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2.26 pm
Lembit Öpik (Montgomeryshire) (LD): I think we all agree with the intentions of the proposals; the question is the degree to which they should be mandatory.
As hon. Members may have realised by now, I once worked for a multinational—Procter and Gamble. I chose to work for the company because I thought it acted with social responsibility, even though that was not mandatory. Members may not know that when there is an oil spill, Fairy liquid is used to wash the birds—not for public relations but because Procter and Gamble believes in doing the right thing. It is a shame that we seem to be saying that people will only start to act responsibly if it is made mandatory.
Employees are more inclined to stay with a company if they feel good about its values and feel that it is making a contribution to the community. Procter and Gamble did a lot of outreach work in schools and so on. When the Minister responds, I hope that he will assure us that the Government are not as cynical as that mandatory approach might imply and that he believes that good, responsible companies will act positively because they and their staff want to do so.
I came into politics because I think that human nature is basically good and that people will generally try to do the right thing without needing to have the Government breathe down their neck. Those who want to do
otherwise will always find a way through and, looking at some of the provisions, I am worried that words such as "fairness" could be interpreted negatively by cynics. If the Bill goes into Committee—I am sure that the Minister will keep his contribution brief enough to allow that to happen—it is on such points that we shall push the most.I agree with the intention behind the Bill but, as a Liberal Democrat and a positive politician, I still think that the human race is generous-spirited enough to do the right thing without always having to look over its shoulder for the law.
2.28 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Gerry Sutcliffe): Things are improving. The last time we debated private Members' Bills, I had a minute and a half to wind up the debate; today, I have two minutes.
I never cease to be amazed by the way we manage to get things done in this place. I anticipated making long speeches on previous Bills this morning, but that I would have no opportunity to speak on this Bill. I am delighted that we have been able to debate it, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Andy King) on introducing it. My Department has had a previous opportunity to respond to it, and I am grateful to be able to talk on it today.
There have been tremendous contributions from lots of hon. Members—notably, my hon. Friends the Members for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) and for Brent, North (Mr. Gardiner)—and I would find it difficult, even in two minutes, to respond in the necessary detail to the many issues that they have raised.
There is always a balance. That is why I tried to draw the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) on his views about regulation—
It being half past Two o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.
Debate to be resumed on Friday 30 April.
Remaining Private Members' Bills
PROPERTY REPAIRS (PROHIBITION OF COLD-CALLING) BILL
Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question [12 March], That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Debate to be resumed on Friday 30 April.
Tyrannical Regimes
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Heppell.]
2.30 pm
Mr. Graham Allen (Nottingham, North) (Lab): One year ago, I helped to organise the largest revolt within a governing party in modern parliamentary history: 140 Labour Members of Parliament. We sought to dissuade the Prime Minister from joining President Bush's premature, counter-productive and premeditated war on Iraq. We failed, but those who won the vote also failed. Lessons must now be learned by all of us. Humility is not a quality for which politicians are renowned, but perhaps all of us ought to take a step back to see how we can learn the lessons, how we can move on from where we are now and, above all, how we can unite on how we can better meet the challenge of tyranny next time around.
I totally endorse the Prime Minister's call to reform international law and on the United Nations to find a better way to deal with the next Iraq. Sadly, that was not attempted in the six years before the conflict. In his Sedgefield speech a couple of weeks ago, the Prime Minister certainly talked the talk, but if it is to be more than the rhetoric of triangulation, it must be the prelude to decisive, vigorous executive action, led by the Prime Minister, of the sort that he demonstrated so ably in the prelude to the Afghanistan conflict.
The Prime Minister is right to state that the old doctrines of state sovereignty and territorial immunity are inadequate to tackle tyrannies. Those doctrines should be replaced by international standards, defined and enforced by the United Nations, not by the Bush doctrine—a blanket authority for any strong country to shoot its way into any weak one and depose its Government at a time of its choosing. That way lies international anarchy and the law of the jungle in which terrorism breeds so virulently.
My first question to the Minister runs through my contribution: what action have the Law Officers and the Foreign Secretary and his team taken in this field over the past year? Despite the time that Her Majesty's Government have had to devote to much of the media trivia on Iraq over the past year, can he demonstrate that we have moved on, that we are already acting on the big picture and that we are not just waiting until the Secretary-General's high-level panel reports some time next year?
The Prime Minister's call could not be more timely, for while the Bush doctrine is dead, it needs someone of international stature and a friend of America to give it the last rites and move on to something more sustainable. The Democratic challenger in the American presidential race, John Kerry, has already made it clear that he favours international, rather than unilateral, action to deal with the threats of terrorism and weapons proliferation that confront the United States and the world. That is a key battleground for the American election, and all the American people are looking for a more effective way to protect their security over the next four troubled years. The Prime Minister, therefore, has
a time-limited opportunity to rally American and world opinion behind the logical and compelling proposal to reform international law and to confront the weakness of the United Nations.A robust legal and institutional basis is needed to allow the international community to act quickly and decisively—not qualities that were evident over the past 18 months. However, at the same time, it should not allow individual states to take the law into their own hands. In the terms of the old-fashioned western, nations should act together as a posse not as a lynch mob.
One of the tragedies of the US neo-conservatives' learning-on-the-job philosophy was that the decision to go to war was settled long before the public justification had been devised. From axis of evil to regime change to humanitarian intervention to weapons of mass destruction, the public reasoning and the supporting evidence that was required changed constantly—sometimes from day to day—often contradicting itself, and that inspired the mistrust that divided our Parliament and, indeed, the world.
