Syria

Tim Farron Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend brings great clarity to this matter. Not taking action is itself a choice, and that choice has consequences. It is my judgment, and the judgment of those independent, impartial, highly trained advisers on security and military issues who take the same view, that inaction is the greater risk.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I thank the Prime Minister for his statement and for early sight of it. There are understandable knee-jerk reactions on both sides to the horror of Paris and of Beirut. There will be those who say, “Intervene”; those who say, “Intervene at all costs”; and also those who say, “Do not intervene no matter what the evidence points to.” The Prime Minister knows that the Liberal Democrats have set out five criteria against which we can judge this statement. On that basis, may I press him on two particular points? The Prime Minister recognises that airstrikes alone will not defeat ISIL. He has already heard that he will need to give much more evidence to this House to convince it that the ground operations that are there are sufficient and have the capability and the credibility to deliver on the ground, which is what he knows needs to be delivered. What role will Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and the other Gulf states play in delivering this victory, if that is the direction in which we choose to go as a country and as a House? There is also a reference to humanitarian aid in this statement. He will know that no amount of aid can help an innocent family dodge a bomb. There is no reference in this statement to establishing no-bomb zones or safe havens to protect innocent civilians if this action takes place. Will he answer that question?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his response and for the fact that his party wants to engage with the arguments, think very carefully and consider the key national security arguments before making its judgment. I know that the national security adviser was pleased to brief its members last night and stands ready to brief them and answer any detailed questions that they might have. I am determined that there should be no knee-jerk reaction. I take very seriously what happened in Paris. I know absolutely that that could just as well happen in the UK, as it could happen in Belgium or elsewhere in Europe, and that the threat that we face is very, very severe. I want us to consider this and to think it through. I do not want anyone to feel that a good process has not been followed, so that if people agree with the case being put, they can in all conscience vote to support it.

The hon. Gentleman asked two specific questions. On humanitarian aid, we will continue to deliver that. On no-bomb zones, the dangers and difficulties with no-bomb zones and safe zones are that they have to be enforced, and that can require the taking out of air defences, which would spread the conflict wider and which, in many cases, requires the presence of ground troops. We will not be putting in ground troops for those purposes. I do not want to declare a safe zone unless it is genuinely safe. Of course what we want is a growing part of Iraq and a growing part of Syria to be no-bomb zones because there will no bombing taking place as we will have a political agreement that will deliver the ceasefires that we need, and we will have taken action to reduce ISIL.

On the question of ground troops and the role of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, they on the whole have been helping to fund the moderate Syrian opposition which, in my view, needs to play a part in the future of that country, and they strongly support the action that Britain proposes to take.

G20 and Paris Attacks

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for his point, and I have a huge amount of sympathy with it, and that is why in the counter-terrorism legislation that we passed we took further steps to confiscate people’s passports. If someone is a dual national, we can strip them of their UK citizenship if we think that they no longer merit citizenship of this country. We now have the power—it was controversial but the Home Secretary and I pushed it forward—to exclude temporarily even British nationals from returning to the UK. I am all for looking at options for going further to make sure that we keep ourselves safe, but it was very contentious at the time. This situation is demonstrating that we were right to stick to our guns.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I thank the Prime Minister for advance sight of his statement. I join him and colleagues on both sides of the House here today in expressing solidarity, compassion and sympathy to the people of Paris and Beirut, especially the injured and families of those who have lost their lives, and in condemning the terrorists who seek to attack us. They detest our diversity, our freedom and our generosity of spirit, and we let them win if we compromise on any of those things. It is critical that any UK military involvement in Syria should focus on civilian protection and political transition, alongside crushing ISIL; otherwise we will repeat the mistakes of the illegal and counterproductive Iraq war. So does the Prime Minister agree that long-term stability in Syria must be part of the strategy against ISIL, and will he confirm that any plan brought to Parliament by the Government to use our armed forces there will specifically address that?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is right to mention the bombing in Beirut. Some people posit this as a clash of civilisations—the Islamic world against the rest. The Beirut bomb, as with so many other bombs before it, proved that these people—in this case, ISIL—are killing Muslims in their hundreds and thousands. It is very important to demonstrate to Muslim communities in our own countries that we take this violence as seriously as violence committed in Paris or elsewhere.

The hon. Gentleman asks whether what we would do in Syria would be about civilian protection. My argument is, yes, it would be about civilian protection in the obvious way—that if we can take out the murderers of ISIL, we are helping to protect the Syrian people whom they are threatening—but, because Britain has precision munitions such as the Brimstone missile, which are in many ways more effective even than some of the things the Americans have, our intervention and our assistance would mean better targeting of the people who should be targeted and fewer civilian casualties.

