Britain in the World

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I shall make a little progress, if I may.

It is also in Britain’s interest and in Europe’s interest that we resolve decisively the question of Britain’s relationship with the EU. Alongside the challenges and threats to the rules-based international system, negotiating a better future for Europe and our future relationship with Europe will be one of the overriding priorities of Britain’s foreign policy agenda in this Parliament. Allowing the British people to have the final say on Britain’s future in Europe was one of the centrepieces of the Conservative party’s offer to the electorate at the recent election, and one that distinguished us from the Opposition parties.

The British people grabbed that offer with both hands, and whatever revisionism we now see from the Opposition, the British people will not forget in a hurry who was prepared to trust them with this decision on Britain’s future and who was not. The introduction of the European Union Referendum Bill last week represented an election promise delivered by this Government, and I look forward to making the case for a referendum—a case that Labour, the SNP and the Liberal Democrats have all denied—in the Second Reading debate next week.

The three key immediate challenges we face are clear: repelling the threat to the established order from Russia and developing a response to its doctrine of asymmetric warfare; crushing the evil and poisonous ideology of ISIL and extremist Islamism more generally; and resolving Britain’s relationship with the European Union.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend says that we should not link Daesh, that evil organisation in Syria and Iraq, with Islam, but the international community is doing so indirectly by calling it Islamic State. It is not a state, it is not Islamic and it is an affront to billions of Muslims around the world to call it Islamic State. Will the United Kingdom do what Turkey and other countries do and call it Daesh, or Faesh in Arabic?

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend will not have heard me using the two unmentionable words that he uttered. I use the term ISIL. Daesh is equally acceptable. I would be grateful if he presented his argument to the BBC and perhaps got it to adopt his very sensible proposal.

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[Mr Hammond]

The answer is that, in relation to Syria, we are doing our training outside the country; in relation to Iraq, we are doing training inside Iraq. We are providing important specialist training to Iraqi forces—particularly counter-improvised explosive device training, which is probably the most pressing single need they have at the moment. We are actively looking at areas where we can increase our support; what we are looking for is areas where we can bring something to the table that others cannot—where we have a niche capability that will deliver a meaningful benefit to the Iraqi forces.

In Syria, we have to seek a political settlement to the civil war, which has allowed ISIL to control large swathes of territory in which to create a nascent terrorist state. We support UN special envoy de Mistura’s efforts to kick-start a political dialogue, and we will continue to train and support the moderate armed opposition and to seek a settlement that leads to a truly inclusive Government that can then tackle ISIL head on.

We are clear that Syria cannot overcome the extremist threat so long as Assad remains in power. As the forces under his command and control showed through their use of chemical weapons against their people and through their continued use of indiscriminate barrel bombing—including attacks over the weekend in Aleppo province—he has lost any claim to legitimacy in Syria. Assad is the heart of the problem. He has triggered a crisis that worsens day by day: 220,000 people dead, nearly 4 million people forced from their homes and more than 12 million in extreme need. We will maintain our leading humanitarian role. With our international partners, we must be ready to support a post-Assad regime to prevent the country being overrun by ISIL and to contain other Islamist extremist forces as it consolidates power.

[Rehman Chishti]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Hammond]

I will in just a moment.

While we work with our coalition partners to use the full range of diplomatic, economic and military tools to overcome a barbaric terrorist organisation with aspirations to statehood on NATO’s south-eastern flank, we must at the same time face a renewed threat on Europe’s eastern border to the rules-based international system. At the end of the cold war, we sought to draw Russia into the international community of nations by offering investment, trade and friendship, but President Putin has rebuffed those efforts. By his illegal annexation of Crimea and Russia’s destabilising activities in eastern Ukraine, he has demonstrated beyond doubt that he has chosen the role of strategic competitor. He appears intent on destabilising eastern Europe with the threat of a new and highly dangerous form of hybrid asymmetric warfare.

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[Mr Hammond]

The programme as agreed at Lausanne does indeed capture that and provide very good levels of protection. Of course, we have now got to translate that into a detailed written agreement. That is the process that is going on at the moment.

[Rehman Chishti]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Hammond]

I must make some progress.

