come before our meetings. We hold them to account, whether at the February session in Brussels or the autumn meeting, which rotates among different countries.

There is therefore a level of connection and accountability, although NATO is not a democratic parliamentary structure. It works through a consensus arrangement between the different member Governments. In a sense, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly is far less democratic than other bodies—there is no qualifying majority voting, like in the European Union—while the European Parliament has a lot more powers. Nevertheless, the work we do as parliamentarians, representing our national Parliaments but also understanding and working in co-operation with others, is vital. Under my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley), the president of the assembly, I believe we will have a much higher profile in future.

Arms Export Controls

Debate between Mike Gapes and Jeremy Corbyn

Thursday 20th October 2011 Westminster Hall

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

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley) on his typically detailed and forceful presentation of the position adopted by the Committees on Arms Export Controls. I have served on the Committees on and off for almost 15 years; I served on them as a member of the Select Committee on Defence, I served on them in the previous Parliament and I am serving on them again in this Parliament. I have to say, therefore, that the right hon. Gentleman is absolutely assiduous in his relentless pursuit of officials and Ministers. When he issues officials in a Department with a gentle warning, they need to heed it; if they do not, they will get many more communications in the long run than if they had heeded it quickly.

I want to begin by referring to last week’s written ministerial statement by the Foreign Secretary. Tucked away in the back of it is a paragraph about how the Government can also consider how we can

“strengthen our decision making when we provide security and justice assistance overseas.”

Those issues are linked, because there are countries to which we export weaponry, where we also provide training and engage in intelligence co-operation, and give help to the civil power on such things as counter-narcotics.

It is in that context that I want to talk about two countries; and in doing so I want to raise a wider question about lack of transparency on relevant questions. Our Committee receives detailed information, some of it confidential, about arms exports. We receive detailed breakdowns of the value and general scope of the categories of weaponry, and we know which categories exports are in—general or specific. We have information about those that are refused and revoked. However, unfortunately, similar information is not available about some other areas. I could give numerous examples, but will quote just a few.

The British Government do not sell significant quantities of weaponry to Colombia. That country has had a very difficult human rights legacy: an insurgency, drug cartels, and assassinations and murders of politicians, trade unionists and human rights activists. It is thought that it is still the country with the largest number of murders of trade unionists. However, we have had—and this goes back to the Labour Government—a period of systematic co-operation on counter-narcotics with the Colombian Government and their forces. Yet successive parliamentary questions have been put to Ministers over the years, and we never receive any detail. In November 2010 such a question received the answer:

“Our counter-narcotics work in Colombia is scrupulously monitored to ensure it cannot contribute to any human rights abuses. We do not discuss the detail of this narcotics work publicly as doing so risks putting UK and Colombian lives in danger.”—[Official Report, 29 November 2010; Vol. 519, c. 551W.]

A similar answer, received in July 2010, was:

“The only military aid we provide to Colombia is for the ongoing programme of counter-narcotics assistance. It would not be appropriate to provide details about this programme, as to do so would prejudice the capability, effectiveness or security of the armed forces.”—[Official Report, 12 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 446W.]

To go back to the time of the previous Government—I am criticising the general approach, not the present Government—this answer was given in December 2009:

“We do not disclose the value of our counter-narcotics assistance to Colombia. To do so would put British and Colombian lives at risk. This decision has been upheld by the parliamentary ombudsman.”—[Official Report, 3 November 2009; Vol. 498, c. 935W.]

There is a problem, and a serious question of accountability to Parliament. We are told by Ministers that the human rights situation in Colombia is not as bad as many critics say. We are told by the Colombian Government that the situation is improving, and that things are not as difficult or bad as they were. They accept that there were terrible things in the past, but they are doing their best. However, there is no transparency, and if the Government are to deal with the deep concerns that we have, they should provide more detailed information. We get information about arms exports, but not about military support or training support for counter-narcotics work in Colombia.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I thank my hon. Friend for the way he puts the case of Colombia. Does he accept that there is a problem, because in making their assessments, Governments tend to work on the dangerous assumption that the armed forces are a seamless whole, working under the orders of civilian Government control? They do not necessarily think that those forces will have an osmotic relationship with irregular forces, militias, drug dealers or anyone else. Supplying arms to an army somewhere like Colombia—and there are other places like it—means, in reality, providing resources that can go anywhere and be used for any kind of repression.

