Combat Compensation

Debate between Tobias Ellwood and Mike Gapes

Thursday 20th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr Ellwood]

Yes, if the hon. Gentleman will be helpful and say that he might be reconsidering.

[Mike Gapes (in the Chair)]

Order. I do not think that interventions necessarily have to be helpful.

[Wayne David]

I am so pleased you said that, Mr Gapes. I was not going to introduce party politics into the debate, but as the Minister has done so, I want to make it absolutely clear that the Opposition want fairness and transparency, but that we also recognise that we live in a parliamentary democracy in which the rule of law is a cornerstone. I understand the operational necessities of conflict, but it is important that we always bear that in mind.

Yemen

Debate between Tobias Ellwood and Mike Gapes

Thursday 26th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

I do. People often ask what they can do as individuals, and their contributions, whether financial or otherwise, are certainly very much appreciated. It is also very important that we thank the non-governmental organisations providing the facilities to make sure that such processes can be followed. I pay tribute to Oxfam, which is conducting a conference on this subject today, at which the Minister of State, Department for International Development, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border will be speaking.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister mentioned the discussions within the United Nations. When the Prime Minister meets President Trump, will she emphasise to him the important role that the United Nations has in resolving regional conflicts such as the one in Yemen, and will she tell him not to undermine the UN by cutting the US contribution to it?

[Mr Ellwood]

I read an article, in The New York Times I think, suggesting that there may be such changes. It is important that people not just in America but across the world understand that the United Nations is pivotal as the international forum in which countries can come together to resolve their issues. If it did not exist, we would invent it. However, we must recognise that the troubled period it has had in the past six months or so, because of the use of the veto, means that it is perhaps now time for it to be reinvented.

Aleppo

Debate between Tobias Ellwood and Mike Gapes

Monday 28th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s military experience. The role of the C-130 in conducting these airdrops would be exceedingly difficult. As I have said, we do not rule this out, but it would be a huge challenge. He asks what more can be done. At the heart of this is the role of Russia, which is pivotal in being able to exercise influence over Assad, to introduce a ceasefire and to allow access to humanitarian aid. Unfortunately, Russia has vetoed five United Nations Security Council resolutions, thereby preventing even the most basic humanitarian aid from getting through. The Canadians are now seeking to pursue a General Assembly vote, which, if not in an emergency session, would require half the votes. This would be tricky, however, because Russia would use its influence to prevent it from succeeding. We are collectively looking to see what could happen in this dire situation that is reminiscent of Rwanda and Srebrenica. If the UN machine is not working, we have to find ways of circumnavigating it.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Can the Minister confirm that the action taken in Kosovo did not have a UN Security Council resolution? Many of us called on William Hague, when he was Foreign Secretary in 2011 and 2012, to support no-fly zones similar to the ones John Major had established to protect the Kurds in Iraq. Is it not time for us all to recognise that we have allowed Russia to get into this position because we failed to act, not in 2013, but in 2011 and 2012, when Assad started murdering peaceful protesters? Is it not time to recognise that the UN Security Council is hamstrung and that we need to act, even without a Security Council resolution, to save hundreds of thousands of lives?

[Mr Ellwood]

Following Rwanda, a new international initiative establishing a duty of care was agreed, under which the international community would not stand by when a leader chose to kill his own people. That agreement was introduced so that comments about acts of genocide and other phrases that came out at the time could no longer be used to justify the hesitancy of the international community to step forward. The hon. Gentleman is suggesting that we bypass certain legal processes to move forward. In Kosovo, we had troops on the ground and we had collective international, regional and local support. In Kurdistan, a UN resolution backed the action taken there. He has raised a profound question. Should we go into a situation to do the right thing, even though we do not have international legal cover because such cover has been vetoed by a P5 member at every opportunity?

Aleppo

Debate between Tobias Ellwood and Mike Gapes

Tuesday 3rd May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

I do not agree with what my hon. Friend has said, but I agree with the direction of travel he wants. Russia has influence over Assad. We are speaking with the Russians. John Kerry is in Geneva along with Lavrov, al-Jubeir and others, acknowledging the urgency of getting a renegotiated cessation of hostilities so we can get humanitarian aid back in.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister referred to the long term. Can he tell us how long is long term? He also made reference to the vote in this House in 2013. Is not the real failure the fact that our Government and the United States Government did not impose no-fly zones and humanitarian corridors when they could have done in 2011 and 2012? Now it might be very difficult to do so. That is the real failure. Non-intervention is not necessarily the best policy.

[Mr Ellwood]

I am a former soldier, and I looked at the idea of no-fly zones and humanitarian corridors. I even wrote some papers on it when I was on the Back Benches. The trouble is: who implements them, and what authority would they have to be in the country? We wanted to take Syria through the UN Security Council to the International Criminal Court, and guess who vetoed it: China and Russia. That is the difficulty we have. We have to ask ourselves how we would implement and enforce such a no-fly zone. I concur with the spirit of what the hon. Gentleman says, but these are the realities of where we actually are.

