Below is the text of the speech made by Dan Jarvis in the House of Commons on 2 December 2015.
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison).
These are always the most difficult judgments—there is never a perfect solution. I have reflected with the utmost care on the case for extending our airstrikes to target Daesh’s stronghold in Syria, conscious of what I heard at the National Security Council, and mindful of what is best for my constituents and our country. I support the motion, but before I set out why, let me say something about the way in which the debate has been conducted outside the Chamber. Let us be clear: there is principle in opposing military action, as there is principle in supporting it. Everyone must have freedom, either in the House or outside, to say what they believe to be right without fear of recrimination.
The question before us is not whether our country enters into a new conflict—it is whether we extend our existing commitment in a conflict that we cannot hide from. We are already engaged in a struggle with Daesh. Just over a year ago, the House voted overwhelmingly to support airstrikes against Daesh in Iraq. We did so because of the direct threat that it posed to our safety and to global security. Any idea that these fanatical terrorists will leave us alone if we leave them alone is simply misguided. The action that is taking place in Iraq is working.
There is no logic in opposing Daesh only in that country, as it does not recognise any border between its bases in Iraq and its stronghold in Syria. We must confront it over the same territory from which it is plotting attacks against us. The dangers projected from Daesh’s stronghold in Syria have multiplied, and we will not overcome it with piecemeal interventions. That is why I have made it clear that I would only support the extension of military action against Daesh if it was framed in a wider strategy that leveraged all the tools at our disposal.
There is agreement across the House that diplomacy to broker an end to the Syrian civil war must play an essential role. In an ideal world, we would perhaps wait for the transition timetable agreed at the Vienna conference to be concluded, but I do not believe the scale of the threat that we face affords us that luxury. I understand the voices cautioning against our broader engagement, but the test for all of us must be hastening the defeat of Daesh. There is no realistic strategy for bringing about Daesh’s defeat without degrading its command and control structures in Raqqa.
When will we begin that task, if not now? We have a firm legal basis in the UN resolution, and our allies have asked for our help and the capabilities that our brave Royal Air Force pilots can offer in precision targeting. In the words of the French socialist Defence Minister,
“The use of these capabilities over Syria would put additional and extreme pressure on the ISIS terror network.”
If we ignore those calls today, when will we answer them in the future?
I understand hon. Members who have listened to the case for extending airstrikes but who are reluctant to proceed without greater assurances from the Prime Minister about the strategy he is pursuing. In this sense I agree with them. The proposals before us are constructive and, in my view, meet the basic test for extending our action, but they need to be developed if we are ultimately to succeed in overcoming Daesh and restoring peace for the Syrian people. Let me say this to the Government Front Bench: on post-conflict reconstruction, the guarantee of a further £1 billion in humanitarian relief is significant, but we need to hold the international community to its responsibilities to Syria and refugees at the upcoming donors conference in London.
In conclusion, my party, the Labour party, has a long and proud tradition of standing up for the national interest when our country is under threat. When the War Cabinet met in 1940, it was the Labour Ministers Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood who tipped the balance in favour of resisting Nazism. Daesh are the fascists of our time. I believe there is still a dignity in uniting with our allies in common cause against a common enemy in defence of our common humanity. That is what I hope we will do.
Below is the text of the speech made by Gisela Stuart in the House of Commons on 2 December 2015.
It is easy to be brief at this point, because I can honestly say that I agreed with every word of two speeches made by Labour Members. Both my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) made an extraordinary case in explaining why action was necessary, and also why inaction would be so difficult to defend.
The decision that we are being asked to make is particularly important in the light of the social media that now exist. Our email inboxes are full of messages saying, “Don’t do it.” I am relieved that I am being asked not to do it, because I would be deeply troubled if my inbox was full of gung-ho messages saying, “Go and get them.” We have come here to make an extremely careful judgment, and we can only ever make the judgment that is best at any one time.
There are many unanswered questions about the part of the world that we are discussing, and none of us can claim to know what the next steps will be. However, there are some things that we do know, and one of them is that just as actions have consequences, so does inaction. The danger for Governments is not knowing when not to act; given that it is always possible for them to act, they must always ask whether it is the right thing to do. The danger for Oppositions is in thinking that because they are in opposition, it is appropriate always to oppose. Occasionally it is right to do things, and occasionally it is right for an Opposition to support a Government, even when they do not entirely agree with a motion on the Order Paper.
I will support the motion tonight because it is good enough, and it is good enough for three reasons that are closely intertwined. We face a conflict with Daesh, because they are terrorists and bad people with, in my view, no redeeming features. We also face a potential civil war with Assad, and—this has not been mentioned so far—a very difficult conflict involving Turkey and Russia. However, the fact that the situation is complicated does not mean that we should not do anything.
Four things persuaded me that it was, on balance, better to do something than to do nothing. The starting point was the United Nations resolution, which was supremely important. Then there was the fact that our airstrikes are adding capacity, which will enhance the actions that we are already taking in Iraq. If we extend those actions to Syria, we will not only bring something to the table, but strengthen the coalition. As the motion rightly points out, we are looking at a political process. Anyone who has been involved in negotiations knows that military actions will not succeed on their own without a political process. The two go hand in hand, and each enhances the other. That political process will be vital.
There is one mistake that I hope we will not make again. We must not take our eye off the fact that we need functioning state institutions when we take military action. That was one of the errors that we made in Iraq. I hope that it will be different in Syria, because of the work that the Department for International Development is doing, and the work we are doing with the coalition to retain the state structures. We all know we cannot predict what will happen next, but we also know that, whatever happens next, we will be acting with our allies, because countries such as France are calling on us. If the situation had been reversed and the same thing had happened in London, and we asked France for help and it said no, we would have been appalled.
Finally, we have to answer the question: why now? Why do we not wait a few weeks? The dynamic changed when Russia entered the theatre, but most importantly, action is in the national interest, because Daesh’s ability to both operate in Syria and organise terrorist attacks on mainland Europe has increased tremendously. We must act now, because if we want to stop that war, this may not be the perfect first step, but at this stage, it is certainly the best first step that I am being asked to support.
Below is the text of the speech made by Tim Farron, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats, in the House of Commons on 2 December 2015.
