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EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES (AMENDMENT) ACT 1993
- That, for the purposes of their approval under section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993, the Government's assessment as set out in the Budget 2003 shall be treated as if it were an instrument subject to the provisions of Standing Order No. 118 (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation).—[Gillian Merron.]
BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
- That, at the sitting on Tuesday 10th June, Private Business set down for Four o'clock by the Chairman of Ways and Means shall be entered upon at the conclusion of Government business (whether before, at or after Four o'clock), and may then be proceeded with, though opposed, for a period of three hours, after which the Speaker shall interrupt the business.—[Gillian Merron.]
FINANCE BILL (PROGRAMME) (NO. 4)
- That the programme order of 6th May 2003, as amended by the order of 8th May 2003, shall be further amended by the substitution in paragraph 3(1) of '17th June 2003' for '12th June 2003'.—[Gillian Merron.]
PETITION
Fireworks
7.25 pm
Mr. Roger Gale (North Thanet): I have the honour to present a petition on behalf of Mrs. Margaret Todd, MBE, the founder and secretary of the Lord Whisky Sanctuary Fund, and of more than 5,000 constituents of my own and other constituents in east Kent.
- To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled.
The Humble Petition of Mrs M Todd, MBE, and others,
SHEWETH
That the setting off of fireworks causes distress and sometimes injury to domestic and farm animals and other wildlife.
Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House will restrict the setting off of fireworks to 5th November and ban the setting off of fireworks on all other days, except for properly organised and licensed public celebrations.
And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c.
Tariq Aziz
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Gillian Merron.]
7.26 pm
Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow): Over 41 years as a Member of the House, I have initiated just over 100 Adjournment debates. On no occasion have I known less about the subject than I do about today's issue of the detention of Tariq Aziz. I do not know where he is. I do not know in what conditions he is held. Is he in Baghdad? Is he in the continental United States? What were the circumstances in which he went into the hands of the coalition? As I understand it, there is a rumour—I cannot say that it is more than a rumour—that his sister arranged for his going into the hands of the coalition on condition that he should have attention to his three heart attacks. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to enlighten us. After all, it is a coalition responsibility, and as a member of the coalition, we are entitled to ask the Americans what they are doing and what they intend to do.
In 1993 and again in 1998 I went to Iraq. On the first occasion I saw Tariq Aziz in his office. On the second occasion, travelling with the former Irish Prime Minister, the father of the peace process, Albert Reynolds, the Taoiseach, we were invited to supper in Tariq Aziz's house. I understand that it was the first time that westerners had been so invited since Edward Heath was invited long before. It was not a particularly sumptuous affair. The meal was made by Mrs. Aziz, with help from a lady who came in.
On that occasion, one of the things discussed at length was Iraq's history. Part of the reason why I was invited may be that my father was the secretary to Sir William Willcocks, the man who did the damming of the Tigris and Euphrates, and was the friend of Leonard Woolley who excavated Ur of the Chaldees and worked for Gertrude Bell, who was Sir Percy Cox's Oriental Secretary.
David Winnick (Walsall, North): Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Dalyell: No, not at the moment, please.
In the circumstances, I feel entitled to ask a rather particular question, of which I have given some notice to the Foreign Office.
The issue that has been raised, and which I raise again, concerns the vital need to protect epigraphic, clay tablet and paper archive written records in Iraq documenting extreme global climate fluctuations in the past 5,000 years. I am indebted to Dr. Richard Grove of the Centre for World Environmental History, whom I have known for a long time, and I put forward his concern.
Currently, human societies face a global climate crisis involving a phase of global warming of unprecedented dimensions. The scientific consensus on this is shown in the official publications of the intergovernmental panel on climate change, and is a consensus with which the British Government implicitly concur in their current and relatively sophisticated policies designed to move towards carbon dioxide emissions reductions.
To understand the likely social, physical and policy implications of the global warming crisis, scientists have no option but to refer to the physical proxy and documentary historical record of previous warming events or other extreme climatic events as analogues of unstable or extreme climate events produced by global warming. For this purpose, the longer the physical or historical record of climate, the more valuable is the analogue for prediction purposes and for the purposes of scientific insight and analysis.
The clay tablet and paper records in Iraq constitute the longest single, largely unbroken climate record known on earth.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but I am having some difficulty connecting the present passage of his speech with the subject of his Adjournment debate, which is about the imprisonment of a particular individual.
Mr. Dalyell: I merely raised the question of the detention of Tariq Aziz, because I know very little about the circumstances. I can only ask the question. However, there is the related question of what is happening to the museum, especially the research that has been carried out in the past decade—and in the past five years in particular—showing that during the past five to 5,500 years—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has vast experience, but nevertheless he is putting me in a difficult position. We cannot have a subject for debate that is put to Mr. Speaker and chosen by him but is the cover for something entirely different. That makes nonsense of the whole system of Adjournment debates. I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that he must speak to the subject that he has given, and not go on to other matters that do not seem to have any direct relationship to it.
Mr. Dalyell: I am always obedient to the Chair. There are other ways of raising the security or otherwise of the tablets. That was a concern of Tariq Aziz. I think that you are being tough on me, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Of course, I obey the Chair. There is an agreement that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) should also participate in the debate.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I do not like to be severe towards the Father of the House, to whose experience I bow. However, I must defend the basic rules of the House. If the subject submitted is the imprisonment of Mr. Tariq Aziz, then that is what we have to debate, and not a related matter, however important in itself.
7.33 pm
Mr. Robert Marshall-Andrews (Medway): I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I hope that you will be as gentle with me as you always have been. I am also grateful to the Father of the House, who has allowed me to participate, albeit briefly, in this short but important Adjournment debate.
I hold no brief for Mr. Tariq Aziz, and I can say straight away that I do not wish to have a brief for him. Equally, I hope that at some stage someone will hold a brief for Mr. Tariq Aziz. If he is to be tried, I hope that he will be tried in all the circumstances that we would regard as humane, humanitarian and in the best traditions of our own form of justice.
That is the matter that causes those of us present a certain amount of concern. There are two questions—a wider and a narrower one. Now that I have reached the grist of what I am going to say, I am pleased to see that the Minister is in his place to hear it. The wider question pertains to the legality of actions taken by the coalition in the invasion of Iraq. We had a debate in the House and views were widely aired on both sides. I have never made any secret of my view that the invasion of Iraq was based on very doubtful legality. Whether that will be shown post facto is a matter that we must now consider, but there is a wider issue of legality and it seems to us that its importance is that the more powerful a man, woman or nation is, the more important it is that legality is observed by that man, woman or nation state.
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