Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

If the hon. Gentleman consults the speeches of the Prime Minister more closely, he will discover a wealth of information about our negotiating position, but since he has not bothered to do that, I do not propose to enlighten him now, except to say that Sir Ivan Rogers did an excellent job and always gave me very good advice. I think his reasons for stepping down early were persuasive. Sir Tim Barrow, as anybody who has worked with him will know—I think that people on both sides of the House will have done so—is an outstanding public servant with long-standing experience of UK representation in Brussels, and he will do a superb job in the forthcoming talks.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

I am sure my right hon. Friend will agree that not only are diplomatic relations important, but relationships between Members of this House and European partners have been important. Membership of the Council of Europe, of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and of all-party groups has never been more important, so can he give an assurance that his Department will assist in every way in making sure that bilateral relationships that exist between Members of this House and Europe will be encouraged?

[Boris Johnson]

Absolutely—I am very happy to give that assurance to my hon. Friend. As he will know, there are parliamentary bodies of one party or another that have links with sister parties across the continent, and we will do absolutely everything we can to promote that in the years ahead.

Aleppo

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

As one of the Members of Parliament who has visited RAF Akrotiri and looked into the eyes of the C-130 crews who would be asked to carry out these missions, I think we should be careful to avoid making a “something must be done” response to a situation that shames humanity and that is on a par with Rwanda, Srebrenica and other events us that have shamed us collectively in the west. Learning from those events, could other actions be taken not only to hold Russia to account but to look at what really hurts that evil regime? London is full of people with connections to that regime who are doing business and educating their children in this country. They need to understand that they cannot behave with impunity and seek to enjoy the benefits that we all take for granted in this country.

[Mr Ellwood]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s military experience. The role of the C-130 in conducting these airdrops would be exceedingly difficult. As I have said, we do not rule this out, but it would be a huge challenge. He asks what more can be done. At the heart of this is the role of Russia, which is pivotal in being able to exercise influence over Assad, to introduce a ceasefire and to allow access to humanitarian aid. Unfortunately, Russia has vetoed five United Nations Security Council resolutions, thereby preventing even the most basic humanitarian aid from getting through. The Canadians are now seeking to pursue a General Assembly vote, which, if not in an emergency session, would require half the votes. This would be tricky, however, because Russia would use its influence to prevent it from succeeding. We are collectively looking to see what could happen in this dire situation that is reminiscent of Rwanda and Srebrenica. If the UN machine is not working, we have to find ways of circumnavigating it.

Aleppo

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. If Iran is to take a more responsible role on the international stage, following the nuclear deal, we expect it to act in a more honourable way, whether in Damascus, Beirut, Baghdad or Sana’a. We have not seen that to date. He is right to say that Hezbollah continues to play an important role, but we are also seeing a difference of opinion between what Iran is looking for and what Russia is after.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

When we hear at first hand from charities and NGOs that run hospitals in places such as Aleppo of those hospitals being bombed repeatedly by the regime and by Russian forces, the temptation is to come to this place and rage against the system, using those well-worn words, “Something must be done.” But in reality this is a most complex situation. What we want to hear—I think I heard the Minister allude to it this morning—is that everything is being done to work with the Russians to create a framework whereby safe areas and, if possible, air corridors for delivering aid can be secured. There must be a way of ensuring that it is humanitarian aid, even if that means having a Russian at Akrotiri to see what goes on the wretched plane that is delivering it.

[Mr Ellwood]

My hon. Friend and I discussed these things over the weekend, and I know he has been following events closely. Indeed, he knows people working in the region. It is important we look for a longer-term solution around access to the humanitarian corridors. As I mentioned, the Foreign Secretary is speaking with John Kerry this afternoon, and I hope we will have more to report as time elapses.

Syria: Russian Redeployment and the Peace Process

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Again, experience is the answer. I have not tried to make the call, and I am in no doubt that I could predict quite confidently the outcome of such a call to Foreign Minister Lavrov. I have had many conversations with him over the course of our regular meetings at Syria-related events, none of which has been fruitful.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

It is depressing to calculate the sum total of human misery that has resulted from Russia’s intervention in this bloody civil war, which has gone from vetoing attempts by countries to get an early resolution to Assad and a transition Government in place through to, as one non-governmental organisation put it to me, the bombing of a hospital four times by Russian planes. May I re-emphasise what my right hon. Friend says by asking him to treat with huge caution this move and to hold Russia responsible for any war crimes that it commits in the future?

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend reminds us of an important fact. If somebody who has gone into another country, bombed civilian populations and destroyed hospitals and schools then decides, five months later, that they have done enough, let us not give them too much praise. It is a bit like that question, “Did he stop beating his wife?” The fact that the Russians are there in the first place is something that we must continually protest about, and we certainly should not give them any credit for simply withdrawing from those illegal activities.