As has been mentioned already, the spectre of the 2003 Iraq war hangs over the debate in this House and in the whole country. In 2003, the late and very great Charles Kennedy led the opposition to the Iraq war and he did so proudly. That was a counterproductive and illegal war, and Daesh is a consequence of the foolish decision taken then. Charles Kennedy was also right, however, in calling, in the 1990s, for military intervention in Bosnia to end a genocide there. I am proud of Charles on both counts.
My instincts, like those of others, are always to be anti-war and anti-conflict. In many cases, the automatic instinct will be that we should react straightaway and go straight in. Others will say that under no terms, and not in my name, should there ever be intervention. It is right to look at this through the prism of what is humanitarian, what is internationalist, what is liberal, what is right and what will be effective. I set out five principles that I have put to the Prime Minister. I will not go into all of them here, with the time I have available, but they are available on the website and people can go and have a look at them. My very clear sense is that any reasonable person would judge them to have been broadly met.
James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con):
Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that, unlike the Leader of the Opposition, he and his party supported airstrikes against Daesh in Iraq and that today’s vote is about extending those airstrikes across the border that Daesh itself does not recognise, into Syria, to degrade Daesh as far as possible?
Tim Farron:
I am happy to confirm that.
For me, and probably for many other Members, this has been one of the toughest decisions, if not the toughest decision, I have had to take in my time in this place. The five principles that we have set out have been broadly met, but I will not give unconditional support to the Government as I vote with them tonight. There are huge questions on the financing of Daesh by states such as Turkey, with the trade that is going on there. There are huge questions on the protection of civilians. Yes, a ceasefire, as discussed in Vienna, is the ultimate civilian protection, but we absolutely must continue to press for safe zones to be established in Syria. I continue to be very concerned about the lack of political and state involvement, notwithstanding what the King of Jordan said overnight, by close-by regional states, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. I continue to be concerned about our failure to take our fair share of refugees, as part of the overall EU plan. I welcome what the Prime Minister said earlier, but I want a lot more than just “looking into” taking 3,000 orphan children from refugee camps. I want them here in Britain.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP):
I am very grateful to the Liberal Democrat leader for giving way. Given that he has pressed so hard for the Government to take more refugees, why is he content to bomb that country when the Prime Minister has refused to give that assurance? This is ridiculous.
Tim Farron:
I will come to that in a moment. The reality is that this is a very tough—an incredibly tough—call.
A final point I wanted to press the Prime Minister on concerns the funding of Daesh from within UK sources. I am very pleased to hear that there will now be a full public and open inquiry. It must cut off that which fuels this evil, evil death cult.
This is the toughest call I have ever had to make, certainly in this House. What pushes me in the direction of voting for action is, above all, United Nations resolution 2249, which calls for us to eradicate the safe haven that Daesh has in Syria. The resolution does not just permit, but urges this country and all members capable of doing so, to take all necessary action to get rid of Daesh. If we had just been asked to bomb Syria, I would be voting no: I would be out there demonstrating in between speeches and signing up to emails from the Stop the War coalition. This is not, however, a case of just bombing; this is standing with the United Nations and the international community to do what is right by people who are the most beleaguered of all. I was so proud and moved to tears when I watched at Wembley the other week English fans singing La Marseillaise—probably very badly indeed, but doing it with gusto—and standing shoulder to shoulder with our closest friends and allies. How could we then not act today, when asked to put our money where our mouth is?
What has really pushed me into the position where I feel, on balance, that we have to back military action against Daesh is my personal experiences in the refugee camps this summer. I cannot pretend not to have been utterly and personally moved and affected by what I saw. I could give anecdote after anecdote that would break Members’ hearts, but let me give just one in particular. A seven-year-old lad was lifted from a dinghy on the beach at Lesbos. My Arabic interpreter said to me, “That lad has just said to his dad, ‘Daddy are ISIL here? Daddy are ISIL here?’” I cannot stand in this House and castigate the Prime Minister for not taking enough refugees and for Britain not standing as tall as it should in the world, opening its arms to the desperate as we have done so proudly for many, many decades and throughout our history, if we do not also do everything in our power to eradicate that which is the source of the terror from which people are feeling.
We are absolutely under the spectre of a shocking, illegal and counterproductive war in Iraq. It is a lesson from history that we must learn from. The danger today is that too many people will be learning the wrong lessons from history if we choose not to stand with those refugees and not to stand as part of the international community of nations. This is a very tough call, but on balance it is right to take military action to degrade and to defeat this evil death cult.
Below is the text of the speech made by Cheryl Gillan in the House of Commons on 2 December 2015.
A dangerous and deadly cult is operating within this country, within Europe, and on Europe’s doorstep, and today we will decide whether we duck our responsibilities and do nothing, or whether we extend our military operations and widen our attack on the territories that that cult has taken over. To widen our airstrikes to include Daesh-held areas in Syria is only a small extension of current military activity, and I honestly do not think that this House has ever seen a Prime Minister set out so clearly the detailed options before us today, and his reasons for asking us to support the motion.
In my view, to vote for this motion is to respond positively to the requests of our closest allies in France and the USA. It will add value to current military operations by providing the precision bombing capability and reconnaissance needed to degrade Daesh’s capabilities and remove its leadership, thereby reducing the direct threat to our citizens. That threat is real, present and extreme, and goes from beheading aid workers, to slaughtering holidaymakers on a Tunisian beach, not to mention the seven foiled terrorist attacks from which the brave men and women of our intelligence services and operations have saved us.
Anyone saying that a positive vote tonight will increase the danger here in the UK needs to wake up and realise that the threat is already here, and controlled by Daesh leaders, mostly in Syria. If we add to the forces trying to eliminate that Daesh leadership, we will increase the odds of removing those who orchestrate violence, terrorism and wholesale murder.
I could not support the Government today if I thought that airstrikes would form our strategy on Syria and Daesh in its entirety. However, with the Vienna process and a reasonable estimate of the ground forces that should be available to back up more efficient air activity, I believe that focused diplomacy and military action will complement each other in moving us forward to what we all want, which is a negotiated and peaceful settlement in Syria. Although I admit it is likely that airstrikes will not be enough to eliminate the threat of Daesh, it is important to recognise the role that they can play at this exact time.
