Ukraine, Middle East, North Africa and Security

Paul Flynn Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

Listening to the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) has underlined for me that we are in danger of having quite a serious debate in this House for a change. There have been a great many very thoughtful speeches, despite their enforced brevity, which I will seek to match.

My Committee, the Public Administration Committee, produced two reports about strategy early in this Parliament. I may be flattering myself, but strategy—and the word “strategy”—seem by osmosis to have got more into the currency of our thinking.

Before I talk about strategy, let me briefly address the question of the role of the House of Commons in the decision to go to war. It is an interesting debate, and I am intrigued that a former Lord Chancellor, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), should describe the royal prerogative as some kind of out-of-date relic given that most of the powers that Ministers continue to exercise—including the power to go to war, whether or not there has been a vote in this House—are in fact royal prerogative powers.

The debate threatens to be sterile, however, because it has never been the case in modern times that any Prime Minister would consider going to war unless they felt that they could command the confidence of the House of Commons, whether they took the decision before or after consulting it. Nothing has changed: whether there should be a debate is not a matter of religious or constitutional doctrine. The responsibility for taking such a decision and for providing leadership on whether to take the country to war and commit our armed forces to military action goes with the seals of office as Prime Minister. The idea that that can be subcontracted to the House of Commons, where all the armchair generals—well, we do not sit in armchairs—and amateur strategists can add their pennyworth and then decide the issue, is a great mistake. We do not want to lose sight of the fact that the Government propose; the House of Commons disposes.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Jenkin]

I give way to my Select Committee colleague.

[Paul Flynn]

Was the hon. Gentleman’s faith in the value of a grand strategy not dented by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), who said that his experience of the National Security Council was of astonishing events that nobody expected and nobody had planned for? A grand strategy carved in stone would be useless.

[Mr Jenkin]

I must remind the hon. Gentleman, who has sat in Committee with me for many hours listening to evidence about this, that strategy is not the same as having a plan. Yes, a plan may be knocked off course by events, but that does not mean that we should relinquish all the means or methods of reformulating the plan. That is what strategic thinking is about, and I shall apply further thought to that in my speech.

Let us face it: if we sweat about whether to take military action and that dominates our entire debate, we are missing the point. I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe on that. Our debate should be about the context in which we are making that decision. The decision should flow out of that context, not be the subject of the debate itself.

The Foreign Secretary demonstrated a laudable strategic perspective after a period of reactive and short-term initiatives, such as the reversal of the policy on Syria after the vote last year, which have left our policy in disarray and, one might even say, paralysis. The period of complete neglect of the Syrian situation has resulted in the ISIS situation that we face. That has not been helped by perhaps the greatest and most silent strategic shock to hit the western world—the almost complete absence of the United States from an active role on the world stage.

The Foreign Secretary still gave us a lot of conflicts. We will consider air strikes in Iraq, but not in Syria, which is the home base of ISIS. We said that we would not provide arms to the Kurds, but now we are. We continue to expect President Assad to stand down, but we will not do anything to make that happen. That has brought about the situation that we are in. The Government’s approach is over-precious about who our friends should be and careless of the consequences of the restraints that that places on our policy. We have to treat President Putin as a pariah, but we might need to use him as an ally to defeat ISIS and stabilise the middle east.

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[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner). We sit together on the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, which produced an interesting document recently on Magna Carta. One of our proposals was that this country should never go to war without a vote in both Houses of Parliament. That is an interesting proposal. Now that it is a convention, I hope that it will be accepted in statute.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the Iraq war, and of course we do not know the truth of why we went into that war. We know that we were fed lies and all kinds of scares, such as that Britain could be attacked within 45 minutes using weapons of mass destruction that did not in fact exist. We still have yet to get the Chilcot report, which the Public Administration Committee discussed with Jeremy Heywood this week. We asked whether he was the blockage, because the Prime Minister has said that he is not stopping the report. All these years later, we do not know whether Tony Blair made an agreement with Bush that committed us to war, after which the House was forced into war based on a series of untruths. Some 179 British soldiers died in Iraq, and there were huge costs and uncounted Iraqi lives were lost.