The FCO and the Spending Review 2015

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

I congratulate the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt), and his Committee—albeit perhaps in its previous form—on making a recommendation that the Government have actually listened to. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) that the Chancellor’s announcement on Foreign and Commonwealth Office spending drew a line under the reductions that had taken place over many years. Like many who have spoken in the debate today, I believe that those reductions have damaged Britain’s ability to project soft power.

I have just come from a meeting of the Defence Committee, at which we heard about an organisation called the Conflict Studies Research Centre, which used to be based within Whitehall. It was a Government organisation, but it was cut in a similar way to that described by my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay when he talked about our ability to inform the Executive of what was going on. However, I am delighted to say that it has re-emerged in the private sector. With London continuing to be a major hub for international organisations, think-tanks and other sources of expertise in foreign affairs and defence issues, we need to be smarter and more fleet of foot in using those resources—much as similar resources are used in Washington, perhaps rather better than we use ours.

In my capacity as a Minister and subsequently in roles on Select Committees and on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, I have been privileged to see our Foreign Office posts working abroad and I have huge respect for those who work in them. The programme of post closures was reversed under the coalition Government, and that was very welcome, but I believe that what we have in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has become broad and shallow. We need to concentrate on finding depth, and I therefore agree with many of the sentiments that have been expressed today. William Hague’s reopening of the language school is a welcome part of the re-engagement with those important skills.

Through Foreign and Commonwealth Office posts abroad, the UK projects soft power. I often see this in my capacity as a trade envoy. Cuts to the FCO are short-sighted. When we engage with countries and build relationships over long periods of time, that is reflected in jobs at home, in exports and in helping our balance of payments. I have seen our influence way exceed expenditure because of the hard work being put into relationships being built with Governments, people of influence and countries. I am kicking the dust off my feet following a trip to Jordan and Lebanon last week with the Defence Committee. I should like to put on record my thanks to those two outstanding posts and to the ambassadors, the defence attachés, the political officers and the security staff operating in those countries. The United Kingdom’s stock is high over there, and we are benefiting from trying to keep those two countries stable in the face of unbelievable threats from over the border in Syria and Iraq.

I want to concentrate on what my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay called trouble spots. He perhaps looked back with a degree of Schadenfreude, and in some cases he was justified in expressing that, although in other cases I might question it. In looking at trouble spots, he said that we should look forward and ask where the trouble spots of the future might be. I suggest that a glaring example is a resurgent Russia.

Whitehall had real experts on the Soviet Union throughout the cold war, as my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate said. When the Soviet Union fell, many of those posts were stripped out as the people retired, were let go or moved to other areas of the Foreign Office or other Departments. At that point, our corporate knowledge fell to an alarming degree. I may be straying from the point slightly here, but the Defence Intelligence Service had no Ukraine desk officer at the time of the uprising. It had to borrow one from the South Caucasus desk. I imagine that similar problems existed elsewhere in the Foreign Office as the glaring reality of a major threat to the interests of Britain and NATO suddenly emerged. There is a real need to understand these threats and to examine how we should resource them in the future.

I am not making any excuses for the Soviet Union, but at least in those days there was some kind of group accountability in that country and we did not feel that the regime was simply being run by one individual on his whim. Now, Russia is ruled by one autocratic mega-thief, a kleptocrat of quite staggering proportions who can annex the sovereign territory of another state, who can have people murdered on the streets of London and no doubt elsewhere, and who oversees a regime that murders people such as the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in prison in Russia. I wonder how many more Litvinenkos and Magnitskys there are. This is a man who can do to parts of Syria what he did to Grozny and who can threaten states that we are treaty-bound to defend under our membership of NATO. This is an individual for whom rules-based governance is anathema. We should therefore govern much of our thinking—and much of the way in which we resource our foreign policy and defence policy—by the use of one clear question: “What would Putin want?”

[Tom Brake]

And what does the hon. Gentleman think Putin would want in relation to the UK’s membership of the European Union?

[Richard Benyon]

The right hon. Gentleman must have read the next page of my speech. I shall answer that question precisely in a moment; I think he will agree with what I have to say.

What President Putin would want first is for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office budget to be curtailed. He would also want a weaker NATO that was riven by infighting and that continued to run down its armed forces, as it has done in years gone by. He would also want a NATO that did not respond to an escalation in aggressive actions against states on Russia’s western border. He has had a bit of bad news in that regard, however, because there has been a reversal in the decline in defence spending, not least by Britain but also by some of our allies. This situation requires massive efforts of diplomacy to keep our alliances moving in the right direction, showing resolve and showing the ability to stand up to the actions of his regime.

To answer the question from the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), Putin wants a west in which influential countries such as Britain become less influential. I think the right hon. Gentleman can see where I am going here. Putin wants a weakened European Union. Let us remember that it is the EU, not NATO, that can impose damaging sanctions against his regime. He hates having an economic rule-setter on his western border.

