Britain's Place in the World

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the fine words of the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti), who I am sure will do great things in the role he has been given by the Prime Minister. He marked himself out early on with his campaign to use the term “Daesh” as opposed to “ISIL” or “ISIS” at the time when we were both elected, so all the best from me to him for that. However, I do fear that the Government have become somewhat complacent, in different theatres around the world, in trying to uphold many of the values that he spoke of.

I want to focus on defence and security, primarily security. I start with what is happening right now in Syria with regard to Turkey. This morning, we had one of the most pressing urgent questions answered by the Foreign Secretary in the most languid and complacent fashion. I think I am being charitable in saying that when met with such criminal behaviour on the part of Turkey, the Government can only go so far as to say that they will ban new arms exports where that infrastructure may be used by Turkey in northern Syria and that they will keep a rolling eye on the matter. They will not even go so far as to argue muscularly for any sanctions on Turkey. Worse, the Defence Secretary appeared to lend support to the Turkish claim of legitimacy in moving into northern Syria. What a disgrace that is.

Then we look at Hong Kong, from where we can all take some inspiration. Thirty years on from the Baltic Way, that amazing signature of human triumph for freedom and liberty and the rule of law over the iron fist of the then Soviet Union has been emulated beautifully, in the most grotesque circumstances, by the people of Hong Kong standing up to one of the world’s most authoritarian and brutal regimes. If we ask ourselves what on earth the UK Government are doing in that regard, it sounds like a lot of warm and feisty words on their part but very little when it comes to any meaningful action. Another example is Saudi Arabia—a country that saw the chopping up of a journalist in one of its own embassies earlier this year. The Crown Prince said only last week that it was down to him that that happened, and we have had barely a finger raised by the British Government.

Of course, as the Minister and other Members might expect me to, I come on to the issue of Russia and Ukraine. December this year marks 25 years since the signing of the Budapest memorandum on security assurances, to which the Government are a signatory. That memorandum, frankly, lies in complete and utter tatters. I do not say that to diminish what the UK Government do to support Ukraine, of which they do a lot and of which they can be proud, but let us think about what is going on in that country—an illegal annexation in Crimea and the overtaking of its eastern border, in the Donbass region, by its neighbour, Russia.

Given all the things I have mentioned so far, whether it is what is happening in Hong Kong, in Syria, in Ukraine or in Saudi Arabia, the Kremlin must be licking its lips and be unable to believe its luck in the way the international order that so many Members speak about here week in, week out is falling apart—and it is falling apart. I say to Members of this House, particularly to Members whom I often disagree with but respect none the less, that what we have seen happen in this country and elsewhere with the attacks on the rule of law and on the norms that keep us safe and secure will continue to happen. If they think that the unravelling of the European Union was enough for these people, I can tell them that it was not. If they think that NATO is not a future target for unravelling by Russia and others who would buy into that agenda in this country, they should believe me that it is. I urge them to step out of the complacency that they find themselves slumbered in.

The Prime Minister spoke yesterday at the Dispatch Box about how much he admires the capitalist free market and the rules-based system, which has delivered peace and prosperity across Europe, but the Queen’s Speech undoes the very instruments that underpin that prosperity, such as freedom of movement. Where once stood closed economies in closed societies under communism and Nazism now stands free markets, which this Government are walking away from. For shame, I say to that.

It is hardly a global Britain that anyone can be proud of. If it was a real global Britain, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe would not be perishing in an Iranian dungeon. If it was a real global Britain, the wives of US military personnel would not be hiding under the terms of diplomatic immunity, having run over a British citizen here on UK soil. It is not global Britain in my name.

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[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

This debate is titled “Britain’s place in the world”. I would argue that our armed forces in the UK are a cornerstone in defining our place in the world. I put on record my thanks, and I think the thanks of the House, to the men and women who serve in our armed forces to keep us safe 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

It was quite surprising that there was very little about defence in the Gracious Speech. There was a single line —that the

“Government will continue to invest in our gallant Armed Forces”—

and yesterday, the Prime Minister re-announced the £2.2 billion that was announced a few weeks ago in the spending review. Our armed forces and our defence budget face a financial crisis. There is a morale crisis among members of our armed forces, and a strategic drift on the way forward for them. That should have been addressed in the Queen’s Speech, but it was not.

Since 2010, the coalition Government and the Conservative Government have cut the defence budget by between 16% and 22%. That has led to aircraft carriers without aircraft and no, or little, capability for anti-submarine warfare, for example. We have an Army of 72,000—the smallest since 1850—and a Navy that has been cut to 30,000 personnel. We have ships that can no longer take to sea because of a lack of personnel. We are told that that £2.2 billion will somehow fund our future needs, but if we look at that announcement, we see that £700 million of it goes straight away on under- funded pension contributions and that a large chunk of it is the drawdown that was already there for the nuclear deterrent, so it does not really address the financial crisis that we face.