I believe that we need to carry out another inquiry into our decision to go into Helmand province, which is arguably the worst military decision that we have taken since the charge of the Light Brigade. At the time, in 2006, we had lost only two British soldiers in combat in Afghanistan. We went into Helmand in the hope that not a shot would be fired, and we ended up with 453 soldiers lost in combat. Why did we do it?

[Mr Baron]

May I suggest that a key reason was mission creep? We allowed the mission to morph, disastrously, from one of taking on and getting rid of al-Qaeda to one of nation building, which was a completely different ball game. That was the fundamental error that we made in Afghanistan.

[Paul Flynn]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I wrote to Tony Blair in 2003—the letter was on my blog and has been there ever since—saying, “If we go to war in Iraq without attempting to solve the Israel-Palestine problem, we will give a sense of injustice to Muslim communities from my local mosque to the far corners of the world.” At that time, we would not have thought it conceivable that young men and women educated and born here would go to the far east and take part in mediaeval barbarism. How did that happen? It is not about the imams, who have lost touch with the young people. It is about the internet and the flow of information that young people have. The sense of injustice has deepened since 2003. There was not the same division at that time. There were a few fanatics, and al-Qaeda existed, but there was minute support for it. Now it takes support from a huge percentage of the young Muslim population. That is deeply worrying, and we have to see the reason for it.

How we take decisions is an important issue. The most important decision that we have taken recently, of course, was on 29 August last year. Having watched how we go to war, I suggest that we must stop trusting the wisdom of Prime Ministers. They do not behave in a normal fashion on such matters. They are overwhelmed with hubris and talk in a different way, digging out the Churchillian rhetoric. They walk in a different way—they strut like Napoleon. I have seen it here time and again. They are not dealing with petty issues about taxes; here is their great moment. They are writing their page in history, and it is usually a bloody page. They are not rational, as Anthony Eden was not rational when he went into the Suez war. We are far better trusting the pooled wisdom of 650 MPs than listening to and following a hubristic Prime Minister.

We have had an interesting debate, and the two speeches that I have warmed to more than any others were those of the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) and the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke). We know that, incredibly, there is a fairly even spread in the House between the peace party and the “give war a chance” party. Even Labour Members have said that we should not be imprisoned by history. Of course we should be imprisoned by history—we should learn from it, because we have nothing else to go on from which to learn lessons.

I am grateful to the Government for holding the NATO summit in Newport, in my constituency. It was possible a grudging and belated acknowledgment of the wisdom of the local MP on foreign affairs matters. It was a great occasion, and I was particularly pleased by the decisions on the Baltic states. In ’89, ’90 and ’91 I had the pleasure of going to the three Baltic states and watching their struggle for independence. It was a great campaign: intelligent, courageous and restrained. It was difficult to win that independence, and they are frightened now—particularly Latvia and Estonia—because they have a large percentage of mother-tongue Russians. We owe it to them to be behind them and guarantee their independence.

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[Paul Flynn]

Does my hon. Friend agree that NATO is a chameleon organisation? It was belligerent and bad under Bush, but benign and peace-seeking under Obama?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I think that is an incredibly generous description of how NATO is behaving under President Obama, although it certainly was belligerent under Bush.

NATO’s endless eastward expansion has encouraged an equal and opposite reaction on the other side, in Russia. Although I am not a defender of Putin or, indeed, of Russian foreign policy, one has to say that if there was a general agreement that Ukraine should be a neutral, non-nuclear state, the presence of NATO forces in Ukraine and joint exercises with Ukrainian forces were likely to encourage the Russian military to do the same across the border. If we want to see peace in the region, as we all do, surely there has to be demilitarisation and a process that brings about a peaceful reconciliation in Ukraine, if that is at all possible. Instead, what I hear all the time is the ratcheting up of the military options on both sides, with more and more exercises and more and more overflying.

This is a very dangerous situation that could indeed lead to some dreadful conflict. I want to sound a note of caution about it and also draw attention to the fact that NATO now gives itself the right to involve itself in any part of the world, at any time, through its rapid reaction force. Indeed, the Prime Minister wanted to bring another 33 countries on board. A global military power that can go in anywhere is not necessarily a good thing; indeed, it can provoke all the opposition and all the problems that we are discussing in today’s debate.