European Council

Tim Farron Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I cannot put an exact timetable on when the negotiations will be concluded. Obviously the House of Commons knows that we must have the referendum come what may by the end of 2017, but I do not want to put a timetable on how long it is going to take to complete this negotiation. I am confident that we will make good progress and I will update the House regularly.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

The decision by some Governments in Europe to close borders has severely impacted their neighbours, thus exacerbating the humanitarian crisis, so will the Prime Minister call on Viktor Orban of Hungary and others to reopen borders and engage in meaningful discussion to tackle this growing crisis, or is there no point because the Prime Minister’s refusal to take a single one of the 600,000 refugees in Europe has destroyed his credibility among Europe’s leaders?

[The Prime Minister]

First of all, what actually happens at these European Councils is not Britain coming under pressure for the approach we have taken. People respect the fact that we are not part of Schengen and that we have made a decision about taking refugees from out of the camps, and above all people respect the fact that we spend on some occasions 10 times more than other European countries of our size on the refugee aid programme to Syria—for the Syrian refugee camps and the neighbouring countries. That is the right thing to do.

As for Europe’s external borders, they are not my responsibility. I will leave Viktor Orban to defend himself, but the point that the Hungarian Prime Minister and others make is that Europe has an external border and needs to prove that it has an external border to ensure that people do not believe it is a risk-free, easy journey to go to the EU. However, that is a matter for them. We have an external border; it is at Calais and that is the border that we will properly police.

Her Majesty the Queen

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is a great honour to be able to pay tribute to Her Majesty on this very important day. I have only managed to meet Her Majesty on two occasions; obviously in the years to come I expect an audience more regularly. On the first occasion I met her, she gave me advice on how to cope with casework. On the second occasion, on her visit to Kendal in Westmoreland, there was very nearly an incident when a very well-meaning local councillor, Councillor Walker, decided to—I can only say—lunge across a crowd of 30 or 40 people carrying a bar of Kendal mint cake to offer to Her Majesty, which she accepted with great grace, looking forward, I am sure, to enjoying it. I have to say that the security services were less excited—or rather very excited—by that lunge. I also thank Her Majesty for the occasion of her silver jubilee in 1977, when she gave me my first, and so far only, experience of being able to dance around a maypole.

We are, as a civilisation, very keen to categorise ourselves by our generations. Are we baby boomers; are we Thatcher’s children; are we generation X? The fact is that all of us here are New Elizabethans. We have all lived through that age—those 63 years and 216 days —when Queen Elizabeth II has reigned over us all. The values that she has embodied, which stand for all of us here, are about decency, about service, about civilisation, about stability, and about family. They are things that underpin our civilisation. It is all the more important that we recognise that Her Majesty occupies the most senior position in our society—indeed, the most privileged position in our society—but her conduct is marked by humility and service, not claiming the grandeur of office. On this great day, on behalf of my party and my county, I pay tribute to her service and her humility. Long live the Queen.

Tributes to Charles Kennedy

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I was elected to this House on 5 May 2005, and Charles Kennedy was my party leader. In the weeks running up to that election, he was meant to pay a visit to Westmorland and Lonsdale—to the University of Cumbria, Ambleside—but in the event he had a very good excuse for missing that appointment, which was the birth of Donald. I remember the immense pride we felt in having Charles as our leader, and the immense pride he felt in becoming a father.

I won my seat at that election by 267 votes. When a candidate wins by that small amount, everything counts. I am quite sure that the additional publicity of Donald’s birth contributed to the capturing of Westmorland after 96 years of Tory rule.

As the months went by, I did not get a phone call. There were a good number of us and many were appointed to positions in junior shadow ministries and junior junior shadow ministries. Then in September I got the phone call from Charles. He said, “I’m sorry I haven’t given you a job. I just completely forgot about you.” He asked me whether I would like to be the youth affairs spokesperson, which was obviously an entirely natural fit. That was the only time I ever felt forgotten by Charles. A year before that, I lost my mother—she was a year younger than Charles at his passing—after a long and pretty horrific illness. I remember seeing him when I was among dozens of other candidates, and he knew exactly about the situation that I and my family were going through, and he showed immense compassion. He never stopped asking me about the situation. When she passed away, he asked me how I was. That was the measure of the man. He went through some very difficult things in terms of his personal health, but he was always primarily concerned about the wellbeing of others.