[Mike Gapes]

I accept that that is a danger. Obviously, countries vary considerably, and Ministers and ministries vary too. Sometimes the problem is not institutional; there may be a personnel problem, involving those who have corrupt or political links with people or organisations carrying out a parallel policy.

Speaking of parallel policies, I want to discuss what has been happening in Sri Lanka. There was a period under the previous Government when we were selling a large quantity of armaments to Sri Lanka. That was mainly during the ceasefire, which lasted about two years and then broke down. At that time, a large number of export licences to Sri Lanka were revoked. As of 2009, when the civil war between the Sri Lankan Government and the Tamil Tigers came to its conclusion, exports from this country were very limited. However, the Sri Lankan armed forces undoubtedly used vast quantities of stockpiled imported ammunition, munitions and weaponry for their armed forces on land and their naval forces. Much of that undoubtedly came from the United Kingdom.

It now seems that the Sri Lankan Government have been lobbying very hard, both before and since the change of Government in this country in 2010, for a relaxation of the current restrictions on arms exports to Sri Lanka. I should like the Minister to give me an assurance that there is no change in export policy on Sri Lanka, and that we are not satisfied that the human rights situation has improved sufficiently for there to be a change of policy. A few months ago, the Government stated that we were awaiting the outcome of an internal assessment by the commission established by the Sri Lankan Government, which is due to report next month, before determining whether to press for an independent international inquiry into the serious allegations of war crimes committed in 2009. Those were documented on Channel 4 and elsewhere, and by the special representative established by the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon. Will the Minister assure me that that means there will be no relaxation until we are satisfied that there has been a significant change of approach in Sri Lanka?

The reason why I raise such concerns is that reports have appeared—for example, Jason Burke’s in The Guardian on 13 October—about the number of unofficial visits made by the former Secretary of State for Defence and his personal adviser Mr Werritty to Sri Lanka, and the number of meetings that took place between the Minister in question and senior figures in the Sri Lankan Government. I shall give just one quotation, but there are many. The article in The Guardian, talking about 2009, before the general election, states:

“With political officers in London telling Sri Lanka that Labour was almost certain to lose coming elections, Fox was seen in Colombo as a major potential asset…Sources say now that they received specific information that Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the feared defence secretary and the brother of the president, had asked Fox to lobby for more access to British weapons.”

Fortunately, the next paragraph states:

“In fact, with evidence of human rights abuses within Sri Lanka mounting, the restrictions were tightened.”

That was under the Labour Government before the general election. Since then, we have seen a number of visits by Ministers and contacts made with the Sri Lankan Government. I would like to know what matters were discussed. Was a relaxation of arms export restrictions on Sri Lanka discussed in meetings between Defence and other Ministers and representatives of the Sri Lankan Government? If so, what was our Government’s response to any request?

It seems that a parallel policy has been going on. Jim Pickard wrote the following in the Financial Times on 12 October:

“Last year a memorandum of understanding was struck between the Sri Lankan government and…two funds”,

the first being the Sri Lanka infrastructure development fund and the second being the Sri Lanka charitable fund. He continued:

“A trust set up by Liam Fox to help Sri Lanka’s development appears to have achieved nothing other than to pay for the MP’s trips to the country”.

My question to the Minister is, why was the former Secretary of State visiting Sri Lanka? Did he discuss arms exports to Sri Lanka or a relaxation of the British policy of restricting defence exports to that country? It is important that those questions be answered, because we know that the Sri Lankan Government have been lobbying hard since 2009 for what they regard as a normalisation of their relationships with a number of countries, in an effort to return to receiving a large amount of weaponry and components, which they had been getting from the UK for many years before 2009.

As I understand it, the Foreign Secretary has been to Sri Lanka only once since the general election, but the former Defence Secretary has been there three times in the past year to meet its President. He also attended the national convention of the President’s political party. I wonder whether there was a consistency regarding the policies on arms exports—

Social Housing in London

Debate between Mike Gapes and Jeremy Corbyn

Thursday 5th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Absolutely. London is a rapidly changing city, and that is, in many ways, part of the joy and attraction of it, but it falls to local government—to boroughs, the Mayor, and the Greater London authority—and central Government to recognise that if we want London to remain a successful, cohesive, coherent city, we have to address the issue of the provision of social housing in London. Otherwise, we will be looking at a city moving into decline, with greater division. It is a very serious issue.