Britain and International Security

Debate between Tobias Ellwood and Mike Gapes

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mike Gapes]

I agree entirely. That was the point of my intervention on the Secretary of State earlier.

The German Government have provided far more weaponry than we have to the KRG in Iraq, but the United States and our Government are still reluctant to directly provide weaponry. The Syrian Kurds may be getting some limited support, but because of Turkey’s concerns and Baghdad’s objections, the Kurds in Syria and in Iraq are not getting what they absolutely need. These are brave people, and they are putting themselves on the line in defence, in the case of the Iraqi Kurds, of a democratic, pluralistic society that welcomes those internally displaced from the rest of Iraq and refugees from Syria.

I, like the former Secretary of State for International Development, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), visited a refugee camp in Kurdistan in 2013. At that point there were only 250,000 Syrian Kurdish refugees inside the KRG. The KRG has a population of about 4 million, but now 1 million people have gone there to seek refuge and survive. They need humanitarian help, but they also need military assistance, which we should be giving directly to help the Iraqi Kurds in their existential fight against Daesh.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Tobias Ellwood)]

I was in Iraq on Friday. I had an opportunity to speak to the Deputy Prime Minister of Kurdistan, and we are upgrading our military contribution. We have to bear in mind that this is not a competition with NATO allies. We are working together on providing important assistance to the peshmerga, an incredible fighting force, but there are requests for Warsaw pact-calibre capabilities. We obviously provide NATO ones, and we have to be careful about what we provide them.

[Mike Gapes]

I look forward to seeing the details. No doubt, as a Select Committee member in future, I will be able to question the Minister on those matters more directly.

Libya is partly our creation. Members of this House overwhelmingly—I was one of those Members—supported military intervention in 2011 to stop the prospect of mass slaughter in Benghazi. An indirect consequence was the downfall of the Gaddafi regime. There was a democratic process and an election, but it all went wrong, and the weaponry that left Libya can now be found throughout north Africa. I saw that myself when I went to Mali.

Libya has played a major role in the destabilisation of democratic, pluralist, modern Tunisia, and the Egyptians are also facing concerns. We have a responsibility to deal with the situation in Libya and to eliminate the potential for Daesh to use it as a safe area. The former leader of the Scottish National party, the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond), was absolutely right to say that we need to look at Libya. I am not sure whether he was advocating military intervention, but that is one interpretation of what he said. I agree that if we are going to do something in Syria, we should also be considering how we can combat Daesh in Libya.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tobias Ellwood and Mike Gapes

Tuesday 22nd July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

7. What the Government’s policy is on the future constitutional and political status of Iraq; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Tobias Ellwood)]

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant poses a threat to Iraq, the region and beyond. I welcome the appointment of a new Parliamentary Speaker last week in Iraq, and hope a new and inclusive Government will be formed quickly. The UK has announced £5 million of humanitarian support for the people of Iraq.

[Mr Ellwood]

If I may, I shall first pay tribute to the work that the right hon. Lady has done. It was a pleasure to travel with her and she is hugely experienced in this area. Unfortunately, the chaos that we are currently witnessing in Iraq is allowing many humanitarian problems to exist and allowing human rights violations to take place. We are working with the Iraqi leaders, and the urgent priority is the formation of an inclusive Government that can command the support of all the Iraqi leaders in the communities, and jointly combat the threat of ISIL. We welcome the fact that Iraq’s new Parliament met on 15 June to appoint a Speaker. The right hon. Lady will know that now the Speaker is in place, a President and a Prime Minister can be appointed. Those are positive steps in moving forward.

[Mike Gapes]

Unfortunately, the Foreign Secretary is not here, but in his last appearance as Defence Secretary, he told me three times that the British Government were in favour of a unified state in Iraq. Is the reality not that a state of Iraq will continue only if there is the loosest possible confederation? Given the facts on the ground, we should be doing far more to support the Kurdistan region, which is democratic and pluralistic, at this time.

[Mr Ellwood]

I was in northern Iraq last month and I was there when President Barzani made the statement of intent to move towards independence. We have heard no more details on that and we will not react to that until something more is forthcoming. However, Iraq needs to be united in tackling the challenges it faces, including the serious threats that are posed not only in Iraq but in the wider region. To achieve that, a new and inclusive Iraqi Government must be formed as quickly as possible, which includes the Kurds. The hon. Gentleman will know from his visits to the country that the Kurds have been distanced from what is going on in Baghdad, as have the Sunnis. Moderate Sunnis have indeed been pushed into ISIL. We are looking for a more inclusive Baghdad Government, which will unify Iraq.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Tobias Ellwood and Mike Gapes

Friday 23rd March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

I am grateful that I was able to catch your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker, in this Hopperesque corner of the Chamber. It is a pleasure to speak in this debate on the Budget and the economy.