Charles was a persuader; he was able to reach people in their gut. People make up their minds on the basis of all sorts of things, but generally speaking we can only move people if we can get them in the gut. He was the only Social Democratic party MP ever to gain his seat in a general election. Four years later, when the SDP and the Liberals merged, he argued on the conference floor against his own leader, David Owen. We could see the faces of people in that hall as they changed their minds. Charles Kennedy had reached into their hearts and turned them.

To my mind, what Charles was so good at was his ability to communicate and get to people, and it was not contrived. People say that Charles Kennedy was human. Yes, he was, but he was not contrived. The first time that I went on, I think, “Any Questions” a few years ago, he gave me a piece of advice. He just said, “Be yourself.” Charles was successful because he was himself. If any hon. Member is ever invited on to “Have I Got News For You”, my advice is, “Say no, unless you want to be made out to be a prat or unless you are Charles Kennedy.”

Charles had a natural ability to communicate with people, because he was absolutely himself. That humanity is one thing; his principle has been spoken of several times, but it cannot be said enough that his stance against the Iraq war seems like the populist and right thing to do today. Twelve years ago, it was not. He was surrounded by people baying at him as though he was somehow Chamberlain or an appeaser of Saddam Hussein, and The Sun had a front-page picture of Charles Kennedy the anti-patriotic rattlesnake. By golly, someone must be doing something right when that happens!

Charles Kennedy was principled and he changed people’s minds, and he was right. He was human; he was principled; and he was effective. He led our party to the largest number of Members of Parliament since Lloyd George’s day. I suggest that that humanity, that principle and that effectiveness—those three things—are connected. If we want to understand why Charles Kennedy was great, we should realise that it was because he was himself. People say that politicians should have a life outside politics before they become Members of Parliament. Maybe. Charlie was elected at 23. It is hard to argue that he did. The reality is that it is not what you have done, it is who you are, and Charles Kennedy was a very, very special man. Donald, you should be really proud of your daddy. I am proud of your daddy. I loved him to bits. I am proud to call him my friend. God rest you, Charlie.

Iraq Inquiry

Tim Farron Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I share with most Members of all parties a deep disappointment at the postponement of the release of the Chilcot report. It is massively disappointing to us, but emotionally exhausting for the families of those who lost their lives in Iraq as they wait for closure and for the answers to which they are entitled.

The former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), sanctioned the report in 2009 and, as we have heard, advised that there should be a report within one year. We are now six years on. Motions in the last Parliament on an earlier inquiry into the Iraq war were voted down by the Labour Government, including the current Leader of the Opposition, so it would have been entirely possible for the process to be concluded sooner. As things stand, the next general election after the Chilcot report is released will be in 2020—17 years after the Iraq war. As the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) said, that is an affront to democracy.

I have absolute sympathy for Sir John Chilcot and his inquiry team, not least because of the difficulties that they have experienced with the illness of some team members. I support the rigorous and forensic way in which Sir John has gone about the process and insisted on the fairness of allowing those who are likely to be criticised in the report the right to respond—the process that is referred to as Maxwellisation. That strikes me as fair.

It is worth the House reiterating and getting behind the offer that my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister made last week of additional resources for the inquiry team’s secretariat. That would ensure that Sir John Chilcot could speed up the process of communications between the team and those given the opportunity to respond if they are mentioned in the report. I have written to senior witnesses including the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to give them the opportunity to clarify that they have responded in a timely fashion to the letters from Sir John. That would enable them to make it clear that any hold-up is not their responsibility. That is important, and I hope that they will take the opportunity to do so.

I do not believe that the House needs to wait to know that the Iraq war was a disastrous episode in British and international history. We have heard that something in the region of 100,000 to 150,000 civilians in Iraq lost their lives as a result of the conflict, and that 179 British servicemen and women died in it. I strongly suggest that the narrative that Islamic State is able to hide behind and run with has been hugely fuelled by the illegal intervention by the United States and United Kingdom in Iraq from 2003 onwards. International law and international institutions were undermined as a consequence of that attack, and in these dangerous and unstable times, the importance of maintaining the integrity of those institutions could not be greater. British interests and influence overseas have been set back by our involvement in that illegal war.

I suspect that the Chilcot inquiry will confirm that the Labour Government were obsessed with the special relationship with the United States and allowed their judgment to be not just clouded but eclipsed, out of a desire to be part of the maybe exhilarating experience of being at one with the leader of the free world. I suspect that it will show that UK foreign policy, going back decades, has tended to be simplistic in simply snuggling up to the United States.

