Debate on the Address

This has been a quite exceptional debate. After the opening speeches, the right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig) gave us an example of a former Defence Minister quietly dissociating himself from the policy that he supported when he was in office. That was done very gently, as is his style. As far as I can see, there are no supporters of the Government’s approach, or people who are willing to defend them. Indeed, I think that the Government realise that we are in a pretty pass as a result of the foreign policy that we have followed since 1997. I entirely agree with the analysis made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke). I have heard a few speeches by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) in my time—as many as four or five a day in 1997, when I was on regional tours, trying to support the beleaguered Conservative troops in the countryside. Today’s speech, however, was a real tour de force, and I have rarely heard him speak better. It was a pity that during that speech, the Minister for Europe—the former Defence Secretary and the four-hour Secretary of State for Europe—was grimacing and making faces on the Government Front Bench. He does not even answer questions on Europe during Foreign Office questions. Instead, he is reduced to doing his duty of manning the Front Bench. The Minister for Europe grimaced when my right hon. and learned Friend pointed out the consequences of the failure of our policy, but in Kosovo, our policy had to be rescued by the Russians. In Iraq, we now look to the Syrians and Iranians to help us to get out of our position. In Afghanistan, we have managed it so that platoon positions in the villages were freed-up by what were, to all intents and purposes, negotiations with the Taliban. Those are the consequences of using hard power over the past decade. In the speech made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), there were important lessons about the use of soft and hard power today, and later I shall return to his important message about Hamas and Hezbollah. Imagine if the United States had not, historically, pursued a policy of hard power and isolation towards Cuba, but had instead pursued a policy of engagement. Is there the slightest chance that Cuba would still have the Government that it has today if it had not been isolated by the United States? The same applies to countries such as Syria and Iran. We need to try to engage with such countries, because a policy of isolation has had the unintended consequence of bringing about the ugly Governments that we hope will change in due course—a hope that is shared by the majority of people in those countries. My right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), the shadow Foreign Secretary, gave an excellent analysis of Iraq, and he had something important to say about the need to deepen our cultural, social and educational links with the Arab world. I am co-chairman of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, together with the hon. Members for Erith and Thamesmead (John Austin), and for South-East Cornwall (Mr. Breed). A few hon. Members present will, I hope, have heard of it, but sadly our activities are not on a large enough scale, and we are not resourced well enough. I have just been to Bahrain with the director of that organisation to explain that some of us in the United Kingdom Parliament are working towards a greater understanding of the Arab world. Given the UK’s long history of involvement in the region, and her apparent depth of understanding of the area, our friends in Bahrain express bewilderment that the UK should have been party to the catastrophe in policy of the past 10 years. I have to point out to them that the UK’s deep experience and knowledge of the subject has largely gone. We heard terrific speeches from my right hon. and learned Friends the Members for Rushcliffe, for Devizes and for Kensington and Chelsea, but it was the generation before them that had experience of the administration of many of the territories in the Gulf. For all of us in the House, that world has gone, and as my right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary suggested, we must now work very hard to rebuild our understanding of a region in which there are many friends of the United Kingdom. We all need to appreciate that those links must be rebuilt. The UK’s reputation has suffered the most awful damage due to the Iraq imbroglio. It is time to put that right, with patience and humility, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said in his speech on the anniversary of 9/11. We have an enormous amount to re-learn. Bahrain, which has strong links of friendship with the UK, is holding elections on Saturday 25 November, and is gradually and overtly progressing towards a constitutional monarchy. At various events during my visit, I talked to Bahraini ladies who were concerned about the consequences to them of the elections. Their values are liberal and western compared to most of the people of Bahrain and they are waiting with some apprehension to see what will happen on 25 November and what kind of lower House Bahrain will elect. We need to support such countries as they make tentative steps towards a more representative system for their people, but the effect of our policy has been to radicalise populations across the entire region. I have talked about our friends, but what about movements whose values we do not share, such as Hamas and Hezbollah? We have to find a way of engaging with them. There can be no solution in Palestine without Hamas. There can be no settlement or stable Government in Lebanon without the participation of Hezbollah in some way. We must make it clear in every possible way that the path of violence is not sensible for them, and that it is catastrophic for their citizens and a disaster for us. The challenge we face is to separate Hamas and Hezbollah and other movements rooted in national issues, such as the Chechen and Kashmiri resistance movements. We have to isolate those movements and analyse them according to the circumstances that have produced them. The real destructive enemy of our values is a cult—a sect called al-Qaeda—but we have created support for al-Qaeda, which is seen by British Pakistanis, for instance, as the exemplar for resisting the west and supporting Islamic values. All our policy should be aimed at reducing the automatic support for al-Qaeda that is springing up inside our society. We must make clear precisely what the nature of that organisation is, which means that we must understand other conflicts, such as those in Palestine, Lebanon, Chechnya and Kashmir, and not simply roll them all together in our rhetoric, for example by using expressions such as ““the axis of evil””. That is disastrous and produces the clash of civilisations. We must be extremely careful about how we describe people whose methods we deplore. We need to understand why Palestinians voted for Hamas in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections. We need to understand why Hezbollah has such enormous support among Shi’a Muslims in southern Lebanon. If we understand those things and take the opportunity to turn the board around—to see what the conflicts look like from the other side—and try to engage by all possible means with people whose values we may not agree with or support, we shall have a much better chance of producing a world for our children that is much more stable than the one they seem likely to face.