During the general election, I made a speech on the economy in which I said that if three MPs were asked the same question on the economy, they would give three different answers. I should confess that I added that if one of the three was a Lib Dem, there might be four different answers. Of course, we are now in coalition, so that joke is probably politically incorrect.

It is day three of the Budget debate and we are beginning to understand the detail of the statement and the impact that the component policy changes will have. Labour is starting to cherry-pick aspects of the Budget, probably to create a distraction from its contribution to the state of the nation’s economy and the inheritance that we received. I can retort by praising the tax breaks for the digital economy, which will help Bournemouth especially because it is thriving in that area; the funds for the Dorset local enterprise partnership; and the raising of the personal tax allowance, which will remove many low-paid workers in Bournemouth from the tax system altogether.

As important as those points are, we should not lose sight of the implication in the Office for Budget Responsibility report that the shadow of the recession that Labour took us into still looms. The eurozone crisis is not over. Oil prices remain high, and could climb higher. Although it has been about four years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the run on Northern Rock, we are certainly not out of the woods. We must not forget the scale of the financial mess that we inherited.

Labour’s approach for a decade was to borrow money that the Government did not have. It allowed the banks to do the same by over-leveraging and lending to people who could not afford it. It is all very well for Labour to blame the rest of the world and the state of the global economy, citing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but there were issues here in the UK for which the Labour Government were responsible. Bradford and Bingley was offering 150% mortgages. That was a UK responsibility. It was happening over here. We cannot blame that on the Americans or on the state of the global economy. Even with the knowledge that the recession was under way and was likely to get worse, Labour kept on spending.

[Mike Gapes]

Is it not the case that, in opposition, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that there was too much regulation by the last Labour Government?

[Mr Ellwood]

I do not agree with that statement at all. It happened under the Labour Government’s watch, and they were responsible. Their Chancellor, who later became the Prime Minister, inherited a stable economy. Indeed, in the first three years of the Labour Government, they actually balanced the books. Then in 2002, they overspent by £19 billion. By 2008 they had overspent by £68 billion, and by the following year they had ratcheted up a £152 billion deficit. That was after Lehman Brothers and Northern Rock. In their final year, they were still spending like there was no tomorrow, ratcheting up a decifit of £145 billion, taking us to an overall debt of close to £1 trillion. That is not good Government responsibility for the economy.

Not until we had a general election and an emergency Budget from our Chancellor, back in June 2010, was there some slowing down in Government spending. He introduced measures to protect the economy and set out a comprehensive strategy, including measures to control public finances and stimulate growth and tax reforms to increase our global competitiveness. Those measures were lacking under Labour, and the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) should ponder them.

I do not have time to go into the detail, but it would be helpful to break the Budget measures down into fiscal and monetary policy. Fiscal policy means the Government expenditure and taxation measures that have a direct effect on the distribution of income, demand and the level of economic activity. Two prime examples are the corporation tax cut, which will make us far more competitive, and the reduction in the top rate of tax to 45p so that Britain no longer has the highest rate in the G20.

By contrast, Labour introduced the 50p rate just before it left office, and it failed to raise the predicted revenues and undermined our competitiveness. Looking back in history, Labour seems to have had a love affair with high income tax rates over the past four decades. It was Wilson who put the top rate up to 83%, and Margaret Thatcher then reduced it to 60% in 1979 and 40% in 1989. What did Labour do when it came into office? It did not put the rate back up again; it kept it as it was. It recognised—certainly Tony Blair recognised—that to remain competitive, we had to have sensible tax rates.

I do not have time to dwell on monetary policy—the supply of money, the cost of money, the rate at which it is controlled, the price that the Government pay to borrow it and the total supply of money into the economy—but it has an impact on matters such as controlling our triple A rating and the price of borrowing. The Government have kept interest rates low and used selective quantitative easing, and that sound monetary policy is moving Britain forward.

This is a radical and reforming Budget that will help Britain earn its way in the world in continuing difficult times. Labour gave us a disastrous economic legacy, for which it is only now, sheepishly, apologising. It led to record debts and a halving of our manufacturing base, resulting in our coming within a whisker of losing our important triple A rating. The Government are at last balancing the books, reforming our tax system, supporting British business and staying on a course towards economic recovery. The OBR has revised upwards its growth forecast for this year. It is low, but nevertheless improving, and the OBR predicts that it will reach 2% in 2013. Labour has proved that we cannot borrow our way out of trouble. This Government are proving that we have to earn our way out.