The question I want to put to the Minister—to which I hope I will get a reply either today or in writing—is this. The mutual defence agreement between Britain and the USA on the sharing of nuclear information, originally signed in 1958, comes up for renewal this year. There is no date set for Parliament to debate it, and apparently the Government do not seem terribly keen on that, yet President Obama sent a message to Congress on 24 July saying that he approved of the renewal of the agreement and hoped that Congress would approve it. If it is good enough for Congress to debate the mutual defence agreement, surely it is good enough for us to debate it as well.

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[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be called to speak in this important debate. During the summer, I was contacted by hundreds of constituents from across Oldham and Saddleworth—the two very distinct parts of my constituency—who were appalled by what was happening in Gaza and Israel. The inter-faith forum comprising all religious groups in my constituency mounted a petition that amassed more than 8,300 signatures in six days. It was presented to Downing street during the recess, and it called for Parliament to be recalled to debate the crisis facing Gaza and Israel. Many of my constituents were hugely disappointed that the Government did not believe a recall was warranted.

We have already heard about the tragedy of the loss of life over the past few weeks, in Gaza in particular but also in Israel. This comes two years after the previous violence in the area. After the 2012 bombardment of Gaza, I was as appalled as many other hon. Members were, and I wanted to go and see for myself exactly what was happening. It was a moving experience, and it has left me with strong views. Consequently, I was disappointed that the Prime Minister did not feel able to condemn the indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks by Israel. That was highly regrettable and a huge mistake. We should be able to stand up to our friends and tell them when we disagree with them.

The Foreign Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander) have rightly said that a Palestinian child’s life is worth no less than that of an Israeli child. However, those are only warm words unless they are backed up by action. My hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) has rightly pointed out that much of the anger felt by our young people nationally and internationally is a result of the perceived injustice of no action being taken. Nothing is being done. We could not even recall Parliament. What message does that send? What does that make politics look like to ordinary people? It really is appalling.

We must obviously welcome the peace that we now have, but history shows us that it will be sustained only if there is international pressure from Egypt and other neighbours as well as from us and, in particular, from the United States. Many have called for an investigation into whether the UK has supplied arms and components in this area. I was interested in what the Foreign Secretary said about there being no evidence for that, but I would like to see the details published. Until we have sustainable peace across the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel, there should be an arms embargo from the UK.

[Paul Flynn]

Does my hon. Friend agree with the statement made that Israel is indifferent to opinion in this country and in many other countries because it is shored up by public opinion in the United States? Is it not time for us to make a stand against Israel and tell it that it has gone too far?

[Debbie Abrahams]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. The EU association agreement with Israel and the preferential trade terms should also be re-examined. The UK’s trade with Israel’s illegal settlements in Palestinian territory is not only illegal under international law, but a barrier to long-term peace. One way people get around the law is by mislabelling products. I was really disappointed by the response I received from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on that issue. I hope that the Home Secretary will be able to say in her response to this debate how we are monitoring that and ensuring that the law is enforced.

The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) have both made important points about the inconsistency of our approach, which relates to the injustice that people perceive is meted out by us. There is such a difference in our approach to different areas. Sanctions against Russia are well deserved, but why is the same not happening in respect of Israel? We need to be able to explain that.

In the long term, we must press the Israeli Government to be brave and take action on the settlements built by Israelis on Palestinian land. The most recent encroachment, days after the agreed peace deal, was most unhelpful, to say the least. Israel must also lift the blockade on Gaza, as stipulated in the peace agreement. We must also demand that Israel ends the discriminatory approach of its law. One law is applied to Israeli children and another is applied to Palestinian children. That is outrageous. We should be demanding more, not just from Israeli leaders, but from the Palestinian leaders of Hamas and Fatah, as they are not blameless. Leaders on both sides have let down their people, but there is hope and I believe that ordinary people will prevail. I was sincerely moved by the real desire of ordinary Palestinians and Israelis for peace. In the long term they will prevail.