Where do we go from here? It might be helpful to start from first principles. When might it be right for one state to use force against another? International law already recognises the right of a state to defend itself against actual or imminent attack and the right and duty of a state to defend another from attack. After 9/11, the Security Council acknowledged a new principle. A state attacked by terrorists may take action against any state that harbours them even if that state did not play any direct part in the terrorist attack.
Another situation is when a state commits abominable crimes as an act of policy against people within its own territory. If those people have no hope of relief from those crimes in their own country, they must look outside for protection. States have regularly intervened to protect their own citizens from the crimes of another state, but increasingly they have shown themselves willing to protect other people to whom they have no direct obligation. That has happened in many places, often belatedly: East Timor, Kosovo, and Iraq in relation to the Kurds. There is an underdeveloped but none the less evolving law of humanitarian intervention. It provided the best reason for a timely invasion of Iraq rather than a premature one, although, sadly, that was not the pathway chosen by the allies last year.
The right or duty of humanitarian intervention has also been applied to states living under anarchy rather than tyranny—"failed states" whose Governments lack the strength or will to protect their citizens from civil war, lawlessness, disease or famine. In all those cases, there was a developing international consensus before Iraq that national sovereignty has limits and is subject to conditions.
Indeed, the Prime Minister, by his gruelling efforts on behalf of us all on Afghanistan, had done more than anyone to help the world to build a global coalition against the threat of terrorism. Building that global coalition against terrorism was tragically interrupted and discredited by the misjudgment over Iraq. That coalition must be rebuilt. Our Law Officers and Foreign Office Ministers must now enter a permanent session
with their international colleagues to reform international law and provide a ratchet of graduated practical action through the United Nations.Some of what I propose already exists, but what we need most at the table is the political will to make it work—determined yet painstaking. That is the Foreign Office's, the Prime Minister's and Britain's greatest challenge but potentially their greatest contribution to the new global order. This is not some starry-eyed utopianism that goes back to the League of Nations in the 1930s, but a tough, practical necessity as we count down to the next crisis—and we do not know where that may come from.
A right of intervention, especially armed intervention, must be codified in a reform of the United Nations charter. One possibility is that the UN could declare a state of emergency, but I think that the words have a legal connotation and may not be appropriate. I am sure that the Foreign Office can come up with a better formulation, but that will do me for now. A state of emergency could require the restriction or even suspension of the sovereignty of a member state. It would cover the use of that member state's resources by terrorists, gross human rights abuses by its Government, or an actual or incipient humanitarian catastrophe. Such a declaration might be sought by any member state, including the proposed subject, so that countries in the grip of famine, plague or civil war could ask the United Nations to take control of all or part of their territory.
It should also be possible for the United Nations to hear appeals for such a declaration from oppressed peoples—whether from exile groups or human rights organisations—and to satisfy itself that such appeals are authentic and representative. If we can build a United Nations capable of making such a declaration, it could authorise or enjoin member states to take action to remedy the conditions that had led to it. That might include armed intervention, but the UN would decide what action to take, not individual member states.
The UN might decide not to declare an immediate state of emergency, but to establish instead a clear set of escalating conditions that would lead it ultimately to make such a declaration. The escalator must be made unequivocal. It must be clear to all those, wherever they are on the globe, who tune in to see the debates and hear the decisions that the UN makes on behalf of us all. As far as possible, it must be made invulnerable to the lawyer's wriggles and political spin that so discredited UN resolution 1441, which was twisted into an excuse for war despite earlier categorical assurances that
- "it was not the trigger for war".
The proposal does, of course, raise difficult questions, and it will not be easy. None the less, the concept of a UN state of emergency offers some hope and a way of tackling 21st-century problems by consensus. Its very existence could induce Governments to behave better,
whether towards their own subjects or the outside world. That influence would be reinforced if all member states, including President Kerry's America, accepted the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and stripped members of vicious Governments of any immunity from prosecution.Much more could be said on the matter, but I shall be brief. There is certainly a case for random UN inspections on the use and control of traded weapons of any kind. However, weapons of mass destruction entail a threat of immediate devastation to civilian life on an altogether new and frightening scale. The risk of them falling into the hands of a vicious Government—still more into the hands of terrorists—requires new forms of action by the international community.
Every state in the world should subject itself to a compulsory random and intrusive UN inspection of the kind that we all demanded of Saddam Hussein. The inspectors should verify not only whether a state possesses or produces weapons of mass destruction, but also its systems for controlling them and its doctrines for their use. Biological weapons must also be properly included in such an inspection regime. The UN produced a model of how to do that when the inspectors returned to Iraq and imposed increasingly demanding conditions on Saddam Hussein. Indeed, it is ironic that almost everything that was done in Iraq was a triumph of principle and of lawful and effective action until the premature invasion.
All those ideas are embryonic, but they are not novel. They represent a continuation of valuable developments, from which the Iraq war was an irrelevant aberration, that could quickly be revived and taken forward. They could reunite us behind the lessons learned from error and division.
The task is daunting and epic. It needs prime ministerial focus and energy. The Bush doctrine is dead, and I hope that the proposals that I have set out may form the basis not of the Bush doctrine but perhaps of a Blair doctrine—a return to a strong, independent British foreign policy, making a telling contribution in an ever more interdependent world.
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