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Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold) (Con): It is a great pleasure to follow the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Iain Wright). I remember as clearly as if it were yesterday making my maiden speech from almost the place where he is now sitting, some 12 and a half years ago. He made an excellent speech. I participated in the by-election campaign. It was an excellent, clean campaign, and I pay tribute to him for that. If anyone other than our candidate had to win, we would have wished it to be him, and I congratulate him. I also pay tribute to the warmness and openness of the people of Hartlepool. They are delightful, and he is privileged to represent them. I can also attest to the variety and excellence of the hostelries in his constituency.
I would like to correct just one thing that the hon. Gentleman said, however. He seemed to think that history began in Hartlepool in 1997. In fact, one of the biggest acts of regeneration there was carried out by the Conservatives in the 1980s, in the form of the Queen Victoria marina. No doubt the hon. Gentleman will oversee the continuing regeneration of the chemical
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industries that have been running down, and the development in his constituency of the new tourist revival that was very evident from what we saw. I congratulate him and hope that he will have a long, happy and successful career in this place.
Before I turn to the rest of my speech, I want to reiterate the concern of the House for the safety and well-being of Margaret Hassan. If anybody was trying to bring help and benefit to the people of Iraq, it was her, through her humanitarian work. We send her and her family every possible sympathy and wish them a successful outcome.
The need for us to consider defence matters has perhaps never been more pressing than it has been in the period since the collapse of the Soviet Union. We face a disparate and hugely varied array of threats that is almost unprecedented in post-war history. Yet the Secretary of State told me on 15 September 2004 that he could not understand anyone making the point about overstretch. If we add to that the Prime Minister's commitment to our African unity force, and the Government's proposals to reduce the number of armed troops through the amalgamation of regiments, we begin to see that our troops—who are among the most professional in the world, if not the most professional—are perhaps not being treated in the way they deserve.
We were informed by the press—not by the Secretary of State for Defence or the Prime Minister—that a decision had apparently already been taken last week to redeploy 650 Black Watch troops to the central region of Iraq. The Secretary of State has told us today that those troops will not be taking their heavy armour. We have not been given a specific answer as to who will provide air cover, logistics and communications support. If they are to take only their Warrior trucks, what sort of a force are they? Are they a heavy armour force, and who will supply the air cover, logistics and communications support? Given the possibility of a serious incident—these troops are going into a more dangerous area—we and the general public deserve to know the answers to those questions.
What will the Government do to the Black Watch, following their valiant service in Iraq? Not only the Black Watch but the Royal Highland Fusiliers, the Highlanders and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, following their valiant service in Iraq and elsewhere, will return home and be amalgamated. That is a disgrace.
We should note the unsurprising risk of a yawning time gap between the mothballing of our aircraft carriers and the hoped-for introduction into service, by 2012 at the earliest, of their replacement. There is also the risk that the Government will fall into the traps created by their failed smart procurement programme. As we have heard today, both the Chief of the Defence Staff and the Chief of the Naval Staff are worried about our ability to carry out wholly autonomous operations in future. In stark contrast, we Conservatives have an effective and broadly welcomed policy. This country's armed forces are among the best trained in the world and we owe them a great deal. Because of this debt to those willing to serve our country, it is the duty of the
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Her Majesty's loyal Opposition to question the Government about the technical capabilities that we provide them with.
On Iraq, in September 2002—well before the war—I made a speech in this House in which I said that I doubted whether there was anything new in the dossier, or whether there were any weapons of mass destruction. In November 2002, I called for a comprehensive plan of reconstruction and renewal for Iraq. Indeed, it is this issue that demonstrates one of the Government's biggest culpabilities. Before they took this country to war in Iraq, they did not have a clue how to reconstruct the peace, and that reconstruction is still going on at a very slow pace. We need, for example, to ensure that the infrastructure—the sewerage, lights and power—is improved, so that everybody's daily life is improved. Only in that way will the Iraqi people feel more likely to support a democratic government.
Furthermore, if the people of Iraq are to be reassured that we are not occupiers but peacekeepers, we must build a more broadly based peacekeeping force. That will involve taking action through the United Nations to ensure that more Asian countries commit troops to that force. I believe that they would be willing so to commit. That would bring two benefits: it would provide greater reassurance to the people of Iraq, and release troops for deployment in other areas of the world.
