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"appreciation for the sacrifices made in the liberation of our country".
"Liberation" was the term that she used. It is also the term that I have heard time and again on my visits to Iraq. The people I have spoken to see what happened in 2003 as a liberation. For those of us who opposed the intervention in Iraq, that is quite a hard thing to have to accept. However, it is strange that we never hear much in this country about what the people on the ground believe. Lots of us have opinions, and lots of people outside this place have them too; but the truth is that the people of Kurdistan and the people in Iraq see what we did as an act of liberation.
Bayan knows what she is talking about. Both her father, who was the deputy Prime Minister of Kurdistan, and her brother were among those killed by suicide bombers in the Kurdish capital Irbil in February 2004. I have had the privilege of visiting the monument to their death, which carries a profound epitaph: "Freedom is not free". Very true.
"it is important to appreciate that Iraq is far better off today than it was under Saddam Hussein and there are many great opportunities for exchange between Britain and Iraq-cultural, educational and commercial."
I hope that John Chilcot, whose inquiry starts tomorrow, asks people such as Bayan Rahman to give evidence. I hope that he asks Hangar Khan, from the regional trade union movement, and Abdullah Muhsin, who was exiled in the 1980s and became the international representative of the trade union movement, to give evidence too. They will say clearly what Bayan has said to me:
"Some people seem to have forgotten the brutal reality of his long years of repression. Saddam conducted a campaign of genocide against the Kurds. His forces used chemical weapons to kill men, women and children including 5,000 people who were killed in an attack on the city of Halabja in 1988. They murdered innocent people including thousands of boys and men from the Barzan area who disappeared in 1983,"
"and whose mass graves are being found today."
"razed 4,500 villages to the ground, destroying"
the agricultural heartland of Iraq. The suffering in other parts of Iraq was the same. The key question that people ask me when I am over there is not "Why did you come here in 2003?" but "Why didn't you come here in 1983? We might have had a very different way of life."
The other thing that I want to stress to the Government is the opportunities that we are missing in Iraq. There is huge potential for investment in Iraq. The Iraqis want us there. They have a great belief in the craftsmanship of British workpeople and a great loyalty to us for what this Government and this country have done over many years. The Iraqis want us to take up those opportunities, but it is clear that other countries are getting there ahead of us. We really need to step up our game, and we need UK Trade & Investment to do that.
The Queen's Speech also referred to the need for us to ensure that we increase the 0.7 per cent. contribution from GDP to international development, a point echoed by the Foreign Secretary earlier. Over the past few weeks, we have had a discussion that I thought would never happen in this country, about the so-called Tobin tax or a currency transaction levy, which I have supported for many years.
I was a delegate to the World Trade Organisation talks in Seattle in 1999, where we thought that we nearly had a deal. Unfortunately, it did not come off. We then went to the next round in Doha, where nothing like that was anywhere near the agenda, mainly as a result of what had happened on 9/11. It was therefore with some surprise that the idea of a currency transaction levy, as called for by early-day motion 1396, which I tabled earlier this year, came out of the discussions at St. Andrews. A currency transaction levy is something that our Prime Minister, our Chancellor and now other people across the world are starting to pursue.
I never thought that I would say this, but it appears that I was too timid in what I was asking for. My early-day motion, with the support of some campaign groups, suggested a currency transaction levy of 0.005 per
cent., which would raise something in the region of £33 billion a year for international development. When we consider the trillions that are moved around the world, £33 billion is not very much, but it would be a huge step in the right direction for international development. I am very glad that that piece of work has taken hold in this country and across the world, because the people of this country are ready to say that it is time that the people who have made millions, billions and trillions off the back of ordinary working people across this country and across the world started playing their part.
For years, the story has been that if we do anything like that, everybody will run away and put their money somewhere else. That is the same story that people told me for years when I argued for the nationalisation of the banks, but what did we see in the past two years? Not only did they not run away; they ran towards and said, "Please, please, please, get us out of the hole that we've put you in." We have done that. We should now be quite clear and say to people, "We want you now to start playing your part in putting this right," and not just by having a transaction levy devoted to international development, but by looking beyond that. What else can we do with the money that we raise with a relatively small levy? The Austrian Government have suggested putting a 0.5 per cent. levy on financial transactions, which would produce £400 billion a year, which could effectively be spent on good causes. That is something that our Government should explore.
I will close my remarks in a moment, but I want quickly to touch on three other things that I hope my Government do not back off from. Last week, the Queen said:
"My Government will introduce a Bill to enable the wider provision of free personal care to those in highest care need."
However, the words had barely been spoken before the experts came out of the woodwork, including those from my party, to criticise the proposal. As a former care worker and someone who had the great privilege of representing home care workers in this country, my suggestion to the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Health is: "Ignore the experts. Get on and do this. It's the right thing to do and the people of this country will congratulate you for it."
Likewise, let us get on with the work to support carbon capture and storage, which is vital for this country's future. We can pretend that we can keep the lights on in this country with wind, water and wave power, but it ain't gonna happen. We need to ensure that we have a good policy, based on exploiting the fossil fuels that we still have in this country.
