Page:Hansard (UK) - Vol 566 No. 40 August 29th 2013.pdf/35

1489 west to Assad on the use of chemical weapons? If not, would not the more logical response be to lay down a credible threat, rather than one artificially limited by some time frame, stating, “If you fail to undertake not to use chemical weapons, we will degrade and deter you by military strike and bring you to the table”? Might that not have more effect than a short-term military strike now?

Mr Blunt: The difficulty is legality, which is why the Government have been dancing on the head of a pin, making the case that this is absolutely and only about the use of chemical weapons—because nothing else in international law would justify the sort of intervention that is being proposed if agreement at the UN Security Council cannot be reached. If we get to that grave position, I think we have to be pretty certain about the effectiveness of the military action before we take it. Are we going actively to degrade chemical weapons? There are hideous practical problems in attempting that, with the potential of awful collateral damage. If we go after the command and control structure in a way that is sufficiently active to degrade it, that plainly means going after Assad himself, thus actively intervening on one side in the conduct of the war.

The critical point about the consequences was put by the Leader of the Opposition in his speech, and it is implicit in the motion. I rather wish that the Opposition had been more direct about the implications of what the right hon. Gentleman was saying. He was saying that if the consequences of our military action were to threaten the Geneva II process, which should mean Assad and his Government on the one side and the rebels on the other sitting down, engaging in politics and reaching a deal to escape from the current position, the action would not be worth engaging in. I think that case is overwhelmingly strong. It is the Russians, supported by the Chinese, who have put themselves in this position by vetoing any attempt to bring about wider international action, so the responsibility is theirs to get their client to the negotiating table.

The responsibility to act is not ours, particularly on much more doubtful legal ground around the use of international humanitarian law, which could get us into a potentially hideous situation with unforeseen consequences. If we are lucky, what we are debating here and perhaps again next week is a very limited British involvement in quite a small international operation of firing off some scores of cruise missiles to make a point about deterring action. We might be firing one cruise missile so that our hand is, as it were, on the dagger of international action.

I suppose that if Prime Minister Blair did nothing else, he at least so sensitised the body politic that we are here having this debate in recess, and we are yet to be in a position where we are even authorising a very limited use of military action. However, we are intervening in a situation where, in the analysis of Eugene Rogan, this is not about winner takes all in Syria; it is about loser must die. So the idea that we will send an effective deterrence message with a limited use of military action does not stand up.

We need to consider other responsibilities. This month, the Egyptian Government have, with malice aforethought, murdered well over 1,000 of their own citizens to suppress people who were supporting what had been previously an elected Government. What are they to think about the fact that we are getting ourselves into a position to intervene over Syria, and yet we have said precious little about a crime that is on the scale of five or 10 times what we are debating here? It has not been part of an insurgency yet, but the Egyptian Government have almost certainly kicked an insurgency off as a result of what they are doing.

We need to examine what we are doing and whether it will work. I do not think it will; I cannot support it.

6.20 pm

Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op): Syria’s use of chemical weapons is either a huge mistake or, in my view, a calculated attempt to test the resolve of the west, post Iraq and post Afghanistan. If we look at the possibility that it was a mistake, it could have been an official or a general who gave orders to the relevant Government department for the use of chemical weapons without the direct instruction of Assad; that scenario has been put forward by reports appearing in Foreign Affairs magazine. Alternatively, it could be a test to see whether Syria could get away with the use of weapons of mass destruction, and whether the west would not have the stomach for a challenge. Chemical weapons have been used in Syria earlier, and until the recent red line from Obama the west did not react, other than to threaten a red line.

The weapons inspectors said that they needed another four days to finish their investigations, plus, I am sure, a short time after that for their report to be collated. Many of us believe that the regime is responsible for the attacks, and those attacks are probably authorised from a very senior level—probably Assad himself. But the inspectors need to report back to the UNSC purely and simply to establish due process—something that did not happen through the Iraq conflict and the Iraq war that followed. I was a relatively new MP, sat on the Bench just behind the Prime Minister, in 2003 when we took the decision. We thought we had good intelligence, and that intelligence was later found to be false. One of the lessons of the Iraq war is that we wait for due process to be followed through the UN before action is taken.

Obviously, the resolution tabled by the Prime Minister under chapter VII preceded the weapons inspectors’ report, so we knew full well that the Russians and Chinese would be likely to veto that resolution. Our debate today obviously takes place before the weapons inspectors have finished, because powers elsewhere have decided to go ahead before the Security Council has determined whether the evidence from the inspectors is sufficient to meet the burden of proof required. It is clear that without that Security Council resolution, any military action would, like that of a previous Labour Government, be illegal.

Mr Newmark: The hon. Gentleman is putting huge stock in the UN, but the UN will not apportion blame. The only thing that the UN is doing is validating that chemical weapons were indeed used, and we all know that.

Mark Hendrick: Yes, we do all know that, but it is a prerequisite of the due process, and the UN procedure, that that is established through the inspectors. That