We can add to that the National Audit Office report from November last year, which said that the equipment plan is unaffordable by £7 billion over the next 10 years, rising to £14.8 billion if the funding is not brought forward. More importantly, 84% of the identified challenge with the equipment plan falls within the next four years.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree—I think he does—that it is about time that the Ministry of Defence and the Treasury switched to multi-year defence agreements?

[Mr Jones]

We were promised that but it has not happened, and that needs to be looked at. The real issue, which I will come to, is our ability not only to afford this, but to know where we are going.

Added to that is the crisis in our defence procurement. In reaction to limited budgets, we are now buying off the shelf from abroad—mainly from the United States—which is not only leading to a hollowing-out of technology and jobs that could be in the UK, but adding to costs. I did not want to mention Brexit in this debate but I have to, because it has a direct effect on the equipment budget. The MOD has contract liability of some $35 billion. Last year, exchange rate losses cost it £620 million, and that could rise to some £800 million or £900 million a year. Buying off the shelf might seem very cheap for the Treasury, but it has long-term implications for the hollowing out of our defence industries, and the foreign exchange risk means that we are spending a huge amount of money that could train, for example, some 9,000 soldiers a year or fund a main frontline frigate in our Royal Navy.

We then have the ludicrous situation, still ongoing, whereby the MOD is continuing this nonsense of putting the fleet solid support vessel out to international tender—it is currently under tender—and arguing that that will somehow be in the interests of not only the taxpayer but UK plc. That dangerous trend is having an effect not only on our sovereign capability to provide these pieces of equipment for our armed forces, but on jobs and technology. It makes common sense to invest in UK plc. The fleet solid support vessel contract could sustain jobs in the UK, if there was the commitment to do that. It is no good trying to hide behind EU procurement rules, as the Government try to do, because no other European nation seems to do it.

This crisis seems to have been completely ignored in the Gracious Speech. Without some fundamental thinking about the equipment plan and what we want to do in defence as a nation, the crisis will continue, and so too will the pressure on individual members of the armed forces. Instead of this smoke-and-mirrors approach to defence funding, it would have been nice to see a full commitment in the Gracious Speech to a fundamental defence and security review. That would mean making some hard choices, but it would not only be better for the industry and members of our armed forces to have some certainty about the future; it would help to define our role in the world—what we can do, what we want to do and what we should do.

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[Emily Thornberry]

I thank my hon. Friend very much.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) talked with great force about the crisis between two of our Commonwealth cousins, India and Pakistan, with the constitutional and human rights of the Kashmiri people being trampled in the middle of that. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) about how we have let down the Kurds, and I believe she is absolutely right.

We also heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham). It was not a speech about foreign policy, but it was one of the most passionate speeches that I have heard for a very long time, with his pure, naked anger at the fact that men in his constituency have a life expectancy of 64, whereas men in the Prime Minister’s constituency have a life expectancy of 80. No wonder he is so angry, and his eloquence said it all.

We heard so many excellent contributions—there were many more that I have not had time to mention—but it is left to the Minister of State to close this debate, and I have a number of specific questions for him. They are based on the Foreign Secretary’s recent speech in Manchester, which at least attempted to address some foreign policy issues, as this Queen’s Speech has so brazenly failed to do.

First, may I ask the Minister why, in the course of a speech of 1,300 words, the Foreign Secretary did not once mention these countries or their leaders? He did not mention Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Cameroon, Brazil or Brunei, and he did not even mention Kashmir. These are not peripheral issues, but ones that should be at the top of the Foreign Secretary’s brief, yet he found time to make jokes about Luxembourg and to tell us how much Donald Trump loves Britain. This is of course the kind of love that expresses itself by ignoring everything that our Government say to him—from climate change, trade wars and the Iranian nuclear deal to the unforgivable betrayal of the Kurds in northern Syria. But even though the Foreign Secretary did not discuss any of those countries, I am delighted to hear that he said in Manchester that he would “relish, not shrink” from our global duty to bring the perpetrators of injustice and war crimes to account. So let us put that commitment to the test.

