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22 Jan 2003 : Column 360—continued
3.56 pm
Mr. Mike Hancock (Portsmouth, South): I am delighted to get the opportunity to speak in this debate. I echo the sentiments of the Secretary of State and the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman in paying tribute to Lord Robertson. I am desperately sorry that he could not be persuaded to take a second term as NATO Secretary-General. I think that all of us would have welcomed that, and that we all appreciate his work in bringing NATO together and making it a more positive force than it has been for some time, especially from a political point of view. He will be sadly missed, and a very tough act to follow.
I also congratulate the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) on his speech. I am disappointed that he is not present just now. I share many of the sentiments that he expressed, and I am sure that many other hon. Members do too. I am a member of the NATO parliamentary assembly, and I am always amazed by the extent to which members of the US Senate and Congress fail to understand why so much of the rest of the world has a problem with the actions that America has taken. In the US, American citizens are even more resentful of the fact that a sizable chunk of the rest of the world does not always perceive their country as a power for good.
The hon. and learned Member for Medway and I are the same age. We grew up seeing the goodness that can come from the US, as well as the awful mistakes made over the past 50 years by various Administrations. I grew up in Portsmouth, and I have often stood on the beach and on the old town's fortifications to wave off Navy and other personnel, among them members of my own family. My earliest recollection is of waving my father off to the Korean war, along with thousands of other servicemen.
A week or so ago, I was there to see the Ark Royal leave. The crowds were as big as usual. Various television crews were interviewing Portsmouth residents and the families of the service men and women on the aircraft carrier. Not a person there did not wish the crew all the best and godspeed, and hope that all of them returned safely. There was no dissenting voice to be heard.
For the first time in my experience, however, I heard serious doubts being raised by the families of the service personnel, in response to questions asked by the
domestic and foreign media crews recording the occasion, about the logic and the aims of what those young men and women were being sent to do. Serious questions were asked. My local newspaper has supported the armed forces historically, and still does, but its editorial that week was very questioning of the Government's motives. We need to examine and get answers to these serious questions.Since 1996, there have been outstanding UN resolutions concerning attacks on Iraq that would have given the same mandate as the Government now suggest they need to use force in Iraq. However, there was no move to enforce those UN resolutions. For some mysterious reason, five or six years elapsed. If one were really cynical, one might think that someone explained to President Bush in the middle of last year that it was going to be very unlikely that he was going to catch Osama bin Laden, which would be a real failure for his Administration and for him. Perhaps he needed a target that was more achievable than the capture of bin Laden. There was then the zeroing-in on Iraq.
The British people, have rightly, demanded that the evidence be forthcoming. Earlier this week, I asked the Secretary of State whether he was satisfied that the right message was being given to people inside Iraq and in the surrounding countries as to why we were sending 30,000 men and women to the Gulf for a potential war with Iraq. He said that he believed it was. That is different from what one hears when one talks to people from the region.
I was in my hospital in Portsmouth at the end of last week, where I spoke to an Iraqi who works there and who told me his family's story about the situation there. I spoke to another Iraqi—a UK citizen, but a former citizen of Iraq who has been in the UK for more than 25 years—who told me of the spin that is put on this subject inside Iraq. Little or no effort is being made to put the Government's case, or the United States Government's case, to the people of Iraq. There is a great deal of ignorance. We will not win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people by convincing the dissidents outside Iraq of the justification of the case. The main bulk of the people within Iraq do not understand or appreciate the sentiments that the Prime Minister and others portray time and time again.
Today, the Secretary of State virtually dismissed the public opinion polls; he said that he had seen the latest one. He cannot have seen The Guardian poll, which was quite clear; 47 per cent. of the British people said that they were not in favour of a war and 81 per cent. said that they would not support a war unless there were a second resolution. The Prime Minister had a question and answer session with Select Committee chairmen, a newspaper report of which said:
- "But again Tony knows best. He said yesterday that the new UN resolution would be "desirable", but that the UN will not be allowed to stand in the way of dealing with Saddam Hussein."
Huw Irranca-Davies : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Hancock: We do not have enough time to take interventions and, to be fair—[Hon. Members: "We get injury time."] If we get injury time, I welcome the opportunity of giving way.
Huw Irranca-Davies: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way; the time that I take will be added on at the end of his speech. While I and many others agree that it would be good to have a second resolution, what would be the Liberal Democrat position if all bar one of the United Nations members said that they agreed that there was a case for tackling Saddam Hussein?
Mr. Hancock: That will largely depend on who the one is and their reason for objecting. What the hon. Gentleman has got from me is a lot closer to an answer than anything that any of us have got from the Prime Minister. If the Prime Minister had gone that far, I think that some of us would have been appreciative, but sadly he has not even been prepared to take that question on.
Are we convinced as a nation that we have given all the information that is available to us to the UN inspectors? Has the United States given the UN inspectors the best possible chance to achieve their goal? It is very difficult to get anyone to give a straight answer to that question. If we are sending people to a country such as Iraq—in some instances possibly even putting their lives on the line—to seek out information, and we claim as a nation and a Government, as does the United States, that we have that evidence, and that it is strong and compelling enough for us to send 30,000 people halfway around the world to fight a war, have we left it to the 300 or 400 people on the ground in Iraq to prove it? The answer is that the Government have not given the House an assurance that they have made that information available.
Mr. Joyce: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that if there were such excellent intelligence, if it were given to 400 people it might just possibly be compromised in one way or another?
Mr. Hancock: The likelihood of compromise is always there; our own Security Service has been compromised many times in the past 50 years in various ways. However, if we are to take on a whole country, we must also define the targets that we shall bomb. Presumably those targets will be where we suspect the weapons to be hidden, and I think that we have a right to expect the inspectors to have at least a level playing field in which to operate.
In the few minutes remaining to me, I want to mention the current debate, in the House and in my city, over the future contracts for the two aircraft carriers. The matter is unrelated to Iraq, but it does affect jobs in our area. At the end of the day, the Government will have to decide whether BAE Systems or Thales gets the contracts, and they must make their choice for the right
reason, for the right price and for the right product. We need to know that the decision is based on those criteria and not on a vendetta between the Secretary of State and the chief executive of BAE Systems, or on the fact that BAE Systems has done a good wrecking job by suggesting that Thales is a foreign company, although it is itself 54 per cent. controlled by people outside the UK. The Government must insist that the successful contractor live up to the expectations of the House, of the Government and, more important, work forces in shipyards all round the country, and that work for those carriers is evenly spread around the United Kingdom, which of course includes Vosper Thornycroft in Portsmouth.4.8 pm
Mrs. Alice Mahon (Halifax): Today the German Chancellor and the French President have pledged to work together to prevent a war in Iraq, and the contrast between their courage in standing up to the United States, and our Government's position could not be greater.
Resolution 1441 is not a resolution for war. It does not authorise military action and the Government know that it does not. It does not contain the automatic trigger that the United States wanted; it simply requires that the Security Council must meet if a breach is thought to have taken place.
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