Lastly, I want to mention something that was not in the Queen's Speech but ought to have been. It is now time, before the end of this Parliament, to put right the injustice of people who are suffering from pleural plaques and asbestos-related diseases. A Bill went through this House about a month ago, and it is now sitting along the corridor. It should be reintroduced, and we should find a way to put this right. That is morally the right thing for this Government to do.
8.19 pm
Mr. Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con):
I congratulate the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr. Anderson) on being an authentic voice of old, red-flag socialism. It
was good to hear him speaking out so robustly. Needless to say, I disagree with almost everything he said, but I do agree with his last point. He has been gravely let down by his own Government on the issue of pleural plaques.
I want to talk about a number of issues, beginning with Afghanistan. I want to follow up on the quote from the Gracious Speech that the hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) used. It is extraordinary that Afghanistan does not even get a sentence of its own in the speech. The quote is:
"My Government will work for security, stability and prosperity in Afghanistan and Pakistan and for peace in the Middle East."
On analysing that sentence, it does not appear that the Government are working for peace in Afghanistan, although they are working for prosperity there.
My constituents, like those in many other communities, have faced the loss of loved ones in this war. I think that four families in my constituency have been directly affected by the loss of loved ones who have sacrificed everything for the service of their country in Afghanistan. The woolly words in the Gracious Speech do not answer the question that I and many others have been asked during the recent Remembrance day services. People asked us whether their son, their relative or their friend had died in vain. The answer that I gave is no, they did not, but I look to the Government to be more forthcoming in explaining why those young men did not die in vain.
The woolly language on Afghanistan in the Gracious Speech, which was picked up by the hon. Member for Islington, North, shows that the Government are trying to embrace all opinions, but we are left with no clarity at all. Instead, we have a spin doctor's fudge, using words that can be interpreted by different people in different ways, to ensure that the hon. Gentleman can support them. I am dissatisfied by the Government's lack of clarity on the objectives. They have not yet succeeded in persuading the people of this country that our young friends and family members are not dying in vain.
I have been in the Chamber for some four and a half hours today, listening to what has been a good quality debate. A persistent theme throughout has been the collective political impotence that our country, our Government and our constituents are experiencing in the face of global anarchy and terrorism and the abuse of human rights. That sense of impotence is apparent in many of the actions of NATO, the EU and the United Nations. Looking at different parts of the world, one can see that their best efforts are not delivering much of a return.
We have heard about what is happening in Zimbabwe, Iran, the Balkans, the middle east and Somalia-not to mention Afghanistan. The Foreign Secretary took it upon himself to say that it was important to have as the EU spokesman on big international issues someone who could stop the traffic in Beijing. I fear, however, that the Foreign Office and the Government now lack any clout in international affairs, although they still talk as though they were running the show.
Extending that theme, I believe that our constituents feel a similar sense of impotence, not just about what is happening abroad but about what is happening in the United Kingdom. For example, the population of the
UK is rapidly accelerating to reach 70 million within the next 20 years. It is difficult to find any constituents who think that that is a good idea, but is there any mention of that in the Gracious Speech? Do we ever have a proper, constructive debate about it? No, we do not. People feel that they are being left in the dark, unable to do anything about it.
What about the vast numbers of immigrants who have come to this country in the past 10 or 12 years, most recently estimated by the Oxford economics report to be in the order of 3 million? According to the report's estimates, that would lead to a total of 6.6 million immigrants in this country, with another million expected in the next five years. Again, has there been any public debate about that? My constituents do not feel that there has. Moreover, the figures that I have just cited do not include those figures for illegal immigrants.
Only last weekend, at my Saturday surgery, I had a couple of relevant cases. One involved a person from Iran. I will not identify him by name, but he was picked up in this country in April 2000. He applied for asylum, but his application was turned down. In January 2002, he appealed. His appeal was dismissed in December 2002. He is still here, although there is a restriction on his being able to work and he is not allowed to depend on public funds. He is, however, alive and well and living in Christchurch. He is now one of the legacy cases, which means that he might finally be dealt with by 2011.
In the meantime, this man is in a complete state of limbo. People will ask why he still reports monthly to the local police station, and why his case has not been dealt with if his appeal was turned down as long ago as 2002. Why is he still in this country, the best part of 10 years after he was first discovered to be here? I do not know the answers to those questions, but I do know that the people of this country feel that this is not right. They feel that someone who has been refused asylum should either be returned to the country from which they came, or, if that is not possible, be allowed to participate in the life of this country. They cannot be expected not to be allowed to earn anything and just to drift along.
On the same day, two people from the People's Republic of China came to my surgery. They had been in this country since 2004, and they, too, were in this limbo of not knowing what is going to happen to them. Again, they are not allowed to work or to have recourse to public funds, but they have now produced a couple of children, so I do not know how they are managing to support them. If there are this number of people in Christchurch who have been refused permission to stay in this country after having gone through due process but are still here, one can only imagine how many there must be in other parts of the country.