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

I am grateful to my Cumbrian colleague for giving way. Is there not a paradox at the heart of this? One way in which the United Kingdom has responded to the humiliation of Iraq is by reducing our capacity to develop our own foreign policy and missions. If we look at our current position in Iraq, we see that we are in even less of a position today to provide an independent assessment of the US mission and strategy than we were in 2003.

[Tim Farron]

My hon. Friend and neighbour makes a very good point. In many ways, the lessons to be learned from Iraq are about how we exert soft and hard influence throughout the world in a wise way, using methods of diplomacy but acting in concert with regional powers as well as those we have traditionally worked alongside.

It is important to state that I support our relationship with the United States. It is important, and we do have a special relationship. I believe that the United States thinks of the United Kingdom in a specific light, just not as being nearly as significant as we would perhaps like to believe. Our emphasis on the relationship with the United States has been at the cost of our relationship with Commonwealth countries and, particularly, with our colleagues, friends and neighbours in the rest of Europe.

[Mr MacNeil]

Must we not face the fact that post-Iraq, and perhaps with the decline of the imperial mindset, the relationship between America and the UK is in fact that of master and poodle?

[Tim Farron]

One would hope not. One would hope that in any relationship, one good friend tells the other when they are making crass mistakes, rather than just nodding their head and going along with it. The hon. Gentleman’s analogy is useful, and I hope it is not the case, but I suspect that, as he says, we will find out that it was the case in the Iraq process.

[Mr MacNeil]

Is that not exactly what happened in the Iraq debacle?

[Tim Farron]

That is why we need Chilcot, to tell us these things. My assumption is that that is what happened, but I would like to get to the bottom of it, which is why the Chilcot report must come out soon.

I strongly suspect that we will also find from the report that the enthusiasm of, dare I say it, Labour and the Conservatives to stand with George W. Bush in a wrong response to the 9/11 outrages, irrespective of the evidence, was a major factor in why we went to war with Iraq. Among other things, the assurances by the United States that ordinary Iraqis would welcome western intervention with open arms now strike me as having been as faulty as the intelligence on the existence of weapons of mass destruction. Instead of assisting Afghanistan in its fight against the Taliban, we diverted our resources and attention to an Iraqi state that had nothing to do with the 9/11 outrages, although 97% of the US population at the time believed that it did—because, one assumes, the likes of Fox News and George W Bush and his friends said so.

The United Kingdom focused on a lengthy Iraq campaign, before shifting its attention back to the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan in 2006, two wars that pushed our military resources to breaking point. The Iraq war was a shameful blot on our country’s history and indeed the biggest foreign policy disaster since the Suez crisis. As a country and a Parliament, we are now in a position in which legitimate intervention will be much harder. I am proud of my party’s stance against the Iraq war, but I am just as proud of my party’s stance in favour of intervention in the Balkans in the 1990s. I am no pacifist: I am in favour of wise intervention when necessary. But we have been denuded of our ability to get involved in legitimate action when necessary, largely because of this appalling error.

I am proud of my right hon. Friends the Members for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr Kennedy), for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Michael Moore) and, of course, for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) for their leadership of the opposition to the Iraq war. But I am proudest of all of the brave men and women who fought in Iraq. We owe them more than this. We owe their families an explanation and we owe our country the right to hold its leaders to account. We must sort out the delays and publish the Chilcot inquiry before the election.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I think it fair to say that the right hon. Gentleman’s week has not got any better. This was the week in which Myleene Klass wiped the floor with him in a television programme, and this was the week in which an opinion poll in Scotland showed that more people believe in the Loch Ness monster than believe in his leadership. The only problem for the Labour party is that he does actually exist.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

rose—

[Hon. Members]

More!

[Tim Farron]

You are all very kind.

The impact of excessive second home ownership on rural communities is that it removes demand from GPs’ surgeries, village schools, rural bus services and post offices, and those services often close as a result. Will the Prime Minister agree to allow an increase in the council tax on wealthy second home owners in order to create a ring-fenced fund to support those vital rural services?

[The Prime Minister]

We have allowed councils to charge more tax on second homes, and many have taken advantage of that. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that we need to build more houses to ensure that the village school, the village post office and the village pub are given the support that they need, and under this Government that is happening.

