Double Taxation Treaties (Developing Countries) Bill

Debate between Roger Mullin and Lisa Cameron

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 16th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Roger Mullin]

I agree entirely. I will respond to that with a slight oversimplification. Let us look at it in this way. If a country has become solely dependent on aid funding for its development and does not have full control of its own taxation and its own mineral resources, what kind of governance structure is set up to accommodate that? It will be about people chasing aid funding, not developing and liberating themselves economically. In some countries, quite a large of part of their administration and democracy is based on managing aid-related matters much less than on managing its own taxation and related matters. Therefore, the infrastructure will benefit through such moves.

I think that the Bill will provide a further advantage for the United Kingdom Government. In another field, I have been trying to persuade the Government to respond to my representations about international criminal activity in Scottish limited partnerships. I am delighted to see that the Financial Secretary is present to respond to the debate, because last week we had what I thought was an extremely constructive meeting about the issue. We recognised that to address the issue of Scottish limited partnerships we had to involve not merely the Treasury but the Home Office and its Criminal Finances Bill, as well as the businesses that would be conducting a consultation. Three different partners would need to be brought together, so that we could begin to create a joined-up approach.

What I am saying, and what my simple Bill is saying, is this. Would it not it be a good idea if those who are responsible for negotiating tax treaties with countries in the developing world had to take reasonable account of our own Government’s international aid policy, because otherwise the Government’s international aid policies, and what they want to achieve in that regard, could be countered in a negative way through the negotiation of tax treaties by others who do not support those aims? It must surely be helpful to governance here, as well as in other countries, to create a system that is much more joined-up. That is surely in everyone’s interests. Who is going to argue against it? Well, my hon. Friends and I can probably predict who, but it seems to me that no rational person could object to a Government’s pursuing their aims in a joined-up and rational manner.

[Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing this extremely important issue to our attention. Does he agree that his proposals would also go some way towards creating sustainable jobs and livelihoods in developing countries, an ambition that sits firmly at the heart of the sustainable development goals that the UK Government are signed up to achieve?

[Roger Mullin]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. The joined-up approach that I mentioned is not just within Departments; it comes about through international commitments that the Government have made to others. It is therefore good that we sign wider international treaties relating to development.

Report of the Iraq Inquiry

Debate between Roger Mullin and Lisa Cameron

Thursday 14th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)]

It has been a great pleasure—privilege might be a better word—to sit through the entirety of the debate today and much of yesterday’s debate. In particular, it has been a privilege to listen to those hon. Members who have been here since 2003 or, in many cases, before, during the lead up to the Iraq conflict. One thing I have noticed about the contributions from people who have been here for that length of time is how some of the emotions are still raw. Members on both sides of House still feel strongly about the way they were led into voting for the conflict or how they had to delve around to find the truth before deciding how to vote.

Any reasonable reading of the Chilcot report would conclude that this Parliament was never at any stage given the whole, unalloyed truth about what was in preparation. Indeed, as I was listening to many of the contributions today, including those of the Chair of the Defence Committee, the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), and of the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess), I wrote down a few words to try to summarise some of their points. What I have written down is that the then Prime Minister did not seem to allow the evidence, analysis or expert opinion to get in the way of his intuition or pre-chosen narrative. For me, that is at the centre of the issue—the attempt to deny the exposure of the truth of the matter, as known at the time.

As this House knows, a total of 179 British service personnel were killed in the Iraq conflict. It is less well known that, according to the Ministry of Defence, there were a total of 5,970 casualties, including deaths, up to July 2009. I pay tribute to the courage of those people and hope, above all, that we do right for those left with utterly appalling physical and mental injuries that they continue to endure.

[Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)]

I speak as the wife of a former member of our armed forces personnel. Does my hon. Friend agree that justice and acknowledgment are particularly important for the families? Locally, we grieve Guardsman Stephen Fergusson of the 1st Battalion the Scots Guards, who lost his life aged 31. I pay special tribute to him.

[Roger Mullin]

I thank my hon. Friend very much for that intervention. I am sure we all wish to pay tribute to the constituent she named.

People living with the consequences—those appalling injuries—need our support and care, but they also deserve justice and the truth. Over the past few days, I have heard one or two Members wonder whether it would be a waste of time to hold the former Prime Minister to account. I would answer that by asking, is justice ever a waste of time? I think not.

I was not a Member in 2003. Like some, I opposed the war at the time, but many people supported it. I have not had time to read the whole report—I have not been to a good enough speed-reading course to accomplish that—but I have attempted to focus on a few issues that I am particularly interested in, not least because I chair the all-party group on explosive weapons, and I am interested in some of the consequences of conflict and in issues such as reconstruction and preparedness for the aftermath of war.

We now know that, as UK troops poured into Iraq on 20 March 2003, the ill-conceived hope in Whitehall was of a quick victory over Saddam Hussein’s regime, followed by a relatively benign security environment, which of course never existed. Victory in the immediate conflict unleashed a vicious insurgency that some have estimated claimed 250,000 lives or more. That should not have been a surprise. As Chilcot argues, UK hopes were exposed as hopelessly vague, under-resourced and compounded by a complete Government planning failure. Indeed, the report finds that the UK Government’s plans were “wholly inadequate”.

For that failing, Sir John Chilcot laid particular criticism at the door of Tony Blair, and stated:

“He did not ensure that there was a flexible, realistic and fully resourced plan that integrated UK military and civilian contributions, and addressed the known risks.”

Before the troops rolled in on February 2003, the Joint Intelligence Committee—the overarching body that brought together the work of agencies such as MI6 and GCHQ— concluded:

“The broader threat from Islamist terrorists will also increase in the event of war, reflecting intensified anti-US/anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world, including among Muslim communities in the West.”

A little over two years later, London would become the target of the 7/7 attacks, yet there has been reluctance in some quarters to accept any link between that and the invasion of Iraq, despite the intelligence that was given years earlier.

Before becoming an MP, I worked in places that had suffered from earlier conflict, albeit not to the same extent as Iraq. There is absolutely no shortage of historical information to show that severe conflicts throw up not merely economic, infrastructure and security challenges, but cultural challenges, which are sometimes seen in the strengthening of sectarian attachments of many sorts. Sir John found that the UK Government had completely failed to appreciate the

“magnitude of the task of stabilising, administering and reconstructing Iraq.”

He commented:

“The scale of the UK effort in post-conflict Iraq never matched the scale of the challenge. Whitehall Departments and their Ministers failed to put collective weight behind the task.”

What may have begun as a failure of leadership by a few had become a collective failure of the entire Government. It has become clear that there was one central strand to UK strategy post-conflict, which was to leave Iraq as soon as possible. As Sir John put it,

“In practice, the UK’s most consistent strategic objective in relation to Iraq was to reduce the level of its deployed forces.”

The report found that the Government failed to protect their own troops with appropriate kit and vehicles, as my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O'Hara) explained a short time ago. Sir John stated that the Government failed to act against known dangers faced by our troops, such as the use of IEDs, and he castigated the MOD at the time for failing to apply appropriate armed vehicles with the appropriate haste. He argued that the troops

“did not have sufficient resources”

to conduct simultaneous long-term operations in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2006 onwards.

On Monday this week, I was in discussions with senior staff at Imperial College’s centre for blast injury studies. I was surprised to learn that as far back as the 1970s and the Rhodesian conflict, as it was known at the time, reports and studies demonstrated to the MOD what it needed to do to upgrade and provide better equipment for armed personnel in such conflicts. At that time, the lessons were ignored. This time, the lessons from Chilcot must not be ignored.