I think about exploitation, the apocryphal stories of what Rachman did in the 1950s and ’60s in Notting Hill, and what was done by various other appalling people who used the rapidly rising property prices to winkle out tenants so that they could resell the buildings. I am not saying that the problem has quite come back to those levels yet, but excessively expensive private rented accommodation that becomes unaffordable for poorer people leads to landlords not maintaining, supporting, improving or looking after properties, and virtually forcing people out of them so that they can rent them out at a much higher rent. Later, I shall make some points about the need for intervention in the private rented sector, because in many ways, in London there has always been a conflict between the social desires of many people to ensure good-quality, decent housing on the one hand, and the pernicious effect of the property market and rapidly rising property prices on many people across London on the other hand.

On inequality, my borough of Islington commendably established in May last year a fairness commission, which has been taking evidence at very well-attended public meetings in community centres, schools and so on across the borough over the past year. It had a very effective final meeting last week, in which a whole paper was put forward on how public policy issues can be addressed. I quote a short part of the section on housing:

“Ensuring that the allocation process for social housing is transparent and effective is essential for addressing fairness in housing. Islington has more than 12,000 people on the housing register but only 5,000 households whose level of need is sufficient for them to qualify for Choice Based Lettings.”

The paper goes on to make recommendations on improving efficiency, changing the allocation system and under-occupation. That underlines the point about the need for new house building.

There is also a problem about the number of people living in private rented accommodation who are in receipt of housing benefit in London. As I say, 30% of my constituents are in private rented accommodation, and the number is rising fast. The proportion of owner-occupiers is now below 30% and falling. Nationally, the figure is falling a bit; in London, it is falling faster, and in inner London it is falling very fast indeed. In the next five to 10 years, we will probably get to the point where 25% or even 20% of housing in inner-London constituencies will be owner-occupied. The majority of new tenancies are not social tenancies, but private rented tenancies.

People who receive or are entitled to housing benefit are suffering grievously because of the Government’s announcement on how they, in their infinite wisdom, will meet the problem of the increasing costs of housing benefit—and those costs are huge. I do not deny people’s right to apply for housing benefit, but there is a public duty to question the cost of that benefit. That duty should fall on the question of how much rent is paid to landlords, rather than result in the punishment of the tenants in the properties.

The London figures show that local housing allowance rates in my borough are £245 a week for one bedroom, £290 a week for two bedrooms, £340 a week for three bedrooms, and £400 a week for four bedrooms. To some people, that sounds an awful lot of money, and it is, but the reality is that many people in desperate housing need are living in private rented accommodation that is paid for by housing benefit. On the anniversary of their application, all those housing benefit payments will be reviewed and—there is not much discretion available to the local authority—housing benefit will be reduced, which causes a terrible problem for the people in receipt of it.

I shall give the example of a constituent whom I know well, but I will not give their name as that would be invidious and wrong. In November 2010, the local housing allowance for the four-bedroom property that they live in was £700 a week. That is to be reduced to £400 a week under the housing benefit changes. There is no way that that family can find the difference. They have lived in the property for a very long time. They have children in local schools, they are very much part of the local community and they have caring responsibilities and all the things that go with that. They will be forced to move, which is damaging to them, the children, and the local community.

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

My hon. Friend makes some very important points. The knock-on consequence of those people being forced to move is that they will look to relatively cheaper private rented accommodation in outer-London boroughs, including Redbridge, where we have thousands of people on the housing list and almost no social housing. We have a lot of private rented properties, but in some cases they have appalling landlords and terrible letting agencies. The local authority has stopped using them, but inner-London boroughs will have to use them. They will send people out, and those people will need school places. Hundreds of young children in my borough cannot get a school place at the moment. This is the wrong policy at the wrong time, and it will have terrible consequences.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I can only agree. If the problem were limited to housing benefit in the private rented sector, that would be bad enough. However, in parallel with the cut in housing benefit payments, the Government have refused to introduce rent controls or even countenance the idea of controlling private sector rents. I hope that we will deal with that when we return to government in 2015 as a new Labour Government—not “new Labour”, but a newly elected Labour Government; I do not want anyone to think that I have changed my ways.