As the leader of the UK delegation to NATO, I recently attended a meeting with other delegation leaders at NATO headquarters. Informally and formally, our allies crossed the floor to ask me, with varying degrees of incredulity, whether Britain was really going to leave the EU. I hope that the Foreign Affairs Committee’s report will look not only at the costs of a possible Brexit but at the impact it would have on the geopolitics of our European foreign policy. These people, including Americans, were coming up to me and saying, “Now? At this time? Really? With all that threatens Europe, economically, militarily and societally?” There is much that our diplomats and intelligence services have to do in the coming years: shore up our alliances, particularly NATO; encourage more spending on defence among our allies; and use all methods, through both our hard and soft power postures, to deter Russia. This is about how we invest; how we work with our allies; and how we exercise our armed forces and show strength.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

When we met Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels last week, he not only concurred with a lot of what my hon. Friend is saying, but discussed the other side of the coin, which is the importance of dialogue with Russia. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important to attempt to engage with Russia, despite these tensions, to try to defuse them?

[Richard Benyon]

I entirely agree with that. I am certainly not somebody who believes in confrontation; my hon. Friend probably knows that well, as he knows how I operate in this House, and exactly the same applies in how we deal with a potential aggressor. The purpose of what I am saying today is that not only should we be strong, showing that our alliance is strong and that we are not going to see the envelope of article 5 pushed by people such as President Putin, but we should engage diplomatically with him and with his regime to try to get some common sense. We should use resources such as the World Service and the British Council, which my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay talked about earlier. Very movingly last week, a Romanian who works at NATO said that the greatest treat of her day used to be sitting under her bedcovers listening to the British World Service, as it kept her in touch with what was going on in the west and the freedoms that we enjoy, and she just used to want some of that—she has now got it. Through such means, we can also influence people in Russia.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

When I used to go back to Warsaw to see my grandfather in communist times, we always listened to the BBC World Service, albeit very quietly and with the curtains drawn, as of course it was illegal to do so. That was a great comfort to my grandfather and his generation of Poles, as they knew there were people outside, beyond the iron curtain, who were struggling for them and ensuring that they were kept informed.

[Richard Benyon]

As always, my hon. Friend makes a very powerful point, and he and his family perhaps understand this more than any of us in this House.

Let me conclude by talking about one concept in foreign policy, which is our will—our will to make a better world and to extol the virtues of the kind of society that we enjoy in this country and that most of our European colleagues also enjoy in the west. We face difficulties in that; we get on with our lives as independent members of different alliances, be it NATO, the EU or other arrangements we have, whereas an aggressor such as Russia is one country controlled pretty much by one individual, and so our will is tested. On the face of it, we should not be alarmed, because across NATO 3.2 million troops are under arms and the four largest NATO members spend $740 billion a year on defence compared with Russia’s figure of £65.6 billion. But that statistic, stark as it is, does not describe the depth of the problem we are seeing in places such as Ukraine, Georgia and Syria, and the threats, be they actual or subversive, faced by NATO countries such as the Baltic states. We have to have a strong will, and proving that we have it requires resources, commitment and the hard slog of soft power and diplomatic efforts. It requires language skills and a real in-depth understanding. Of course there are other problems in the world, for example, in the South China sea, in Africa and elsewhere, which draw many of those resources away from a particular problem.

As so many people have said in this debate, we do not know what is coming round the corner next, but I am certain about one thing: Russia will tweak NATO’s nose, push the envelope of article 5, be it through cyber, by playing on Russian-speaking nationals in certain countries or just by threatening countries that are friendly to us but not members of NATO, such as Sweden, through incursions into their waters or airspace. Today, in the Defence Committee, we were told that

“any weakness on our part, Russia exploits.”

Making sure that Russia understands that the west will respond and will punish it if it attacks a NATO state must remain a key foreign policy objective—but it is one that needs proper resourcing.

Central and East Africa

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Phillips]

I am grateful for that intervention. A number of things could be done in the long term, some of which I shall come on to. Deterring the corruption that has been rife in Burundi is one of them. Having proper enforcement of the anti-corruption convention and, indeed, the African Union’s convention on preventing and combating corruption would assist not just in Burundi, but elsewhere. Specific things could be done immediately, too.

I would like to commend the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge), who has responsibility for Africa, for travelling to the region just before Christmas and speaking to the Burundian Government about some of the language used, which was reminiscent of the language used prior to the 1994 Rwandan genocide. I am also very pleased to see in his place on the Front Bench the Minister of State, Department for International Development, my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Mr Swayne). He will know that as a result of the corruption in Burundi, his Department withdrew its support for the Government. One issue that the Government need to look at and consider is restoring that support. Without it, it is fair to say that the UK will have a voice that is less likely to be listened to by the existing Government of Burundi and elsewhere.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

A number of us were privileged to hear Bill Gates speak earlier today. One thing he said was that, generally speaking, the better off a country is, the more it is inclined towards democracy, good systems of government, health care and everything that flows from it. My right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) asked about solutions, and clearly one key point is that we should be focused on trying to improve the economic state of these countries and, therefore, the systems of governance that flow from that.