Iraq: Coalition Against ISIL

Tim Farron Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Richard Ottaway]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I think he has answered his own intervention. I think the Government should be addressing that and recognising that soft power is now a tool of war, and should be addressed very seriously indeed.

I was saying that our opponents are young and radical. Up against them are the slow, clunking democracies of the west and the civilised world. But these democracies are our strength. This building and our electoral mandate—they give us a legitimacy that ISIL and similar rebel groups will never have, and that is what will ultimately undermine them.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. An important part of all this, alongside the military action that I hope we will endorse today, is the soft approach—the diplomatic record of the United Kingdom in relation to many of the Sunni tribes in the area over which ISIL has control. Is it not important to recognise that ISIL, with its use of social media and its very strong media operation, is effectively an opportunist front for what has been a civil war? We cannot negotiate with ISIL, but we must make sure that we negotiate with and talk to the people in the Sunni community within the tribes in that area.

[Sir Richard Ottaway]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman; indeed, he anticipates what I am coming to in my speech.

The western world agonises about how to respond intelligently and responsibly to these violent threats. I congratulate the Prime Minister on the rational and measured way in which he has assessed the situation and on the leadership that he has shown. A coalition of the willing has been assembled. The response has been prepared. Our thoughts are now with the men and women of the armed forces. This is not going to be an easy campaign. It is going to be messy, it is going to be untidy, and there will, I fear, be fatalities. But this intervention is the very least that a country such as Britain and the United Kingdom should be doing. We are a world leader in the EU, in NATO, and in the G8. We hold down a permanent seat in the Security Council in the United Nations. We derive benefit from all these positions, but they also give us responsibilities, and we have a duty to act.

I have to say, however, that it is of some regret to me, while I recognise the politics, that, we are not authorising action in Syria today. The border between Syria and Iraq has virtually disappeared. It is a sea of human misery. There is open, cross-border movement of people both legal and illegal, military organisations, innocent citizens, and homeless, terrified refugees. It is a seamless conflict over two countries covering thousands of miles and presenting a vulnerability in ISIL’s stretched resources that we are not capitalising on.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is being a little unfair; I think we are making progress on this very difficult issue. At the G8, we raised the importance of having international rules on tax reporting and of more countries working together on that. Huge progress has been made, not least in the European Union, where countries such as Luxembourg and Austria, which have always held out against this exchange of information, are now taking part for the first time. The OECD work is also going ahead apace, and that is partly because Britain has put its full efforts behind this vital work.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Paul Goggins was a decent, humble man and, in my experience, one of the most effective and fair Ministers the House has seen. He will be very sadly missed.

The Prime Minister will know that the science is clear that the extreme weather conditions affecting our communities, including around the Kent estuary in Westmorland, are at least in part a destructive and inevitable consequence of climate change. Given that he has said that this should be the “greenest Government ever”, will he now agree to support the carbon reduction targets so that we can take real action to protect people and property?

[The Prime Minister]

I agree with my hon. Friend that we are seeing more abnormal weather events. Colleagues across the House can argue about whether that is linked to climate change or not; I very much suspect that it is. The point is that, whatever one’s view, it makes sense to invest in flood defences and mitigation and to get information out better, and we should do all of those things. As for carbon reduction targets, this Government are committed to them and we worked with the last Government to put the Climate Change Act 2008 into place. That would not have happened without our support. We also have the green investment bank up and running in Edinburgh, and we are going to be investing billions of pounds in important green projects.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The education maintenance allowance, as proven by study after study, was not targeted at the problem it was supposed to address. That is why it has been replaced by a fund, which is now used at the discretion of colleges to cover classroom costs and transport costs for those students at college who otherwise cannot access it. I hope that the hon. Lady will welcome the fact that we have recently announced—as well as free school meals for all children in the first years of primary school—that we will finally address the inequity of providing free school meals to youngsters from disadvantaged backgrounds at college as well.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Given that one of the key determinants of social mobility is the availability of affordable new housing, will the Deputy Prime Minister disassociate himself from words attributed to the Prime Minister over the holiday period about the Price Minister being opposed to the development of new garden cities to help meet that desperate need? Will my right hon. Friend support proposals to build in fresh places to make our economy stronger and our society fairer?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I have been a long-standing advocate of garden cities. If we are to avoid endless infill and endless controversy about developments that sprawl from already established urban or suburban places, we have to create communities where people want to live—not just with affordable housing, but with the amenities of schools and the infrastructure necessary. That is why I believe in garden cities and why, as a Government, we are committed to publishing a prospectus on them, which I very much hope we will do as soon as possible.