Foreign Affairs and Defence

Debate between Mike Gapes and Jeremy Corbyn

Wednesday 26th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mike Gapes]

That is absolutely right. In a number of countries in Europe, earlier in the year—until the then Foreign Secretary got additional support from the Treasury—budgets were being overspent. Last year, when the FAC visited the United States, we highlighted the fact that the locally engaged staff there were working four-day weeks and taking unpaid leave to ensure that the budget for those posts did not exceed the annual allocations. That is the context in which the new Government and Foreign Secretary have agreed to an additional £55 million in cuts. That situation will get worse, and I implore Members of all parties to recognise that we need to defend the fundamentals of having a global diplomatic footprint and effective diplomacy in many parts of the world.

I am conscious of the time limit, but I want to highlight an additional aspect published in one of our reports. We produced a brief report on the situation in the Turks and Caicos islands. I hope that the new Government will continue to fund adequately the special prosecutor in Turks and Caicos, so that there can be proper investigations of the corruption and scandals that took place in that overseas territory. I have something else to say to future FAC members: it is fundamentally important that we keep an eye on the overseas territories. They do not represent many people, but they are important, and they are the responsibility of the House. It is crucial that we maintain the interest and scrutiny, because the citizens of our overseas territories do not yet have democratic representation in this country—they do not have the right to speak in this Parliament—so we have to speak for them and maintain the relationship with them.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that a lot of the legislation to do with the overseas territories is done by Orders in Council? There is therefore no discussion or transparency about those arrangements and they cannot be debated in the House.

[Mike Gapes]

This is not for this debate, but we need to consider mechanisms under which the overseas territories can be involved in the process, whether in this House or the other place. We need to find ways to do that.

In the time left to me, I shall move on to some of the issues that featured in the new Foreign Secretary’s speech. Clearly, we have this week a very important conclusion—or, perhaps, not a conclusion—to the non-proliferation treaty review conference. It has become clear already that the processes to get an agreement are proving difficult. The conference on disarmament, which is chaired by the Zimbabwean UN ambassador, could not reach agreement, and its proposals have now been pushed into the general discussions about the sections dealing with non-proliferation in the plenary. The main reason is that the developing world, in particular, wishes to have a timetable under which the declared nuclear weapons states who are signatories to the treaty will begin the process of taking real measures towards nuclear disarmament. There was no agreement on that timetable proposal, because the United States and France, in particular, did not wish to go down that route, and nor did Russia.

I urge the new Government, in the days that remain, to consider sympathetically how we can assist getting an agreement. It will be a disaster if the 2010 NPT review conference goes the same way as the 2005 review conference. I hope that we can find a solution through Britain, France and the other nuclear weapons states making concrete offers on how they can contribute to the achievement of article VI, under which the nuclear weapons states are to agree to act in good faith to secure real measures of nuclear disarmament. The previous Labour Government did a lot in that way. They did more than any other of the nuclear weapons states, and now we have this new Russia-United States agreement on deep cuts in strategic nuclear warheads. That is very important.

I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s statement about the maximum number—225, he said—of warheads for this country. However, I had understood, having read various of these documents over recent years, that it was thought that the UK had nowhere near 225 deployed warheads. We therefore need some clarification. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) said that there might be a case for co-operation between the United Kingdom and France on future nuclear weapons activities. That might be a way forward, leading to an overall reduction in the nuclear arsenals of European signatories to the non-proliferation treaty, which might help in reaching an agreement at either the current conference or a future review conference.

Proliferation generally poses big threats to the world. We have seen what has been happening in Korea this week, and I am not as relaxed as some seem to be that we might not get into a hot conflict between North and South Korea. This is potentially an extremely dangerous situation. Through the efforts of China in particular, I hope that we can find ways to get the six-party talks or some other mechanism to defuse the conflict and show to the North Koreans that this is not the way to behave. Ultimately, however, the South Korean Government are absolutely right to take the matter to the United Nations. They need solidarity and support from the whole of the rest of the world. China is clearly playing a big role in the Korean peninsula. It also plays a big role in the debate on Iran—I do not have time to go into that now—as well as having played a pretty bad role with regard to what has happened in Sri Lanka in the past few years.

This century, and the next decade in particular, will pose big challenges for those of us in Europe, as we adjust to the shift of economic, political and military power from our part of the world towards Asia. We need to handle that shift carefully. In that context, I note that the Foreign Secretary did not choose to repeat the words of the Prime Minister, as Leader of the Opposition, when he sought to justify the retention of British nuclear weapons on the basis of a potential nuclear threat from China. I hope that that is not Government policy. I hope that it was just a slip of the tongue and that we will work in a measured way to have good relations, but also express our view with regard to human rights abuses in China—