Defence Supplementary Estimate 2021-22
Debate between Peter Grant and Julian Lewis(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Not for the first time and, I am sure, not for the last time, the House has cause to be grateful to the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) for reaching across the party divide in support of the strongest possible defence of this country and the strongest possible support for NATO. It is in that spirit, as a former Chairman of the Defence Committee, that I acknowledge the stalwart support he has given to successive holders of that post. This is an opportunity for defence-minded parliamentarians to give some initial reaction to the colossal and extraordinary events of the past fortnight in the context of what Britain was going to spend on defence, and what it should spend on defence in future.
In June 1950, five years after the end of world war two and following a time of mass demobilisation, the Korean war broke out. The effect of that conflict, quite apart from the terrible consequences for the people living in Korea, was to cause a huge reassessment of the amount of national effort that must be invested in defence in the United Kingdom. That led to a reconsideration of the level of defence expenditure, and I suggest that the seismic events of the past two weeks should lead to a similar reassessment of what we are prepared to invest in defence in the United Kingdom in the 21st century. We cannot conduct this debate as if nothing serious has happened to transform the situation in the past two weeks.
Although it is very early and the outcome of the conflict is still very much in doubt, I suggest it is possible to come tentatively to about half a dozen conclusions, and I will run through them very quickly. First, I think we can say that the advanced public messaging by the United States, NATO, the United Kingdom and other allies has been outstanding. It has prevented President Putin from seizing the narrative. By predicting accurately in advance what he was going to do, it has completely undermined his potential disinformation campaign. Every pronouncement that we hear from the Kremlin is so ludicrously at odds with reality that it cuts no ice at all, except with those totally indoctrinated.
Secondly, the events of the past fortnight dispel any illusions we might have had about the nature of our Russian adversary. As has been said rightly many times by those on the Front Bench, that is not the Russian people, but the people in control of that great, but benighted country. We must remember that people such as President Putin are the direct descendants of the regime whose ideology led them to kill millions of their own people in the decades in which Leninism and bolshevism held sway. Although the communist doctrine has collapsed, the mindset, the imperialism and the brutality have not. I have previously described President Putin in uncomplimentary terms, and I think it is worth repeating them. This man is a cynical, sneering psychopath. He does not care how many people he kills, as long as he gets his own way. Anyone thinking that there is a way to reason with these people, rather than deter, contain or, if necessary, defeat them, is living in a world of fantasy.
Thirdly, in light of Ukraine’s decision to give up—admittedly it was not a system it could operate at the time, but given time it could have done so—the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world, which it inherited from the former Soviet Union, any lingering doubts about the wisdom of the United Kingdom continuing to possess a strategic nuclear deterrent as long as Russia does so have finally been put to bed.
Peter Grant
I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that we do not have a problem with the issue; we have a problem with nuclear weapons. Is he not aware that as a matter of international law, as a successor state to the Soviet Union, Russia was the legal owner of those nuclear weapons? It was entitled to take them away. Ukraine would have been in breach of the law to try to hold on to them.
Dr Lewis
Yes, and I am also aware that as a result of Ukraine’s decision to give up those nuclear weapons, Russia guaranteed the security and the borders of Ukraine. If the hon. Gentleman is going to throw international law at me, all I can say to him is that, if he thinks that those sorts of manoeuvres and unilateral renunciations are the way to stop someone being attacked and destroyed by a ruthless adversary, it should be a long time indeed before he and people who think like him have any influence on the way in which we choose to keep the peace—by deterrence—so that we do not end up in a situation like Ukraine.
Fourthly, this horrible situation should establish whether and to what extent economic sanctions can force an aggressor to desist. It is often said that the world has become more interdependent. We will never see a more extreme example of democratic countries seeking to use economic pressures to force an aggressor to desist. If that fails to work in this instance, it will be a further argument for increased investment in hard defence capability, because that particular aspect of hoping to be able to turn war into an outmoded concept will, sadly, have been disproved. I hope that it does play a part in stopping Russia from proceeding, but I am not holding my breath.