The biggest sense of frustration and impotence at the moment, however, is that felt by people in the face of what has been happening in the European Union in the past week or so. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) said that she thought what had happened in recent weeks or days was not particularly satisfactory, but I would go so far as to say that it has been a grotesque spectacle of wheeling and dealing and backroom deals, ending up in lowest common denominator appointments, which cannot be in anybody's best interests.
Over the last two Sessions, I have consistently sought to bring before the House a Bill to evaluate the costs and benefits of our continuing membership of the European Union-a Bill that is supported by my Front Benchers and by the Liberal Democrat Front Benchers, but not, interestingly, by the Government. Bearing in mind the fact that my own party accepts that political integration has gone too far and that the costs of our membership-with a gross contribution exceeding £14.2 billion-are far too high, I hope that the Government will introduce proposals to enable us to have a rational discussion and evaluation of the political and economic costs of continuing membership of the European Union, balancing against that what the benefits might be.
If we did that, we would be prepared at the beginning of the next Parliament to debate this issue with the people-leading, I hope, to a proper referendum, because the people feel impotent, having been promised a referendum that has never been delivered. Nobody under the age of 52 has ever had the chance to express their views in a specific ballot on whether they believe our relationship with the EU is satisfactory or not, and whether they wish to have a changed relationship.
All those sources of frustration give rise to a feeling among our constituents that they are impotent and powerless, with an enormous democratic deficit. Having a lame duck Government continuing to try to hang on to power instead of calling a general election to have a fresh start in this economic crisis simply adds fuel to the fire. I hope that the Government will in fact abandon their proposals in the Queen's Speech and call an immediate general election so that we can clear the air and people can have their say.
8.31 pm
Paul Flynn (Newport, West) (Lab):
"I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it... I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow-soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation... I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed. On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the deception which is being practised on them".
Those words, written by Siegfried Sassoon in 1917 as a serving soldier, were read out in this House, but they precisely describe the current situation in Afghanistan. We went in with a number of objectives, the main one being to ensure that Osama bin Laden had no safe haven from which to plot terrorism in the west. He has a safe haven, but it is in another country.
We went into Afghanistan, as we heard from the Government earlier, partly because 90 per cent. of our drugs were being produced there. It was not the main reason for the war, but it was one of the reasons why going into that country in 2001 was a popular decision. Now, after the deaths of 235 soldiers and enormous expenditure by taxpayers in this country to reduce drug growth, we can see that what we have done has had no influence whatever on the production of heroin. Market forces have had an influence, as there have been three record years for the production of heroin, as a
result of which the price of heroin on the streets of Britain is the cheapest it has ever been. This has been an utter failure.
We heard from the hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer), who has a military background, that he does not believe a word of the current fiction that fighting in Afghanistan reduces the threat of terrorism on our streets. He is, of course, absolutely right. The people who committed the act of terrorism here on 7/7, which killed 52 people, spoke with Yorkshire accents. They were trained in Pakistan. A quarter of the terrorist acts in Britain were planned in this country; the other three quarters were planned in Pakistan. Yet because we have lost our way, the reasons for which we initially sent in our soldiers have now disappeared. The politicians are seeking to find an exit that can be spun into a victory. That is the position we are in now. No one in America, Canada or the Netherlands with any knowledge of the situation believes anything but that the war is lost, and lost hopelessly. We must find a way out.
We now put ourselves in a position where we believe any fantasy: it is always easier to go on repeating an old lie than to reveal a new truth. Do we seriously believe that the current President of Afghanistan is the one who will lead his country out of corruption? He has rigged an election; his brother is one of the best known and richest drug dealers in the country; on human rights, he has said that it was right to release from prison, on the grounds that boys will be boys, young men who gang-raped a 13-year-old girl; he refused for 18 months to release from prison someone who received a 20-year sentence for accessing a document on women's human rights from the internet; and he made it legal for Afghan men to commit marital rape.
It was telling that this afternoon the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) said that our best practical way forward was to use corruption ourselves, as we did in Iraq: to bribe soldiers to come to our side. We often miss the point that the soldiers in the Afghan army, the ones in the police, the ones in the Taliban and the ones fighting for the warlords, are mercenaries with tribal loyalties. There is not a good group and a bad group. Are our bribes of money to get people to fight for us somehow ethical? It is no wonder that their loyalties are shallow.
Nor is it surprising that we cannot count on the Afghan police, one of whom turned on our soldiers in an act of murder. They have no reason to be loyal. I asked the Foreign Secretary today whether he thought that Karzai would arrest his brother, Wali. If he does not, is he serious about corruption? Will he make sure that the Afghan police are paid? That is fairly important, because at the moment they are not paid-they buy their jobs. The position of chief constable in one area costs up to £100,000, which the holder must get back by taking his cut of the bribes and extortion of his junior officers who rob the people they are meant to serve.
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