Like many hon. Members, I have received representations from my constituents in Chesham and Amersham on both sides of the argument, but after that attack in Paris and the wholesale slaughter of many young people, it has resonated even more with the general public that Daesh is a dangerous force that must be defeated at its roots. As it stands, I think that the best course of action is for Britain to increase its commitment to this complex, difficult and continuing conflict, and thereby increase the odds of improving the safety of our country and of the British people wherever they are in the world.
The Prime Minister knows that we must constantly revise our plan for post-conflict Syria and the whole region, and if we want to see peace in our time, we will need to address that. Tonight I will be putting our security into the hands of our armed services, and I will support the motion.
Below is the text of the speech made by Yvette Cooper in the House of Commons on 2 December 2015.
No Parliament ever takes a more serious decision than what we should do to protect the security and safety of our nation and whether to put our forces in harm’s way. I know that every Member of the House will be weighing that decision very seriously, not least because the truth is that we have got those decisions wrong before, and our Governments have got those decisions wrong before, when we went into Iraq in 2003, but also when we failed to intervene early enough in Bosnia a decade before that.
Since the Prime Minister made his case last Thursday, I have raised a series of questions and sought a series of assurances, some of which I have received and some of which I have not. I do not believe that the Prime Minister has made the most effective case, and so I understand why many in this House feel that they are not yet convinced, but I also feel that I cannot say that the coalition airstrikes that are already under way in both Syria and Iraq should stop. If they are not going to stop, and France has asked for our help, I do not think that we can say no. I think that changes need to be made to the Government’s approach, and I will argue for them. I think that there are more limits in the approach they need to take, but I will also vote with the Government on the motion tonight, even though I recognise how difficult that is for so many of us.
The whole House, I think, agrees that we need a strategy that delivers peace and defeats ISIS/Daesh, but I disagree with any suggestion that this can be done as an ISIS-first, or Daesh-first, approach, because that simply will not work. In the end, we know that the Vienna process—the process to replace the Assad regime, which is dropping barrel bombs on so many innocent people across Syria—is crucial to preventing recruitment for ISIS. If we or the coalition are seen somehow to be siding with Assad or strengthening Assad, that will increase recruitment for Daesh as well.
I disagree with the suggestion that there are 70,000 troops who are going to step in and that the purpose of the airstrikes is to provide air cover for those troops to be able to take on and defeat Daesh, because that is not going to happen any time soon. We know that there are not such forces anywhere near Raqqa. We know too that those forces are divided. The airstrikes will not be part of an imminent decisive military campaign.
But I also disagree with those who say that instead of “ISIS first”, we should have “Vienna first”, and wait until the peace process is completed in order to take airstrike action against Daesh. I think the coalition airstrikes are still needed. We know that ISIS is not going to be part of the peace process: it will not negotiate; it is a death cult that glorifies suicide and slaughter. We know too that it has continuous ambitions to expand and continuous ambitions to attack us and attack our allies—to have terror threats not just in Paris, not just in Tunisia, but all over the world, anywhere that it gets the chance. It holds oil, territory and communications that it wants to use to expand. The coalition cannot simply stand back and give it free rein while we work on that vital peace process.
Coalition airstrikes already involve France, Turkey, Jordan, the US, Morocco, Bahrain and Australia. If we have evidence that communication networks are being used to plan attacks in Paris, Berlin, Brussels or London, can we really say that such coalition airstrikes should not take place to take out those communication networks? If we have evidence that supply routes are being used by this barbaric regime to plan to take over more territory and expand into a wider area, do we really think that coalition airstrikes should not take out those supply routes? If we think that coalition airstrikes should continue, can we really say no, when France, having gone through the terrible ordeal of Paris, says it wants our help in continuing the airstrikes now?
I have continually argued in this place and elsewhere for our country to do far more to share in the international support for refugees fleeing the conflict. I still think we should do much more, not just leave it to other countries. The argument about sanctuary also applies to security. I do not think that we can leave it to other countries to take the strain. I cannot ignore the advice from security experts that without coalition airstrikes over the next 12 months, the threat from Daesh—in the region, but also in Europe and in Britain—will be much greater.
I think we have to do our bit to contain the threat from Daesh: not to promise that we can defeat or overthrow it in the short term, because we cannot do so, but at least to contain it. It is also important to ensure we degrade its capacity to obliterate the remaining moderate and opposition forces, however big they may be. When the Vienna process gets moving properly, there must be some opposition forces; the peace debate cannot simply involve Assad and Daesh as the only forces left standing, because that will never bring peace and security to the region.
If we are to do our bit and to take the strain, we need more limited objectives than those the Prime Minister has set out—to act in self-defence and to support the peace process, but not just to create a vacuum for Assad to sweep into. That makes the imperative to avoid civilian casualties even greater. Where there is any risk that people are being used as human shields to cover targets, such airstrikes should not go ahead however important the targets. It makes the imperative of civilian protection even greater, but that is not mentioned in the Government’s motion. It should be the central objective not just for humanitarian reasons—to end the refugee crisis—but to prevent the recruitment that fuels ISIS.
I also think there should be time limits, because I do not support an open-ended commitment to airstrikes until Daesh is defeated—the Foreign Secretary raised that yesterday—because if it is not working in six months or if it proves counterproductive, we should be ready to review this, and we should also be ready to withdraw. We will need to review this. I think we should lend the Government support tonight and keep it under review, not give them an open-ended commitment that this should carry on whatever the consequences.
Finally, I say to the Government that I accept their argument that if we want coalition airstrikes on an international basis, we should be part of that, but I urge them to accept my argument that we should do more to be part of providing sanctuary for refugees fleeing the conflict. There are no easy answers, but I also say, in the interests of cohesion in our politics and in our country, that the way in which we conduct this debate is immensely important. However we vote tonight, none of us is a terrorist sympathiser and none of us will have blood on our hands. The blood has been drawn by ISIS/Daesh in Paris and across the world, and that is who we must stand against.
Below is the text of the speech made by Alan Johnson, the former Home Secretary, in the House of Commons on 2 December 2015.
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron). During my time in Parliament, it has become a convention that this House authorises military action, whereas previously it was for a Prime Minister to do so under the guise of royal prerogative. Sometimes they would involve the House of Commons; most often they did not. This new convention places a responsibility on Members of Parliament to weigh up the arguments and vote according to their conscience, rather than a parliamentary Whip.