Fifthly, the conflict has exposed the folly of fuel dependence on hostile countries and raised questions about the wisdom of a policy of unilateral net zero targets by democracies regardless of what much larger countries, that are not democracies, do. I am not seeking to pick an argument with the environmentalists; I am merely saying that there is a parallel with the question of unilateral or one-sided nuclear disarmament, because if we achieve net zero at tremendous cost to ourselves while much larger hostile countries simply flout the commitments that they have given, we will have taken that pain for no benefit to anyone. Targets must be multilateral if they are going to do anything other than weaken our ability to protect ourselves.
The last of the six lessons is that the conflict has killed the idea that conventional aggression by one state against another is an outmoded 20th-century concept. Time and again, people such as the right hon. Member for Warley on the Opposition Benches and my right hon. and hon. Friends present on the Conservative Benches have raised the question of what an appropriate level of defence investment should be, only to be told from on high, “You’ve got to realise that there are new forms of warfare. The next war will not be fought much with conventional armed forces. It will be fought in cyber-space or even in space itself.” Of course, there are new and serious threats—potentially fatal threats—in those two newer areas of conflict, but they are additional threats. They are not substitutes for the threats that we have always faced and continue to face from conventional armed forces.
Freedom of Religion or Belief
Debate between Peter Grant and Julian Lewis(4 years, 8 months ago)
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Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
I really do not know how to follow that speech. The hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) may think that it was a ramble, but I think we have just had difficult privilege of hearing one of the great speeches in this place, for which I thank him. I am a practising Roman Catholic, so it was not easy to listen to, because sadly my religion, like many others—as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) will know only too well—is used by people who claim to be of the same faith to justify deeds that would never have been condoned by the one we call our saviour. I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate and thank both previous speakers for their speeches.
It saddens me greatly that this debate is necessary, but the sad fact is that persecution based on what people believe or do not believe is probably as big a problem now as it has ever been. How can that be? The world in so many ways is getting smaller, and it is much easier for us to understand what other people are about and to get to know the basis of so many beliefs and cultures. When that is happening, how can it be that almost every religious or faith group in the world is, somewhere, being persecuted, with people losing their lives because of what they believe, and that almost every faith group in the world participates in that persecution? I cannot begin to understand it.
We can look at the horror of Daesh murdering Muslims, Christians and other religious minorities with complete impunity; at the terror attacks such as the one on Easter Sunday last year in Sri Lanka, when people were murdered simply for celebrating the most important day of their religious year; at 1 million people in China being supposedly “re-educated”, as the hon. Member for Strangford mentioned, to strip them of their cultural, religious and ethnic identity, just because they are Muslims; or at the genocide of the Rohingya Muslims. We can look at countless other atrocities. Individually, they might often not be important enough to get a mention on the UK news or in the newspapers but, collectively, they add up to an estimated 2 billion people possibly daily risking persecution and even their lives simply because of what they believe.
The hon. Member for Beckenham rightly said that freedom of religion and belief is a fundamental human right. International organisations have said for years that everyone has the right to believe or not believe what they believe to be right for them. There can be no let-up in international efforts to safeguard freedom of religion and to prevent the persecution of religious minorities anywhere. This principle was adopted in 1966:
“Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law”—
I was five when the world agreed to that, and I turn 60 later this year. But the world, having agreed to that, far too often seems to turn away, or decides to act far too late.
The Rabat plan of action launched by the United Nations in 2013 sets out the kinds of comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation that all nations should adopt, but as the hon. Member for Strangford so rightly said, having legislation in place is one thing; making it happen in reality is a very different thing. The international community has the tools it needs to tackle religious persecution. It is up to Governments everywhere, working together, to use all the diplomatic, political and economic means at their disposal to ensure that no Government feel that they can ignore, condone or actively participate in religious persecution.
I fully support much of the hon. Gentleman said when he asked the Foreign and Commonwealth Office what it will do in trade deals and diplomatic relations to ensure that human rights and rights of religious freedom are always at the top of any agenda. Personally, I believe that there are some countries with which the United Kingdom has strong diplomatic and economic ties that we should simply isolate ourselves from, because their persecution of people has got to the stage where they are no longer the kind of country that we should be proud to have as a friend anymore.
The large-scale persecution of religious or racial minorities does not happen overnight. As with racism—a very close cousin of religious sectarianism, as the hon. Gentleman said—such persecution needs to be fostered over a longer period. It starts with verbal insults and racist or sectarian language, which is first ignored and tolerated, then actively promoted and celebrated by those in positions of power in the media or in politics. It grows through deliberate attempts to isolate a targeted group and to vilify anyone who speaks in their defence, denouncing them all—those being targeted and those who would stand alongside them—as somehow disloyal to the country of residence, a threat to national security, or even terrorists, simply because of the peaceful practice of their religion.