The Russian assault on our stability in Europe has been met with a robust response and Britain has been at the forefront of delivering it. We now need to maintain unity in the European Union and alignment with the United States to renew the sanctions until such time as Russia delivers on the pledges it made at Minsk. Sanctions must remain in place until it does so. If there are further violations, the EU has made it clear it will impose further sanctions. Nor will we forget Crimea: Russia’s annexation of Crimea was illegal and illegitimate in 2014; it remains illegal and illegitimate now.

On Europe, the concerted response in Europe to Russia’s aggression has shown how the European Union can leverage the muscle of 28 countries coming together to send a clear, unified message of willingness to use its economic power to protect Europe’s security. We must also recognise, however, that in a rapidly globalising world, the European Union has demonstrated fundamental weaknesses that have to be addressed. The Common Market we joined 40 years ago has changed out of all recognition since then. For many people in Britain, the EU too often feels like something that is done to them, rather than for them.

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[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on having been reappointed as Foreign Secretary, and I wish him well with his important responsibilities. From the start I assure him that where we believe it is right to do so, I and my colleagues will fully support him and the Government in matters of foreign policy.

I shall also say something about my predecessor as shadow Foreign Secretary, Douglas Alexander. For nearly 18 years, he was committed to serving his constituents, and as a Cabinet Minister and as shadow Foreign Secretary he made a distinguished contribution to public policy and our debates; he will be much missed.

I pay tribute to the men and women of our armed forces. Whether it is their courage and sacrifice in Afghanistan, conducting air missions in Iraq, helping the people of Sierra Leone affected by Ebola or saving the lives of frightened families in overcrowded boats in the Mediterranean, their unfailing bravery, professionalism and dedication are in the finest traditions of our nation. I would also like to acknowledge all those who serve in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development, here and abroad, for their outstanding work on behalf of our country and the world. In all my dealings with them as a Minister, I was unfailingly impressed.

In this century more than ever before, we as human kind are having to come to terms with our interdependence and what it means for relations between countries and peoples. One hundred and fifty years ago, when the British empire was at its height, Parliament was much concerned with what was happening overseas, but, unlike now, much of that debate focused on what Britain’s unilateral diplomatic or military response should be. Today’s world is very different. The empire has gone. New global powers and trading blocs have emerged and grown in strength and influence—most notably China—as power and wealth have shifted from north to south and from west to east. Events across the globe are seen and reported as they happen and their effects are felt and debated by people in this country as never before, as the imperial interests of the past have been replaced by the community of interests that reflects our nation today.

The challenges we face are changing too, and the end of history is nowhere in sight. Who would have thought that 25 years after the fall of the Berlin wall, we would see fighting between Russia, through its proxy forces, and Ukraine? Who would have believed that 350 years after the Enlightenment dawned, an ideology bitterly hostile to other faiths and the rights of women would rise up and use brutality and terror to conquer and seek to roll back progress in countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Nigeria?

[Rehman Chishti]

In tackling extremism, one has to create a tolerant world, but in 130 countries there is persecution of people based on their faith. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that we have to do much more to protect religious freedom, whether it is reforming blasphemy laws in Pakistan affecting Christian and other minority communities or in respect of Burma and the Rohingya community? Does he agree that that should be a key pillar of our foreign policy?

[Hilary Benn]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman and shall have a word to say about it a little later.

Who would have thought we would be grappling with the potentially catastrophic consequences of loss of biodiversity and climate change—a threat that is the ultimate expression of our interdependence as human beings, because no one country on its own can deal with it? Make no mistake: if drought causes crops to fail or families to go thirsty, if flooding and rises in the sea-level wash people’s homes away or if conflict breaks out, human beings will do what human beings have done throughout the whole course of human history; they will move somewhere else to try to make a life for themselves and their families.

Despite these changes, Britain retains influence and reach in global affairs. We are part of the Commonwealth; we are members of the European Union, NATO, the G7 and the G20; and we have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Our history and our exports, material, political and cultural—democracy, human rights, the rule of law, the BBC, the English language—give us a voice that makes itself heard, and because of that heritage and good will, the Government have a particular responsibility to use Britain’s place in the world for the greater good by showing that we aspire to continue to be an outward-looking, not an inward-facing, nation.

That is why the mess the Government have got themselves into over the Human Rights Act is so damaging to Britain’s reputation internationally. Does the Foreign Secretary really believe it helps his cause when he raises human rights issues with other countries while back home his Cabinet colleagues talk about leaving the European convention on human rights, which we helped to draft after the second world war?