Ukraine, Middle East, North Africa and Security

Richard Drax Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

May I apologise for missing a large part of the debate because of Select Committee duties? Personally I find great danger in these types of debates, because I do not have all the facts. If I had been fully and properly briefed by a general and by MI6, my words would, I hope, be wiser, but I will do the best I can with what I have learned and read.

This is a debate on world security, particularly in the middle east and the Gulf states. I want to touch briefly on two points relating to the NATO summit and any possible military conflict in Iraq.

I am delighted that NATO appears to have woken up to the fact that responsibility must be shared and that the share of the budget must be increased to at least 2% over the next 10 years. Why, however, should it take 10 years? If we look around the world, we see what a chaotic state it is in, so I would suggest that it should be done in one year or even less. Why should the United States continue to bear so much of the responsibility for world security? Every time they do something, they are often pilloried for it. They may get it right or wrong, but surely we would be in a better place to criticise if we took a bigger share of responsibility.

To a certain extent, I agree with the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) that we should stop intervening in countries such as Iraq. In my view, the intervention in Iraq was a disaster—and so it has been proved. However, if we go into countries such as Iraq with promises that we will save them, restore all the things they want and help them live as near as possible to a law-abiding life, do we not have a responsibility when we pull out? We have lost brave members of our armed forces who have been killed or severely wounded. To simply leave such a country and abandon it to its fate would be a dereliction of our duty. Future politicians should ask the question raised by the hon. Gentleman: do we go in, can we afford to go in and how on earth do we get out; and if we do get out, should we go back in if what we were attempting to do has not been achieved?

I am not for one minute advocating boots on the ground, but if we were asked by an international confederation, including the Iraqis, to send troops to help deal with this minority group of 13,000 people—militarily we could succeed and teach a lesson to this barbaric group—would the Government consider putting British military boots on the ground?

Finally, if any British military action, including bombing, is to take place, will the Prime Minister and the Executive come to the House to ask its permission to send our armed forces into harm’s way?