Situation in the Gulf

Debate between Rupa Huq and Jeremy Hunt

Monday 22nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

What my hon. Friend says is close to my heart, as the son of a naval officer, a phrase I have been known to use in the last few weeks one or two times—[Interruption]—and as an entrepreneur, but that is not perhaps relevant to this afternoon’s statement.

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. The Defence Secretary has been talking to the Defence Ministers of France, the Netherlands, Norway and others about more burden sharing within the EU. The reason we have constructed the proposal that we have in the way that we have today is precisely because we are trying to encourage more European involvement in maritime security, because that is in the European interest.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

While the world witnesses the horror of this dangerous 3D, real-life game of battleships, may I relay to the Foreign Secretary—he may be more than that by this time tomorrow—the concerns of my Iranian diaspora constituents? Their relatives and nearest and dearest are caught up in this, such as the children unable to access vital medicines due to the sanctions imposed by Trump and Bolton in vengeance because they do not like their predecessors. May I urge him to do all he can and all in his power to condemn and rectify these cruel hardships suffered by ordinary Iranians on the ground, as well as to carry out his decisive actions on the high seas?

[Mr Hunt]

I commend the hon. Lady for staying in touch with the Iranian diaspora in this country, who remind us that at their heart many Iranians fundamentally do understand our values and want to find a way to accommodate Iran in the modern world. Iran is a great country and a great civilisation, and we ought to be able to find a way to resolve our differences. However, there is the particular issue at the heart of it—I discussed this with the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds), the parliamentary leader of the Democratic Unionist party, just now—which is its support for destabilising activity across the middle east, which is already the most dangerous region in the world, and that is the thing we have to address if we are going to solve this.