[Stephen Phillips]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; I agree with him. Perhaps when the Minister responds to this debate, he will tell us that that is a particular focus of the Government, which I think would be a useful thing for the Government to say.

Daesh: Syria/Iraq

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that when one sups with Vladimir Putin, one needs a very long spoon? It is very dangerous for some of our European colleagues to say that his involvement in this battle is somehow helpful and that we should reconsider sanctions against him. Will he confirm that that is not the view of the Government?

[Mr Hammond]

The Government have been clear that anyone who genuinely wants to take part in the fight against Daesh is welcome to join the coalition and to do so, but what the Russians have done so far is, at best, ambiguous. Yes, they have bombed Daesh positions. Although the percentage of Russian airstrikes targeting Daesh has increased since the loss of the Russian aircraft over Sinai—which was almost certainly due to a Daesh-inspired or planned bomb attack—they are still only about 25% of the total of their airstrikes. The remainder are targeted at the moderate opposition, and that is, to put it mildly, deeply unhelpful.

Britain in the World

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow such a superb maiden speech by the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn). As a former fisheries Minister, I listened many times to her predecessor giving the same speech in the fisheries debate. Whatever was rightly or wrongly attributed to him—he allegedly said that anybody in a red rosette would win the seat of Grimsby—the hon. Lady has proved those words to be incorrect, because she gave an exceptional performance in this debate. She should feel huge pride in her initial contribution to our proceedings.

Frederick the Great once said:

“Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments.”

We need to contemplate that as we decide how Britain plays its role in the world. People in all parts of this House have an internationalist view. In that spirit of working together, much as was outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt), we can find a way through the difficult decisions that we have to face. Too often in this House we use phrases such as “projecting power” and “punching above our weight”. I urge hon. Members to treat those phrases with caution. Our constituents are suspicious when we use such phrases. They are weary of Britain playing an eternal role of international policeman. They are suspicious of phrases that might lack humility following some of the interventions in the post-9/11 period, which—whatever the undoubted professionalism and courage of our armed services, and through no fault of theirs—have not been the success that we were led to believe they would be or might have hoped they would be. Too often, too high a price was paid in blood and treasure for those interventions. However, while I have a deep suspicion of those kinds of high-octane interventions, I remain, and this House and this Government should remain, absolutely committed to Britain playing a leading role in the world.

Over the next few weeks the Government will be working on their National Security Council risk assessment, so this is an absolutely crucial moment. Anybody who knows me will know that I have a generally sunny view of life—I am a ready listener to the Prime Minister when he talks about bright sunlit uplands and the great future that awaits this country—but I must confess that as I contemplate the world today an awful bleakness comes over me. It is a more dangerous world than has existed at any time in my lifetime, and I speak as somebody who served in the armed forces during the cold war.

I hope that the National Security Council risk assessment reflects an arc of insecurity around Europe’s south and eastern borders that extends from northern Nigeria through the Maghreb and the Sahel into the horn of Africa, and includes the chaos in Yemen and the tragedy in Iraq and Syria. As we look at Russia’s western border, we see Russia’s actions destabilising countries, some of which we are duty-bound—treaty-bound—to defend if they are attacked. We hear today about threats in the South China sea. We know of emerging threats in different parts of the world. I entirely agree with the shadow Foreign Secretary that climate change is an instigator of instability and that wars that may have been fought over the egos of leaders, or oil or territory will perhaps in future be fought over natural resources such as water, energy and food.

As we look to the future, the important point is to look back to the past. Five years ago, we did not predict that a jihadist group would hold an area the size of France, where they are trying to create a state with levels of barbarity unknown since medieval times. We would not have been able to guess that Russia would actually annex part of a sovereign state. We need to look at how we resource our influence in the world, first understanding the mistakes we made in the past, but then looking to flexible and properly resourced services for the future.

Our armed forces have a societal value to us that we do not value enough. They have the immense value to this country of deterring potential enemies and supporting our allies, but most importantly they exist to counter the threats we face. I hope an intellectual thread will run through the National Security Council’s risk assessment that will feed through to the strategic defence and security review and, from that, to the comprehensive spending review. It is almost impossible to conclude that we can achieve what we need to achieve in the world without spending at least 2% of GDP on defence. We need to make that a factor of honour. As recently as last September, in Wales, the Prime Minister was right to extol the virtues of Britain doing that. Our constituents will want us to keep the Government’s feet to the fire on the most important duty of any Government—the defence and security of the United Kingdom and its interests.