Nigel Evans
Main Page: Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)Department Debates - View all Nigel Evans's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. May I remind Mr Baron that he has already taken 20 minutes? This is an over-subscribed debate, and we will impose an eight-minute limit on speeches after the Front-Bench contributions. He would be generous to his colleagues if he began to draw his remarks to close.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Will hon. Members resume their seats? I will explain the procedure to be applied so the House can follow what is going on. I will call an Opposition Member next. The Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of Sir Malcolm Rifkind, whom I will call after the first speaker from the Opposition side. I will then call another Opposition Back-Bench Member, then we go to both Front Benches. The time limit will then be formally applied. I say to those Members whom I call before that if they exceed eight minutes, plus two minutes for interventions taken, I will cough loudly. I may become even more explicit than that. I call Michael McCann.
Mr McCann
Sadly, it is a consistency that runs through the regime, like lettering through a stick of rock, alongside all the actions of the Iranian Government and the Iranian leadership. What it tells me about the leadership that we are dealing with is that we must consider all possible measures to determine how to move forward.
Do I believe, as the motion suggests, that the use of force against Iran would be wholly counter-productive? I do not know the precise answer to that question, but what I do know is that ruling it out would be counter-productive. It would say to an extreme set of people that their tactics have paid off, and the willingness of the Iranian regime to ignore the international community and six UN Security Council resolutions, and to repress the Iranian people’s rights, tells me that diplomacy and sanctions should not be our only options. The Foreign Secretary pointed out on television yesterday, quite properly, the complex nature of the threat, and for those reasons, nothing should be ruled out.
I appreciate that many wish to speak, so I will finish on this point. Two weeks ago at a local high school in my constituency, I listened to a gentleman named Harry Bibring, who, as a 12-year-old in March 1938, witnessed Nazi troops march into Vienna. Days later, the persecution of the Jews started in that city. In that same year, the Peace Pledge Union, a British pacifist organisation, asked people to make this pledge:
“I renounce war, and am therefore determined not to support any kind of war. I am also determined to work for the removal of all causes of war.”
I am sure that all would agree that those are laudable aims and that all of us would be prepared to sign up to that pledge to remove all causes of war. But I am also acutely aware of Edmund Burke’s quote:
“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”
That is why I oppose the motion and will support the amendment.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Thank you for your self-restraint. I am sure that Sir Malcolm will do likewise.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind
Panetta was probably referring to the consequences of an Israeli attempt to damage Iranian nuclear capability which, because the Israelis do not have cruise missiles or bunker-busting bombs, would clearly have a much more limiting effect, even if it had some limited success.
In the interests of time, I shall share my final point with the House. Sometimes the inference of those who argue against even the option of a military response is that the world would be a much more peaceful, happy and gentle place if only we renounced the use of force, even as an option, in resolving this dispute. I say to my hon. Friend, however, that we have to contemplate— for a very brief moment, Mr Deputy Speaker—the consequences of Iran becoming a nuclear weapon state. There is not just the one response, to which my hon. Friend referred—whereby the Saudis themselves, pretty certainly, feel obliged to become a nuclear weapon state, Egypt and Turkey perhaps follow them and, therefore, the middle east, which is already the most dangerous part of the world, becomes incredibly volatile for all the perfectly obvious reasons that I do not have to go into. The only alternative, which my hon. Friend touched on, is that in order to discourage any Saudi, Egyptian or Turkish response of going nuclear the United States would have to give a nuclear umbrella guarantee to the Arab and Gulf states of the region, just as it has to NATO members, to Japan and to South Korea. In each case, when the United States gives such a guarantee, however, the guarantee is not credible unless the United States has bases in the area, as it has had in western Europe and has in the far east.
My hon. Friend’s view leads to the point that, if Iran became a nuclear weapon state, to have any prospect of discouraging the Saudis and others from becoming nuclear powers themselves, we would have to envisage not just for a few weeks, a few months or the odd year or so, but for the indefinite future, the middle east as a region where the United States, far from disengaging, became more committed and involved than it ever has—committed by guarantee not just to go to war, but if necessary to use its nuclear weapons in the defence of what would then be its allies, in the sense that NATO is an alliance, alongside the need for bases in the region, with all the inflammatory consequences of American troops in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf on a permanent basis.
The stakes are very high, and my hon. Friend cannot just sleep quietly, saying, “I don’t think we should have the military option, and everything would be peaceful if only people accepted the judgment that I have come to.” It has to be an option. We must hope that it never comes to that, but it cannot be ruled out at this stage. It is no one’s interests that it should, and therefore I commend the amendment to the House.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I call Mr Jack Straw. The same unofficial time guidelines still apply.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
Do I understand you correctly that the time limit is now on, Mr Deputy Speaker?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. The eight-minute limit now comes into effect, with the usual injury time for interventions.