I am not sure if other parties are whipped on this vote or not, but I am pretty sure that nobody in any part of this House would seek to justify their vote tonight by pleading that although they disagreed or agreed with the proposition, the Whip forced them to vote the way they did. On votes such as this, the Whip is irrelevant, except to Front Benchers, perhaps. Although I am grateful to the shadow Cabinet for the free vote my party has been afforded, I do not think it will make the slightest difference to the way we make our decision.
I intend to vote for the motion this evening for one basic reason: I believe that ISIL/Daesh poses a real and present danger to British citizens, and that its dedicated external operations unit is based not in Iraq, where the RAF is already fully engaged, but in Syria. This external operations unit is already responsible for killing 30 British holidaymakers on a beach in Sousse, and a British rock fan who perished along with 129 others in the Paris atrocity a few weeks ago.
It is true that this unit could have moved out of Raqqa, but that is not what the intelligence services believe. The fact is that just as al-Qaeda needed the safe haven it created for itself in Afghanistan to plan 9/11 and other atrocities, so ISIL/Daesh needs its self-declared caliphate to finance, train, organise and recruit to its wicked cause. Yes, there may be cells elsewhere, but there is little doubt that the nerve centre is in Raqqa. Just over 14 months ago, this House sanctioned military action in Iraq against ISIL/Daesh by 524 votes to 43. Nobody expected that action to bring about a swift end to the threat from ISIL; indeed, the Prime Minister, responding to an intervention, said that
“this mission will take not just months, but years”—[Official Report, 26 September 2014; Vol. 585, c. 1257.]
Many right hon. and hon. Members felt at that time that it was illogical to allow the effectiveness of our action to be diminished by a border that ISIL/Daesh did not recognise. We were inhibited by the absence of a specific UN resolution, so there was some justification for this House confining its response to one part of ISIL-held territory in September 2014. There can surely be no such justification in December 2015—no such justification after Paris, given the request for help from our nearest continental neighbour and close ally in response to the murderous attack that took place on 13 November; and no such justification after UN Security Council resolution 2249.
Paragraph 5 of the resolution, which was unanimously agreed,
“Calls upon Member States that have the capacity to do so to take all necessary measures…to eradicate the safe haven they”—
ISIL-Daesh—
“have established over significant parts of Iraq and Syria”.
George Kerevan:
I put to the right hon. Gentleman the point that I would have put to the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett): a similar call from France was met by Germany, which sent reconnaissance aircraft but refused to bomb.
Alan Johnson:
Germany is constrained by its history. The point I am making is that we in this Parliament, having authorised military action by the RAF in Iraq, can no longer justify not responding to recent events by extending our operations to Syria. If we ignore the part of resolution 2249 that I have just read out, we will be left supporting only the pieties contained in the other paragraphs; we will unequivocally condemn, express deepest sympathy, and reaffirm that those responsible must be held to account. In other words, this country will be expressing indignation while doing nothing to implement the action unanimously agreed in a motion that we, in our role as chair of the Security Council, helped formulate.
Furthermore, there is no argument against our involvement in attacking ISIL/Daesh in Syria that cannot be made against our action in Iraq, where we have helped to prevent ISIL’s expansion and to reclaim 30% of the territory it occupied. As the Prime Minister set out in his response to the Foreign Affairs Committee, that means that RAF Tornadoes, with the special pods that are so sophisticated that they gather 60% of the coalition’s tactical reconnaissance information in Iraq, can be used to similar effect in Syria, so long as another country then comes in to complete the strike. That is a ridiculous situation for this country to be in.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab):
Is not the different between Iraq and Syria the fact that we have on the ground in Iraq a long-established ally, the Kurdish peshmerga, who want to work with us? We do not have that in Syria; we have there what the Prime Minister is now describing as a patchwork.
Alan Johnson:
My hon. Friend, as always, makes an important point. I have just re-read the Hansard report of our debate in September 2014, and this point was not raised by anyone. The question of what comes next, which is a very important consideration—concerns have been expressed on both sides of the House—must not stop us responding to what happened in Paris and to the UN resolution’s request for all countries with the capability to act now. The resolution did not say to delay; it said to act now.
I do not think that anybody in this House believes that defeating the motion tonight will somehow remove us from the line of fire—that ISIL/Daesh and its allies will consider us no longer a legitimate target for its barbaric activities. The 102 people murdered in Ankara were attending a peace rally. The seven plots foiled by our security services so far this year were all planned before this motion was even conceived. Our decision tonight will not alter ISIL/Daesh’s contempt for this country and our way of life by one iota, but it could affect its ability to plan and execute attacks. If our decision does not destroy ISIL/Daesh’s capability in Syria, it will force its external operations unit to move and, in so doing, make it more exposed and less effective.
The motion presents a package of measures that will be taken forward by the international community to bring about the transformation in Syria that we all want to see, and it promised regular updates on that aspect. Furthermore, I believe that the motion meets the criteria that many Members will have set for endorsing military action now that the convention applies: is it a just cause? Is the proposed action a last resort? Is it proportionate? Does it have a reasonable prospect of success? Does it have broad regional support? Does it have a clear legal base? I think that it meets all those criteria.
I find this decision as difficult to make as anyone. Frankly, I wish I had the self-righteous certitude of the finger-jabbing representatives of our new and kinder type of politics, who will no doubt soon be contacting those of us who support the motion tonight. I believe that ISIL/Daesh must be confronted and destroyed if we are properly to defend our country and our way of life, and I believe that this motion provides the best way to achieve that objective.
Below is the text of the speech made by Margaret Beckett, the former Foreign Secretary, in the House of Commons on 2 December 2015.
This debate centres on national security and the safety of our constituents. There will be differences of view within and between every party in this House. In good faith and conscience, Members will reach different conclusions. Anyone who approaches today’s debate without the gravest doubts, reservations and anxieties simply has not been paying attention. We are sent here by our constituents to exercise our best judgment—each our own best judgment. This is a debate of contradictions.
The terms of today’s motion, echoing the UN resolution are stern, almost apocalyptic, about the threat, which is described as
“an unprecedented threat to international peace and security”.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) said, the proposal before us amounts to only a relatively minor extension of the action that we are already undertaking. We have been asked to agree to act in both Iraq and Syria, precisely because that is what Daesh does, and its headquarters are in Syria. We have been asked to make a further contribution to an existing international effort to contain Daesh from extending the mayhem and bloodshed that accompany its every move even more widely across the middle east.