We must build relationships with Muslim organisations in this country and abroad. If we can build a much broader consensus with the Arab world, we will face the threat of world terrorism with a much more positive view. In that connection, I support the Prime Minister's efforts to secure a Palestinian peace initiative. I hope that one of his first actions following the election of the next American President will be to telephone him not only to congratulate him, but to say that now we must seize the initiative in order to bring about a middle east peace settlement. The entire middle east is in a very fragile state. Not only is Iraq, whose oil reserves in the south we have done so much to guard, fragile; the situation in Saudi Arabia is very fragile, and there is a particularly difficult and emerging situation in Iran, Iraq's neighbour.
We know that Iran has been building up its armed forces and its nuclear capability, so it is vital in any peace reconstruction effort—particularly if we are eventually to withdraw our troops from Iraq—that we build better relations with Iran. We must find a way, working with our allies and through a broad-based coalition—including the French, Germans, Russians and Chinese—to exert diplomatic pressure on Iran to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency full and open access to Iran's nuclear programme.
Iran is currently the second biggest exporter of oil in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries cartel, and we must find a way of gaining an assurance that its desire for nuclear power is purely to supplement its locally abundant energy force. To date, Iran's somewhat dangerous behaviour and failure adequately to fill in the gaps in its report to the IAEA has been the result of a number of domestic factors. Most prominent among those has been the influence of Iran's religious and political supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who has consistently, if gradually, increased the power of the conservative factions within his country's governing elite. We must build better relations with Iran.
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I hope that the deployment of an extra 650 troops into the central and more dangerous part of Iraq is not a prelude to deeper involvement in the general morass of Iraq. We must try to build a democratic Iraq, but it will be very difficult indeed to achieve that. Perhaps a federated structure granting some degree of autonomy to the different parts of Iraq may be the way forward. Our Government must work hard if we are to avoid being embroiled in another Vietnam situation. Above all, we must have some idea of an exit strategy, which relies on having strong Iraqi leadership—including strong police forces and armed forces—so that Iraq can be all the more stable in future.
4.17 pm
Llew Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab): When I participated in last year's debate on defence, I mentioned that there seemed to be a reluctance to debate the whole issue of nuclear weapons. In retrospect, I suppose that I have been proven wrong, because for the past 12 months we have spent many hours in the Chamber debating nuclear weapons. Sadly, the nuclear weapons that we debated were the mythical Iraqi nuclear weapons of mass destruction.
It was obvious from the Secretary of State's opening speech that there is still a great reluctance to debate, or even mention, nuclear weapons. I do not think that he mentioned them on a single occasion in his speech. We should debate that subject. We should debate our own nuclear weapons. We should debate Trident, which has been dubbed the £15 billion mass killer. We should debate the tens of thousands of nuclear weapons deployed by the US and Russia.
We should also debate the 200 nuclear weapons deployed by Israel. We should never forget Mordecai Vanunu, who spent 16 years of his life telling and protesting the truth about Israel's nuclear weapons while all those around him were lying. Although he has been released from one form of imprisonment, he is now faced with another—being unable to leave Israel.
I make no apologies for returning to the question of nuclear weapons today. It was interesting to hear the Secretary of State's admission, on previous occasions in response to my questioning, that he was willing to press the nuclear button. He has said that he would be willing to be involved in what would be the greatest act of murder ever committed in the history of this beautiful planet of ours. However, he remains reluctant, and still refuses, to mention the sort of circumstances in which he would be prepared to use nuclear weapons. He still refuses to tell the House who the enemy is, against whom those nuclear weapons are directed, and against whom they would be used.
The Government's latest attempt to justify nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction appeared in their response to a question tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Denzil Davies). The Minister for Europe stated:
"Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty . . . five states—the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Russia and China—are legally entitled to possess nuclear weapons."—[Official Report, 1 September 2004; Vol. 424, c. 689W.]
The problem is that that statement is untrue. The Minister conflated the definition of a nuclear weapon state under the NPT with its legality. The NPT, however, is clear on this matter: article 9, paragraph 3, states:
"For the purpose of this Treaty, a Nuclear Weapon State is one which has manufactured and exploded a nuclear weapon or other nuclear explosive devices prior to 1 January, 1967."
That defines what constitutes a nuclear weapon state, but it does not make legal our continued possession of nuclear WMD. In fact, as Ministers well know, the NPT explicitly requires our nuclear WMD to be negotiated away. Most independent observers will agree that we have failed to carry out that obligation.
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