Once a country has allowed that attitude to become embedded, the next step forward is easy: the violence, the abductions and the wholescale sexual abuse of women and children become much easier. At the moment, we would all say that we in the United Kingdom are among the 17% of the population of the world who do not suffer from religious persecution—it is a shocking statistic that almost 85% of the world’s population live in countries where one religious minority or another is actively persecuted—but if we took a hard, honest look at where the United Kingdom is now, we would see some worrying signs that the first steps in that process are happening. That does not mean we will see wholescale violence in the next week or so, but we have to be aware of what is happening on our streets and in our communities, and we have to be prepared to stop it.
For example—I am not taking sides on this one—did political processes come out with much credibility after the accusations and counter-accusations of antisemitism and Islamophobia over the past year or so? They have been such a feature of our political debate, but does anyone think that the political establishment came out well when a response to an accusation of antisemitism was a counter-accusation of Islamophobia? Instead, everyone should have said, “You know what? All of us have a problem with some kind of racial or religious bigotry within our organisations or our culture. Let’s sit down to talk about how we can tackle it all together.” We have to recognise that a large percentage of the world’s refugee population are only refugees because of religious persecution. The less we are able to prevent religious persecution, the greater the moral responsibility we have to take our share of the responsibility for looking after the refugees who inevitably come here.
This is a difficult topic to talk about—I seem to be pinching an awful lot of the hon. Gentleman’s speech, because he said much of what I wanted to say, more eloquently—but I feel that it is important when we talk about freedom of religious belief to acknowledge as an equal right the right to not believe. I have real concerns about what is happening in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. He is trying to change the constitution so that believing in God becomes compulsory. As someone who believes in God, that worries me greatly, because a fundamental part of my faith is that that is my decision, and that I will answer for it when my time comes.
Sometimes, I have taken decisions that have surprised some of my close friends and family who thought that as a practising Catholic I might take a different decision on same-sex marriage, for example,. However, following a faith that has a particular set of teachings on human sexuality gives me no right to pass laws to prevent someone else from, first, following a different faith or, secondly, having a different view of what is acceptable or not, or right or wrong, for them in their private or family life.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Is the real problem not so much the religion itself but fundamentalism? When people get so absorbed in their religion that they can only interpret it literally, extremism and persecution take root.
Peter Grant
The right hon. Gentleman makes a very valid point, whether that is a political or a religious view. I have to make a distinction between being fundamental or extreme and how firmly we believe something. Being fundamental or extreme can be an unwillingness to accept that other people are equally sincere and passionate about a completely contrary view. When it comes to being extreme and the steps that people take to promote a particular set of beliefs, it becomes a problem.
I do not speak from a position of great authority, but on the occasions when I have engaged actively in dialogue with someone whose behaviour was blatantly racist, sectarian or religiously intolerant, it is surprising how often, on getting down to it, such people are deeply insecure in their own religious or political beliefs. It is almost as if they had never stopped to think about what they believe, and cannot allow anyone to suggest anything different, rather than accept that someone might challenge them. They hide in a shell, to come out fighting. That might present itself as Christianity, but it is so mired in hatred and intolerance that I can see no connection with what is happening or, certainly, with the teachings of the version of Christianity that I seek to follow.
I will finish with one statistic that should concern us all. In 2018, the British social attitudes survey found that almost two thirds—63%—of people in the United Kingdom believed that religions bring more conflict than peace. In my religion, we worship one who has the title “Prince of Peace”; and the word “Islam” can translate as “peace”. Every religion that I have any knowledge of is founded on peace, on respect for human beings of all kinds and on living together in peace and harmony. In this collection of countries, we think freedom of religion and belief is established, but almost two thirds of the population think religion is the problem rather than the answer. I suggest that it is not only the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that needs to change the way it does things. Perhaps the Church establishments, including my own, have a job to do in persuading that 63% not necessarily to follow a particular religion, but at least to understand that any true religion is about making things better for the whole of humanity.
I have spoken for longer than I expected to, so I will sit down to allow other hon. Members to speak.