Serious questions have been raised, and I respect those who raise them. There is unease about ground forces. There is proper concern about the strategy and endgame, about the aftermath, and about rebuilding. Some say simply that innocent people are more likely to be killed. Military action creates casualties, however much we try to minimise them. Should we, on those grounds, abandon action in Iraq, although we undertake it at the request of the Iraqi Government, and it seems to have made a difference? Should we take no further action against Daesh, which is killing innocent people, and striving to kill more, every day of the week, or should we simply leave that to others? Would we make ourselves a bigger target for a Daesh attack? We are a target; we will remain a target. There is no need to wonder about it—Daesh has told us so, and continues to tell us so with every day that passes. We may as well take it not just at its word but, indeed, at its deeds. It has sought out our fellow countrymen and women to kill, including aid workers and other innocents. Whatever we decide today there is no doubt that it will do so again, nor is the consequence of inaction simply Daesh controlling more territory and land. We have seen what happens when it takes control. The treatment, for example, of groups such as the Yazidis, in all its horror, should surely make us unwilling to contemplate any further extension of Daesh-controlled territory. Inaction too leads to death and destruction.
Quite separately, there are those, not opposed in principle to action, who doubt the efficacy of what is proposed: coalition action which rests almost wholly on bombing, they say, will have little effect. Well, tell that to the Kosovans, and do not forget that if there had not been any bombing in Kosovo perhaps 1 million Albanian Muslim refugees would be seeking refuge in Europe. Tell that to the Kurds in Kobane who, if memory serves, pleaded for international air support, without which they felt they would lose control to Daesh. Tell them in Sierra Leone that military action should always be avoided because there would be casualties. Their state and their peace were almost destroyed. It was British military action that brought them back from the brink.
Of course, that military action took place in conjunction with political and diplomatic activity, and I share the view that it is vital that such activity is substantially strengthened. I was heartened by what the Prime Minister told us today. Our conference called for a United Nations resolution before further action, and we now have a unanimous Security Council resolution. Moreover, that resolution calls on member states in explicit and unmistakeable terms to combat the Daesh threat “by all means” and
“to eradicate the safe haven they have established”
in Iraq and Syria.
Although it speaks of the need to pursue the peace process, the UN resolution calls on member states to act now. Moreover, our French allies have explicitly asked us for such support. I invite the House to consider how we would feel, and what we would say, if what took place in Paris had happened in London and if we explicitly asked France for support and France refused.
George Kerevan:
Will the right hon. Lady give way?
Margaret Beckett (Derby South) (Lab):
I am sorry, no.
These are genuinely extremely difficult as well as extremely serious decisions, but it is the urgings of the United Nations and of the socialist Government in France that, for me, have been the tipping point in my decision to support military action.
Below is the text of the speech made by Sir Gerald Kaufman in the House of Commons on 2 December 2015.
There is of course absolutely no doubt that Daesh/IS is a vile, loathsome, murderous organisation, and the attack in Paris—the murder of 130 innocent people—could just as well have been in London. The choice of Paris was a retaliation against French activity in its region, but that does not justify our taking action unless it were appropriate, relevant and, above all, successful. These people claim to call themselves Islamic, and the Prime Minister talked about reclaiming Islam from them—they do not own Islam. Hundreds of millions of Muslims throughout the world are appalled by their murders, their beheadings, their kidnappings—all the abominable things they do. But our loathing of IS and our wish to get rid of it, to defeat it, to stop it is not the issue here today. The issue here is: what action could be taken to stop IS and get rid of it? I have to say that I do not see such an action.
The Prime Minister spoke about getting a transitional Government in Syria and about the situation in Syria. I have been to Syria many times. I did so with some distaste as shadow Foreign Secretary, as I met leading officials in the Syrian Administration—I knew they were murderers. They murder their own people. They murdered 10,000 people in Hama alone. I would be delighted to see them got rid of, but they are not going to go. There is talk about negotiations in Vienna, but the assumption that somehow or other they are going to result in getting rid of Assad and the Administration is a delusion. Putin, one of the most detestable leaders of any state in the world, will make sure that because they are his allies and they suit him, action against them is not going to be successful.
What is the issue today? It is not about changing the regime in Syria, which would make me very happy indeed. It is not about getting rid of Daesh, which would also make me very happy indeed. It is about what practical action can result in some way in damaging Daesh, stopping its atrocities, stopping the flood of people who are fleeing from it and stopping the people who are flocking to it, including, sadly, a small number of people from this country. If what the Government were proposing today would in any way not simply or totally get rid of Daesh but weaken it significantly so that it would not go on behaving in this abominable fashion, I would not have any difficulty in voting for this motion. But there is absolutely no evidence of any kind that bombing Daesh—bombing Raqqa—will result in an upsurge of other people in the region to get rid of Daesh. It might cause some damage, but it will not undermine them. What it will undoubtedly do, despite the Prime Minister’s assurance, which I am sure he gave in good faith, is kill innocent civilians. I am not going to be a party to killing innocent civilians for what will simply be a gesture.
I am not interested in gesture politics and I am not interested in gesture military activity; I am interested in effective military activity, and if that is brought before this House, I vote for it. When the previous Conservative Government came to us asking for our support to get rid of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, I, as shadow Foreign Secretary, formulated the policy that led Labour Members of Parliament into the Lobby to vote for that. I am not interested in gestures; I am interested in effective activity. This Government’s motion and the activity that will follow, including military action from the air, will not change the situation on the ground. I am not interested in making a show. I am not interested in Members of this House putting their hands up for something that in their own hearts they know will not work, and for that reason I shall vote against the Government motion this evening.
Below is the text of the speech made by Liam Fox, the former Secretary of State for Defence, in the House of Commons on 2 December 2015.