I hoped that in this Queen’s Speech we would hear a commitment to work through the United Nations to end the airstrikes and the atrocities being committed by Turkey and its jihadist death squads in the Kurdish regimes in northern Syria. I was hoping that we would hear a commitment to table a new resolution before the Security Council of the United Nations demanding an immediate ceasefire by all parties in Yemen, in every part of the country. I was hoping that we would hear a commitment to recognise the state of Palestine while there is still a state left to recognise. I was hoping that we would hear a commitment to hold a judicial inquiry into the historical allegations of the UK’s involvement in torture and rendition, and the operation of our country’s secret courts. I was hoping that we would hear a commitment to table a resolution for agreement at the United Nations referring Myanmar to the International Criminal Court for investigation of its crimes against the Rohingya, because of course we hold the pen on that issue as well.

I was hoping that we would hear commitments to correct the historic injustices over the two Amritsar massacres, the discriminatory demob payments from world war two given to non-white soldiers in the colonial regiments, the Chagos islanders’ right of return, and our nuclear test veterans. Those issues would all feature in a Labour Queen’s Speech—the Kurds, Yemen and Palestine, torture, rendition, the Rohingya, Amritsar, demob pay, the Chagos islanders and the debt owed to our nuclear test veterans—but under this Government, those issues go utterly ignored.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Sir Robert Syms]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

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[Christopher Pincher]

We went to the Foreign Affairs Council yesterday; we were party to the discussions there and the outcome of those deliberations.

The Gracious Speech sets out the legislation that we need both to give effect to Brexit and to grasp the opportunities of it. That legislation will ensure a smooth and orderly departure and a better deal for our farmers and fishing industry, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) expressed. It will take back control of our immigration policy, with a points-based migration system, and allow us to become an energetic champion of global free trade for United Kingdom businesses and consumers. Our vision for a global Britain is about more than Brexit, because if only the Opposition will let this country go, we will get beyond Brexit.

The Government will maintain and strengthen our historical trade ties, boosting our competitiveness by expanding trade with growth markets of the future. We want a strong trading relationship with our existing partners in Europe and North America. Thanks to the tireless work of my right hon. Friend the International Trade Secretary, we have made good progress in preparing the ground for future free trade agreements after Brexit. In the words of the US Secretary of State, the US is poised

“on the doorstep, pen in hand, ready to sign”

a deal. We are not at the back of the queue; we are at the front of the line. That is good news for our businesses that want to export, and it is good news for consumers on both sides of the Atlantic who want cheaper food and services with wider choice. That is where the opportunities of the future will be found. As a global champion of liberal free trade, this Government are ready to grasp those opportunities. We are the internationalists; we are not the little Europeans who sit opposite.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

Will the Minister give way?

[Christopher Pincher]

No, I will not, because I have only three and a half more minutes.

The leader of the Labour party may run to defend President Putin, like some north London primped and plucked poodle, but Government Members will work with our allies to stand up for and protect the people of this country. We will work with all our international partners to shine the spotlight on Iran’s violation of international law, from the attack on the Aramco oil facilities in Saudi Arabia to its cruel and unlawful detention of United Kingdom nationals. We will work with our European and American friends to secure Iran’s compliance with its obligations not to develop nuclear weapons, and we will engage with all our partners to prevent the bloodshed in north-eastern Syria.

One of the strongest speeches I heard today was made by the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg). I do not have time to answer all his points, but if his speech tonight was the last that he makes in this Chamber, he will be a sad loss at the general election when he retires. I am afraid that it was not possible at the United Nations to come to an agreement to produce a resolution, but we have released a statement with our European partners, and we will ask for further work to be done at the UN tomorrow.

We will also be a constructive voice on Hong Kong, supporting its people’s right to peaceful protest and encouraging political dialogue on all sides to give effect to the one country, two systems model that China has consistently advocated since 1984. My right hon. Friend the International Development Secretary has made clear our robust stance on Venezuela, in contrast to the leader of the Labour party, who celebrates the achievements of that despotic regime and does so as people starve.

We will be a force for good and a champion of causes that know no borders. On the international stage, we will show the leadership of the next generation, as it expects us to, by hosting the United Nations climate summit—COP 26—in Glasgow next year, in partnership with Italy. We will bring to bear both our world-class innovation and our determination to leave our environment in a better state for our children and theirs, in the United Kingdom and across the world. We will continue to lead global action to help to provide 12 years of quality education for all girls by 2030 and leave no girl behind. We are proud of the new media freedom coalition we have set up with Canada. Some 26 countries are already signed up, having committed to protecting media freedoms, speaking out against abuses and standing up for journalists who are detained, bullied and brutalised around the world.

That is the mission of this Government: to deliver Brexit, faithful to the promises made to the British people; to embrace the opportunities that lie ahead for a truly global Britain; and to reinforce the United Kingdom’s role as a force for good in the world. I commend the Gracious Speech to the House.