It is very important that the whole House is clear about what this debate is not about. It is not about provoking a new confrontation with Daesh, given that it has already confronted peace, decency and humanity. We have seen what it is capable of—beheadings, crucifixions, mass rape; we have seen the refugee crisis it has provoked in the middle east, with its terrible human cost; and we have seen its willingness to export jihad whenever it can. It is also not about bombing Syria per se, as is being portrayed outside; it is the extension of a military campaign we are already pursuing in Iraq, across what is, in effect, a non-existent border in the sand. I am afraid that the Leader of the Opposition’s unwillingness to answer the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) will give the clear impression that he is not just against the extension of the bombing campaign into Syrian territory, but against bombing Daesh at all, which is a very serious position to hold.
To understand the nature of the threat we face and why it requires a military response, we need to understand the mindset of the jihadists themselves. First, they take an extreme and distorted religious position; then they dehumanise their opponents by calling them infidels, heretics and apostates—let us remember that the majority of those they have killed were Muslims, not those of other religions; then they tell themselves it is God’s work and therefore they accept no man-made restraint—no laws, no borders; and then they deploy extreme violence in the prosecution of their self-appointed mission. We have seen that violence on the sands of Tunisia, and we heard it in the screams of the Jordanian pilot who was burned alive in a cage.
We must be under no illusions about the nature of the threat we face. Daesh is not like the armed political terrorists we have seen in the past; it poses a fundamentally different threat. It is a group that seeks not accommodation but domination. We need to understand that before determining our response.
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con):
My right hon. Friend will know of concerns that Daesh fighters are leaving Syria for Libya in greater numbers. Does he believe that when we are tackling Daesh in Syria, we will have to confront it in Libya at some stage as well?
Dr Fox:
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As I said, we have not chosen this confrontation; Daesh has chosen to confront us—and the free world, and decency and humanity. It is a prerequisite for stability and peace in the future that we deal with the threat wherever it manifests itself.
There are two elements to the motion: the military and the political. On the military question of whether British bombing, as part of an allied action in Syria, will be a game changer, I say, no, it will not, but it will make a significant and serious contribution to the alliance. The Prime Minister is absolutely correct that some of our weaponry enables us to minimise the number of civilian casualties, and that has a double importance: it is important in itself from a humanitarian point of view, as well as in not handing a propaganda weapon to our opponents in the region. Britain can contribute: we did it successfully in Libya, by minimising the number of civilian casualties, which is not an unimportant contribution to make.
We must be rational and cautious about the wider implications. No war or conflict is ever won from the air alone, and the Prime Minister was right to point out that this is only a part of the wider response. If we degrade Daesh’s command and control, territory will need to be taken and held, so ultimately we will need an international coalition on the ground if this is to be successful in the long term. There may be as many Syrian fighters as the Joint Intelligence Committee has set out, and they may be co-ordinating with the international coalition, or be capable of doing so, but we must also recognise the need for a wider ability to take and hold territory. To those who oppose the motion, I say this: the longer we wait to act, the fewer our allies’ numbers and the less their capabilities are likely to be, as part of a wider coalition. If we do not have stability and security on the ground in Syria, there is no chance of peace, whatever happens in Vienna.
On the political side, our allies think it is absurd for Britain to be part of a military campaign against Daesh in Iraq but not in Syria. It is a patently militarily absurd position, and we have a chance to correct it today. But we must not contract out the security of the United Kingdom to our allies. It is a national embarrassment that we are asking our allies to do what we believe is necessary to tackle a fundamental threat to the security of the United Kingdom, and this House of Commons should not stand for it. Finally on that point, when we do not act, it makes it much more difficult for us diplomatically to persuade other countries to continue their airstrikes, and the peeling off of the United Arab Emirates, then Jordan and then Saudi Arabia from the coalition attacking Daesh is of great significance. We have a chance to reverse that if we take a solid position today.
This motion and the action it proposes will not in itself defeat Daesh, but it will help, and alongside the Vienna process it may help to bring peace in the long term to the Syrian people. Without the defeat of Daesh, there will be no peace. We have not chosen this conflict, but we cannot ignore it; to do nothing is a policy position which will have its own consequences. If we do act, that does not mean we will not see a terrorist atrocity in this country, but if we do not tackle Daesh at source over there, there will be an increasing risk that we have to face the consequences over here. That would be an abdication of the primary responsibility of this House of Commons, which is the protection and defence of the British people. That is what this debate is all about.
Below is the text of the speech made by Iain Duncan Smith, the then Leader of the Conservative Party, to business executives in London on 3rd March 2003.
Let me begin by thanking you for his invitation to me to address you this evening.
It was clear to me, within five minutes of arriving here, that foremost in all of our minds is the question of the war. When will it come? How will it go? Where will it end? And just to be clear, I am talking about Iraq!
On that subject, I left on Friday for the Gulf, returning just this morning. I went out there to see for myself our state of readiness, and to lend our own encouragement to the brave young British servicemen and women who have taken up their positions in the desert, awaiting their orders.
Iraq was not intended to be the main subject of my address tonight. However, the war, and related security issues, are a critical factor in the general apprehension that presently grips the business community, the country, and indeed economies – and polities – around the world.
And we have now reached a critical point.
So it is important that I make my position perfectly clear.
Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who tortures and murders his own people and poses a threat to the safety and stability of the Middle East.
Of that, I have absolutely no doubt.
And there are few people in Iraq or among its neighbours who will mourn his passing. I know there is widespread concern about the dangers of war, and where they may lead.
But I believe it will be far more dangerous if we do not act now; if we fail to deal resolutely and unhesitatingly with Saddam, once and for all.
If we don’t deal with him now, our soldiers will only have to go back – in two, or five, or ten years time – just as it is today, after 12 long years of Saddam’s cat-and-mouse game with the UN.
Saddam still holds the power to come clean; to disarm; to pull back from the brink of war, which, as any soldier will always tell you, must always be the last resort.
But he must be left in no doubt that if he does not disarm, after years of terrorism and evasion, after years of unanswered questions – from hidden weapons to missing Kuwaiti prisoners of war – then he will face the consequences.
The reality of the world didn’t change on September 11th. We had already seen the signs – the new threats had already made themselves clear. What happened on September 11th is that our understanding of the world caught up with that reality.
So this is now a crucial test. There are things at stake here — and not just for Britain and the United States — that go well beyond the outcome of this crisis. There is the credibility of the United Nations and the Security Council as instruments of international security.
There is the future of the Transatlantic relationship – which, given the importance of France and Germany in Europe and their appalling behaviour over the issuing of defence missiles to Turkey – can be said to be at its lowest ebb in 40 years. And there is a burgeoning threat to civilised, democratic values and their preservation and advancement around the world.
This is now our chance to send a very clear message to Saddam and beyond. It is, I repeat, a crucial test. We must be resolute in our determination to disarm Saddam by whatever means prove necessary, or fail it.
I want to turn, now, to our domestic concerns.
Our country faces great challenges at home – challenges which represent real threats to our day-to-day lives, and to our future.
The sooner we can return our attention to these challenges, the better it will be for all of us.
Now you will all be able to guess what I think of this Labour Government. I think this Government is hell bent on a massive programme of tax and spending, regardless of the results.
I think it is obsessed with centralised control – with targets and micro-management. I think it is wasteful – careless with your money. I think this Government is just like Labour Government have been and always will be. There is a continuity of behaviour that no amount of spin can hide.
As a politician I always have to take a moment to get the rhetoric off my chest. But I’m sure you are here for some more thorough analysis.
And in that regard, I want to make two assertions tonight –
The first is this: –
That the Labour Government has gambled its entire economic strategy on an assumption that it can continue to take more and more tax – currently £109 billion more – and that businesses and people can continue to afford it. Moreover, that if it continues to spend more and more money on the public services, they will continue to improve. They have failed and we are now paying the price.
But whereas they believe you should now be paying the price for their failure through higher taxes…
We in the Conservative Party believe – and I think the general public is coming to believe – that Labour should pay the price at the next election — by being thrown out.
My second assertion is that there is a critical connection between the state of Britain’s public services – services which Labour, despite its promises, has utterly failed to improve — and our ability to compete on the global economic playing field.
As a nation, we are now less competitive and less productive than we were in 1997. Britain must regain the competitive ground it has lost over the past six years – but it can only do so under a Conservative government committed to the reform and improvement of the public services.
So, my first assertion… Labour has gambled on a tax and spend policy, and failed. What does that mean?
Well, for that we can turn to the record.
Labour came to power saying: ‘We’ve no plans to increase tax’. Since 1997 they’ve raised the national tax bill from £270 billion to £380 billion. Next year, it will rise to £405 billion – a 50 per cent cash terms increase since 1997.
What that means is that in the past five and a half years the price per household for Government services has gone up from £11,000 to £16,500 a year.
Does it feel like we have had a 50 per cent improvement in those services?
This April’s tax increase comes in the form of National Insurance contributions – another £4 billion a year from employers, and £4 billion a year on top of that from employees.
It’s a straightforward tax on jobs and pay. Gordon Brown may have talked about an increase on National Insurance of just one penny, but the total effect is equivalent to raising the basic rate of income tax by 3p.
In 1997, the Labour manifesto said: ‘The level of public spending is no longer the best measure of the effectiveness of government action.’ And: ‘New Labour will be wise spenders, not big spenders.’
In 2002, the Chancellor committed the government to – in his own words – ‘vast increases’ in spending over the next few years.
So from this April, as the extra jobs tax kicks in, the Labour Government will break though the 50 MPH barrier.
It will be spending more than £50 million pounds an hour – that’s almost 50% faster than the rate of spending in 1997 before they came to power.
On the health service alone, spending will have risen 70% in real terms by the time of the next election.
They have pumped money into the health service in a desperate attempt to show they care, that they are doing something, never mind about the results.
This in spite of a promise by Gordon Brown not 15 months ago that “there will not be one penny more [spent on the Health Service] until we get [the] changes [that] let us make reforms and carry out the modernisation the health service needs”.
They hit pensions funds while the market was at its peak and when only so-called ‘fat cats’ would complain. And because pension funds were apparently in surplus, Gordon Brown had the gall to call it a reform.
But it wasn’t a reform, it was a tax, plain and simple. Not only that, but the markets have since gone into reverse with the FTSE falling much further and faster than the Dow Jones.
Private pensions have halved since those heady days – but Mr Brown’s still raking off his £5 billion quid. This tax has had two further knock-ons.
First, companies contributing to pension funds have to replace that £5 billion, reducing their profits, and knocking about £80 billion off share values.
Second, removing the dividend tax credit has reduced the relative attractiveness of UK equities compared to bonds and overseas equities.
Unintended as these consequences may have been, they are the product of an arrogant attitude to policy making. And they have made the prospect of retirement a source of fear and anxiety for millions of hard-working people.
This pensions debacle speaks precisely to the reasons which underlie the larger failure of Labour’s tax policies.
For a start — they assumed the great bull market of the late 1990s would run and run and run.
They assumed that as the economy continued to grow, and incomes continued to grow, that they would be able to take more and more money out of British enterprise in tax, and no-one would notice.
And so they took decisions – to tax, to regulate, to spend — whose consequences they thought would be covered up, or softened up, by a growing economy.
They assumed that instead of putting in the hard work, and making the hard choices, to reform and improve our public services, they could exercise the soft option — making pledges, announcing targets, introducing schemes, undertaking initiatives.
They assumed that glittering promises and finely-spun excuses would make an effective substitute for hard results.
This has been a fatal misjudgement; policy-making at its most arrogant and most injudicious.
Policy-making, my friends, that has proved wholly unsustainable: Because we know that you cannot spend more and more money – and note that I say spend money and not invest it, – you cannot spend far faster than you are earning, while delivering less and less return on that spending, and not expect to be caught out when the market turns against you.
And now the market has turned. The gamble has failed. A flawed policy, founded in the most basic error, has run aground. The damage is done.
And there is much more damage to come – for businesses, for taxpayers, and for our public services.
Because, at precisely the moment when the economy has just grown at its slowest rate for a decade, and businesses and consumers alike are gripped by uncertainty, the Government – instead of consolidating; reassuring; being a rock of stability – is planning to do precisely the opposite. It is about to embark on a tax and spend experiment of such unprecedented scale that the Health Secretary himself – whose department will most benefit – is known to have grave concerns that the money will be wasted.
And there is every likelihood that this will indeed happen. Good money will be thrown after bad. Because Labour has balked at the hard job of introducing into the public services the efficiencies needed to ensure that they can use the new money to best effect.
You, as businessmen and women, as leaders of British enterprise, will have seen too many disquieting parallels.
Companies which assumed the old and unforgiving rules of economics had somehow been suspended.
Executives who pursued disastrous strategies.
Who re-engineered corporate finances to breaking point – Then when it all snapped, destroyed the wealth of millions of stockholders, and were disgraced and dismissed.
I think it’s time we understood this Labour Government in the same way.
They had so much going for them – a golden economic legacy, the vast goodwill of so many in business and among the electorate, two landslide election victories, a massive majority in the Commons.
They have squandered it all.
They have failed to deliver.
They have destroyed wealth, not created it.
Indeed, ironically, it is their very policies that have helped create the malaise that is now catching them out.
At the earliest opportunity, they should be dismissed.
Let me turn now, to my second assertion – that there is a critical connection between the state of Britain’s public services – services which Labour, despite their promises, have utterly failed to improve — and our ability to compete on the global economic playing field.
Let me explain my view of how that connection is made.
In 1997, Britain voted for a change.
It is not my job to tell Britain that it was wrong to make that choice. It is my job to understand why Britain made that choice.
We could understand the lure, for many voters, of more money for schools and hospitals and more support for patients, parents and the lowest earners.
But something deeper was going on. Across the board, people were coming to recognise that being able to compete had to be about more that just economic efficiency.
To compete meant being a country where people wanted to live, where people were optimistic, where businesses would choose to locate their operations.
A place that would attract and retain the best talent and the most investment. A place with something extra to offer.
To compete meant being a nation with a well educated, highly qualified workforce that didn’t waste weeks every year, off sick, or stuck in traffic jams.
People had come to understand that the poor quality of our public services was holding us back.
Britain needed better public services, a better quality of life.
For years, we had worked hard to improve our standard of living.
18 years of Conservative Government had yielded a wonderful legacy – we had taken the sick man of Europe and turned it into a wealthy, enterprising and confident nation.
But there was work still to do.
In 1997, the debate was shifting from standard of living to quality of life.
Tony Blair took advantage of this and, on the promise of delivering a better quality of life while not threatening our standard of living, he carried the country on a tidal wave of support.
His use of pledges and slogans was brilliant, and helped him to capture the imagination. But all this did was mask his party’s true colours.
So unfortunately, we’re now no further on than we were six years ago. In fact, we’ve fallen further behind.
Britain is a country where people are afraid to fall ill; where their children are not guaranteed a decent education; where our infrastructure – from the transport system to our local communities – is falling apart.
Over a million people are still on hospital waiting lists, waiting for treatment in a health service that now has more administrators than it has beds.
If you need an operation in France, the maximum wait is four weeks. If you need one in Britain, the average wait is 4.3 months.
In Accident and Emergency, NHS patients have to wait hours – first just to be seen, then to be admitted. In Germany, all patients are seen within minutes of arrival.
And all this despite a dramatic increase in resources. Over the last two years, health spending has gone up by 22 per cent. And what did it deliver? A paltry 1.6 per cent increase in hospital treatments, and a half-percent decline in hospital admissions.
Our education system is leaving more and more children behind.
One quarter of 11 years olds leave primary schools unable to read, write and count properly.
30,000 young people leave school each year without a single GCSE. The gap between inner city school and the rest is getting wider.
The failure of our schools to deliver for all is no good for business and no good for society.
As for crime, despite all of Labour’s pledges, it keeps getting worse. Gun crime soaring, robbery way up, domestic burglary up, drug offences up.
A crime is now committed every five second in England and Wales.
So Labour’s policies have had little impact – the challenge to improve British people’s quality of life remains.
But meanwhile, what other competitive advantages we did have are being eroded.
The burden on business is up, and our competitiveness and productivity growth down.
The CBI believes Labour’s new regulations alone have added £15 billion to the cost of doing business in Britain.
And since 1997
– we’ve lost over half a million jobs in manufacturing,
– we’ve seen the number of days lost to strikes increased sixfold
– and we’ve fallen from 9th to 16th place in the World Competitiveness rankings.
Over the last year, business investment has fallen at its sharpest rate for more than three decades.
As a global competitor, we have lost a lot of ground.
With taxes up, we’re a more expensive place to do business.
With regulation up, we’re no longer an easy place to do business.
With our public services in decay, we’re no longer a magnet for the world’s top talents and skills.
Instead, we have a government that has so completely lost control of its own policies on asylum that Britain has become the destination for a flood of economic migrants – more than 100,000 last year alone, who put further pressure on our straining services and finances.
These are the issues to which a Conservative government will give priority.
What does this mean for business?
First, we are, by nature, a party of lower tax.
It flows from our belief in smaller government, greater individual liberty, and greater personal responsibility.
It flows from our belief that governments should measure success not by how much they spend of your money, but how well – and how carefully – they spend it.
And our belief – also — that low-tax economies are more efficient, and more competitive, than high-tax economies.
Second, a Conservative Government will not be trying to second-guess everything you do. We will not be over-interfering in the way you run your businesses.
And unlike the Labour Government, we mean what we say when we say that we’ll cut red tape, and we’ll ask for your advice on how to do it.
Thirdly, on public services we are committed to a strategy of reform, widening choice, and rooting out waste.
Up and down the country, Conservative councils are putting this approach into practice and using people’s money more carefully.
What sets us so completely apart from Labour is that we understand how important it is to have a holistic approach. Without strong businesses, you cannot have a strong economy.
Without a strong economy you cannot have strong public services. Without strong public services, you cannot have strong businesses. And without all these things you can’t have a strong country. This, I hope, is in our future.
But there is still today to contend with. Indeed, we have two to three years of this Government still to run.
The Chancellor has already badly miscalculated.
His tax and spend gamble has failed. It is clear that more money alone is not the answer to better healthcare. Or to improving any other public service for that matter.
But on the way to finding this out, Mr Brown and Mr Blair have damaged us. Undermined our competitiveness and left us all poorer.
The Chancellor’s policy is running into heavy weather. Already holed below the waterline, he now risks steering the country onto the rocks.
It is not too late to change course. Indeed he has a month left to scrap his new tax on pay and jobs. He still has time to admit that his failed policies are damaging the economy – and to recognise that our public services need real reform.
But what concerns me now, and you may share this concern, is that he will not change course in time, and that before someone else gets the chance we will already have run aground.
